Talk:Moonsund operation

Title

Moonsund is more commonly used in English than Moonzund, thus I propose moving the page appropriately. Thoughts? Martintg (talk) 01:30, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Other articles on similar operations have used the Russian transliteration where there is no established English name for the operation; whether there's an English name for the place or not hasn't been relevant. As I doubt there is any tradition of calling this operation by a particular English name, I'd argue to keep 'Moonzund'.Esdrasbarnevelt (talk) 12:23, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Esdrasbarnevelt. The Soviet historical name is the one which 99% of people will be searching for. Buckshot06 (talk) 10:53, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. If the archipelago is known in English as the Moonsund islands, then introducing the Russian spelling is erroneous. Otherwise, we might perhaps also rename Berlin Operation into Berlinskaya Operation. Besides, your logic that The Soviet historical name is the one which 99% of people will be searching for doesn't hold. Both 'Moonsund operation and 'Moonzund operation' have only 8 google hits. So let us not disseminate misspellings, unless strictly necessary. --Miacek (talk) 17:43, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, google.books gives more hits for Moonsund operation. --Miacek (talk) 17:46, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

The first one of which is something about the First World War - this proves nothing.

This is an article about a military operation, not about the archipelago it took place on. As such, in the absence of an English name, it should follow the Soviet one. Esdrasbarnevelt (talk) 10:49, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

The English name is not absent, it is used and more often than the 'Russian version'. Both can be used with regard to first or second world war. It would be ridiculous to use a misspelling that is actually less often used than the correct English term. Related searches which can include e.g. 'Liberation of Moonsund islands' give together over 10 (!) times more google hits than 'MoonZund' variant [1] vs [2]. Unless you give a good reason to see that scholarly sources use considerably more often the illiterate version, I recommend entitling the article as Moonsund operation. --Miacek (talk) 14:09, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Disputed atrocities

The following comment was removed by a user:

The Russians in particular gained a reputation for not taking prisoners, shooting them out of hand or even torturing captives to death. The fighting on Saaremaa is a grim example , it is not known whether any Germans were taken prisoner at all. For instance, an officer was hung from a nearby road sign, a few Germans who just missed the last evacuation were forced to stand in the icy Baltic sea for hours, then pulled ashore and shot. Civilians were also brutally murdered.

I consider this paragraph relevant. While not intending to clear the German forces of their various crimes, it is now generally accepted that Russian forces frequently shot or tortured captured Germans. German excesses are well known and documented, whereas Allied excesses are little known. These examples are mentioned to try to balance the black/white picture. They are documented, and such examples figure in several stories and anecdotes written by German soldiers.

I therefore suggest that this paragraph should be reinstated. Falk74 (talk) 10:00, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I would exercise caution here - why does the paragraph state that russian soldiers "in particular" gained a reputation for brutality? If the German excesses are "well known", why should the Soviet forces be portrayed as having a brutal reputation "in particular"?

Hanging someone from a road sign wasn't exactly excessive by the standards of the Wehrmacht - a sadly common enough war crime. Esdrasbarnevelt (talk) 11:42, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I think that by all probability the source quoted in this section is a very biased book, written by nationalist writers in current Estonia. Neutrality of this text is very disputable, especially considering that Soviet forces claim 700 German POWs being taken on the Syrve peninsula. This alone makes the statement "it is not known whether any Germans were taken prisoner at all" really funny. Not to say anything harder. :) Thus I have replaced the propaganda with the numbers. 91.122.168.20 (talk) 19:52, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

References

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"Russian" is not the adjectival form of "The Soviet Union"

It doesn't matter how much historical minutiae you might know about the battle if you don't know the identities of the major combatants. Guys - please - get it right! There was no "russian" army in WW2 just like there was no "English" air force. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.30.245.96 (talk) 14:15, 25 February 2015 (UTC)