User talk:K.e.coffman/Archive/2016/January

Copyright material removed

I have removed part of your addition to HIAG, as two paragraphs were copied from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1880378. All content must be written in your own words. Let me know if you have any questions.-- Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 00:08, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

@Diannaa: Hi Diannaa, thank you for your note. I think you removed the 'stated goals' section - it contained the quotes from HIAG's bylaws (via Large), which naturally had to be presented as direct quotations. Could you clarify? K.e.coffman (talk) 00:17, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

You can see for yourself the overlap by viewing this report. Your prose is almost identical to the source text. -- Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 00:26, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

I cannot see this as it's a paid service. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:28, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

That is odd; I can see it, and I do not pay for the service. Here it is: The part that is bolded is identical to the source: I will remove and revision-delete this material once you have had a chance to review it.

Ok, thank you. I will rework this. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:00, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

@Diannaa: Okay, how about his version? I'd still like to keep some of HIAG's language in the 1s para, as I think it speaks for itself. In the second para, I'd like to keep the bylaws quote; I added quotation marks to Large's language to indicate that this is his interpretation of the bylaws, and not mine (I had neglected to this in the previous version).

By late 1951, HIAG was publishing its first periodical and beginning to draw attention to itself and generate public controversy. In response, in December of 1951, Paul Hausser reached out to the political parties in the West German parliament with a message justifying HIAG’s existence as an organisation that focused on the 'comradeship' and 'legal, social and economic rights' of the veterans. The letter further stated that the Waffen-SS veterans rejected all forms of ‘radicalism' and declared themselves to be ‘upstanding citizens’.

The official bylaws were drawn up in 1952, and included provisions that HIAG would seek legal equivalence with the Wehrmacht under West Germany’s law that granted pension rights to some of Werhmacht’s professional soldiers. The bylaws also vowed “to assist the orphans and widows of fallen Waffen-SS men; to aid their colleagues convicted of war crimes as well as the recent returnees; facilitate a search service for those still unaccounted for; and cultivate 'comradeship and military values'”.

Please let me know if you think this will work. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:10, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

This is inadequate paraphrasing, as you are still presenting the exact same ideas in the exact same language and the exact same order as the source material, and presenting them as though they were your own work. Please see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for why this is not okay. Putting the material in the second paragraph in quotation marks gives the reader the mistaken impression that you are quoting from the bylaws, when in actuality you are quoting Large. You might consider integrating the material into the existing sections of the article. For example, the material in your first paragraph could be integrated into the first paragraph of "Formation", and your second paragraph could be integrated into the first paragraph of "Waffen SS advocacy". Like this:

HIAG began in the late 1950 as a loose association of local support groups The majority of participants were officers, mostly of junior grades. It was formally established in the summer of 1951 by Otto Kumm, a former Waffen-SS general and the last commander of the Waffen-SS division Leibstabdarte.[7] By October 1951, it claimed to embrace 376 local branches across the entire Federal Republic.[6] With the publication of its first periodical in late 1951, HIAG was beginning to draw attention to itself and generate public controversy, including speculation that it was a neo-Nazi organization. In response, HIAG spokesman Paul Hausser wrote an open letter to the Bundestag denying these accusations and describing the HIAG as an advocacy organization for former Waffen-SS members. (Large 1987, pp.82-83)

Later, the first paragraph of "Waffen SS advocacy" becomes this:

As described in their bylaws of 1952, the aims of the organisation were to provide comradeship, legal assistance, help for families, and aid in searches for those still missing. The HIAG also campaigned for Waffen-SS veterans to be awarded the legal status of "persons formerly in the public service" under article 131 of the Basic Law, so that they would qualify for the same rights and pensions as Wehrmacht veterans. (Large 1987, p.83)

@Diannaa: Thank you; that was very helpful! K.e.coffman (talk) 06:17, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Problematic material in articles on the regular Germany Army of World War II

Hi, I've just received some total gumph from the Afrika Korps article glamorising the force based on dubious or no references ([1], [2]) and material from the Ramcke Parachute Brigade article implying its commander was a hero for protecting the civilian population at Brest later in the war - he was actually convicted of war crimes for destroying the city and murdering civilians there! [3] [4]. This had also been omitted from the lead of the Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke article [5]. I suspect the issue you've been chasing up on goes much beyond articles on the SS... Regards, Nick-D (talk) 06:45, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

And in the Panzer Division Clausewitz article [6]. Referring to most of the division's personnel becoming casualties or prisoners in the last weeks of the war as simply being "expended" is pretty chilling. Nick-D (talk) 07:04, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I could bang on about this for ages, but this really takes the cake. Nick-D (talk) 08:01, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I've also just run through the articles on the Army jäger divisions making this edit to boilerplate text which had been added to them all: Hitler reduced the size of Germany army divisions from three to two regiments as a way of keeping lots of divisions he was no longer able to man active, but the text implied that this was done because it was a superior organisation. The post-war German armies used the standard three regiment/brigade divisional structure throughout the Cold War. Nick-D (talk) 09:41, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

An odd thing I keep noticing is that an implausibly high number of articles on German units claim that despite fighting the Soviets in the last days of the war they surrendered to the western Allies. While many German units tried to do this, for obvious reasons, the implied success rate is strikingly high. These articles generally also don't note that the units were often grossly under-strength by the end of the war, with many individual soldiers being captured by the Soviets. Nick-D (talk) 10:04, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Another good example: the article lead claimed that the operation failed due to "the numerical superiority of the Red Army", while the referenced figures in the info box show that the German force was actually larger, and the body of the article states that the Soviets correctly anticipated the attack and then out-fought the Germans. Nick-D (talk) 10:10, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

@Nick-D: Yes, the body of such claims is so vast, it's mind boggling. I also present to you the Battle of Tannenberg Line – another so-called battle of the European SS, where 20,000 SS-men with 7 tanks and 70–80 assault guns defeat 135,000 Russians with 150 armoured vehicles and 1680 assault guns.

If you are interested in this topic, here are a few sources I recommend:

• MacKenzie, S.P. (1997). Revolutionary Armies in the Modern Era: A Revisionist Approach. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415096904. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) − contains a chapter "The Waffen-SS in the Second World War, 1939–45: Europe's Übermenschen?" which explains myths of Waffen-SS and post-war revisionism, including such popular items as fighting performance, 'comradely relationships within the ranks', 'leading from the front', etc. On the first item, turns out that W-SS divisions were simply larger and better equipped than the Wehrmacht ones. For example, an up to strength W-SS division would have 15 to 20,000 troops and a full complement of tanks. Further, compared to Soviet rifle divisions, which at the end of the war were often 4 to 5,000 strong, it's no surprise that a W-SS unit would be able to take on a corps (as was the case in Operation Spring Awakening, if I'm not mistaken) or even an army.

• Smelser, Ronald; Davies, Edward J. (2008). The myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521833653. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) – covers the Wehrmacht myth overall, but with a special emphasis on W-SS, as the most popular with the 'romancers', – the myth's origins, how it was sustained, how West Germany's rearmament and the Cold War played a role. Special attention is given to the apologist/revisionist body of work, which makes the book unintentionally hilarious in its later chapters.

• Wegner, Bernd (1990). The Waffen-SS: Organization, Ideology and Function. New York: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 978-0631140733. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) – I've not studied this book in detail, but it appears to be a solid scholarly treatment. For example, I read a portion on the formation of the SS Div. Hitlerjugend, and got interesting insights. Wikipedia used to contain admiring material in the "Formation and training" section on the unconventional training tactics (see version prior to revisions). Per Wegner, formation of this division was an irresponsible exercise, as it denuded NCO and jr officer corps urgently needed for other division and disrupted training schedules for other formations. As the result, the division was ineffective and was largely wiped out in the Normandy battles anyway.

• Werther, Steffen; Hurd, Madeleine (2014). "Go East Old Man: The Ritual Spaces of SS Veteran's Memory Work" (PDF). Culture Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research. 6: 327–359. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) – This is a good read on how the W-SS revisioninsm lives on in the post Berlin Wall world, with the opening of the Eastern Europe for the W-SS veterans and sympathisers to make new 'memory spaces'.

Eventually, I'd like to work on an article The myth of the clean Wehrmacht where the origins and the resulting narratives can be explained. But I could start with Waffen-SS historical revisionism. I think I have a good start with the HIAG article, especially with sections Historical revisionism and Assessment and outcomes, but it's naturally limited to HIAG so I could not include much material on the pan-European revisionists or the current state of affairs, given that HIAG was dissolved in 1992. The Waffen-SS historical revisionism article can also be used as a reference to point to if there are questions about using Agte, Kurowski, Landwehr, waffen-ss.nl, www.eestileegion.com, axishistory.com etc.

What do you think? K.e.coffman (talk) 21:02, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

There were also some nationalist Estonian POV pushers a few years ago who added serious nonsense to articles like Battle of Tannenberg Line. Those articles sound good - I'd be interested in helping. Nick-D (talk) 07:12, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

By the way, here's another example: [7] (the unit committed war crimes, ...but somehow didn't). Nick-D (talk) 07:47, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good one! There's a lot of this minimization/obfuscation going on. I like how Wilhelm Mohnke's article emphatically ends with: "Mohnke strongly denied the [war crimes] accusations, telling historian Thomas Fischer, "I issued no orders not to take English prisoners or to execute prisoners."" What else is he going to say, admit it? K.e.coffman (talk) 08:06, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

And that's hardly the point: officers are responsible for misconduct in their units, and if he ran such a poorly disciplined unit and didn't take action against the murderers than he carried some of the responsiblity. Nick-D (talk) 09:48, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Some more examples: [8], [9], [10], [11] (I suspect that this was well-intentioned but hopeless editing), [12], [13]. The volume of this stuff is prtty awful. Nick-D (talk) 10:51, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

This really takes the cake. Other units were blamed for crimes these units were also involved in, and a nasty militia unit involved in a string of massacres was claimed to have been a "purely military battle formation". The fact that these units were transferred intact into an SS division was totally over-looked. Nick-D (talk) 06:28, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Here's an example of "surrendering to the Americans" that you brought up before. IMO, it's a way to soften the blow of the defeat by making it a point of pride to surrender to the Western Allies ("at least we did not surrender to the Soviets"), tinged with victimhood – the choice of language is really telling here. K.e.coffman (talk) 08:10, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Joachim von Ribbentrop

K.e.: I know you are working on the SS articles (with a main focus on the Waffen-SS articles). Here is an article that frankly needs ce and clean up work. It is bloated, to say the least. I don't have time to do it right now. Anyway, just a suggestion. Cheers, Kierzek (talk) 17:56, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

@Kierzek: Did you perhaps mean Rudolf von Ribbentrop? K.e.coffman (talk) 04:42, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

No, but certainly that one is one I can see that you would want to review as well. Kierzek (talk) 13:18, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Mellenthin

I wanted to apologize for engaging in the edit warring. I am new to WP and did not initially realize how things work around here. I pinged a couple other editors to get additonal perspective on the matter and I appreciate your efforts to clarify items in the article. I will play around with the sandbox and maybe you can help me with your input. Thanks, Teddy1289 (talk)Teddy1289 —Preceding undated comment added 12:36, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

@Teddy1289: Sure, I'd be glad to help where I can. Interestingly, I came across Mellenthin's mentions in Citino's Wehrmacht Retreats and Wette's Wehrmacht not because I was looking to prop up the position offered in The Myth of the Eastern Front, but these were the books I happened to read at the moment. So Mellenthin appears to be well known among historians. K.e.coffman (talk) 07:00, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Arthur Nebe

Hello: I have just completed a first editorial pass of your article on Arthur Nebe. I will do a second pass tomorrow. I wanted to draw your attention to a number of things that I found so far while editing.

In the "Head of Kripo" section, I may have missed it, but what does “SD” at the end of this sentence mean? "At that point, Reinhard Heydrich was in overall command of the SiPo (Gestapo and Kripo) and the SD."

Possibly flesh out why Nebe had an “aversion” to Heydrich and Himmler? Did Heydrich report to Himmler? It’s not clear why he would be lunching with both of them.

Did the Nazis really use the term “reservations” ("…to the planned reservations for the Jews and others…") to refer to what we refer to as concentration camps? I think that the term “reservations” refers solely to Native Americans’ homesteads.

Killing Operations section – “Einsatzgruppe B's activities were also stymied by inefficiencies.” – needs clarification.

New Killing Methods section – “Nebe discussed the technical aspects of the idea with Dr. Heess…” – who is Dr. Heess??

In the meantime, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I'll continue working tomorrow.

Kind regards,
Twofingered Typist (talk) 22:27, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@Twofingered Typist: Awesome, thank you! I will address these issues tonight. Is it okay to edit the article directly, or do you prefer answers here / on the article's Talk page? K.e.coffman (talk) 22:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@K.e.coffman: You are the author so most certainly should make any necessary changes. I see from your second note you have done so. I'll take another pass at the article. It's interesting that the Germans used the term "reservation" - I had no idea. Regards,Twofingered Typist (talk) 12:40, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

@K.e.coffman: My copy edit is now complete. I notice that someone made a change in the middle of my c/e - you might want to check that what was added is correct. One final query - is there an extra "ken" in Max von Schenkenckendorff?

You might be interested - I was shocked - in these two sites which are numbers 2 and 3 (the WP article is #1) when you Google Arthur Nebe.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Nebe.html
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/nebe.html
Kind regards.Twofingered Typist (talk) 14:13, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I have worked on the article to some degree, off and on, for several years; however, only became re-involved recently after K.e. started improving the article. It is in much better shape now. Thanks, to both of you. BTW the jewishvirtuallibrary.org, ironically uses Wikipedia as a source, something most people don't know, so it is discouraged as a cite. Cheers, Kierzek (talk) 18:05, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Ronald Smelser (March 23)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by Onel5969 was: Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.

• If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Ronald Smelser and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
• If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk or on the reviewer's talk page.
• You can also use Wikipedia's real-time chat help from experienced editors.

Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:02, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Hello! K.e.coffman, I noticed your article was declined at Articles for Creation, and that can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! Onel5969 TT me 13:02, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Some constructive criticism

Just glancing over the list of articles, on your userpage, which you have worked on. I noted the following comment for Barkmann: "Ernst Barkmann – see diff; this case is somewhat unique due to a eponymous non-existing battle in the infobox".

It seems you missed an opportunity. As far as I am aware, this guy is only famous in the west for his alleged actions at "Barkmann's Corner". I do not know if Barkmann himself stated what happened as fact, but what I have read is that Eric Lefevre made it 'common knowledge' and it has since been reprinted several times. Chaps like Steven Zaloga have called it what it is: made up and yet another myth to boost the (poor fighting) reputation of the Waffen-SS. For example, see Zaloga's Armored Champion: The Top Tanks of World War II. Not a reliable source, although historian Rich Anderson posts here describing the actual facts compared to the myth: link.

If anything, I think that is what these articles should show: the myth, and the myth refuted. Otherwise, we have articles providing small biographies with no one having an idea as to why they have a wiki page. Granted, the above example is a toughy considering the lack of sources on the subject. At any rate, just a bit of constructive criticism. Regards, EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 05:02, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

@EnigmaMcmxc:Thats a great suggestion! Currently, my favorite books are those that deal with WWII historical revisionism. I plan on developing content the "Rommel myth" for Erwin Rommel (from Rommel Reconsidered by a number of British historians); I'll add "Barkmann's corner" content after that. The "myth and the myth refuted" is exactly what I did with Friedrich von Mellenthin; compare the current version to the one before reworking. I had to debate the changes with an editor who kept removing the critiquing content as "outside opinions injected into the article". K.e.coffman (talk) 05:17, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Wittmann

I see you have been doing some editing of Michael Wittmann; the article Battle of Villers-Bocage is a FA article; therefore you should be able to copy edit over information and RS cites from that for use. I myself have never studied Wittmann in any detail as there were enough other editors who seemed to be interested in him and related subject articles. Kierzek (talk) 17:48, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! I will do that in the next couple of days or over the weekend. K.e.coffman (talk) 18:03, 29 February 2016 (UTC)