Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/World War II task force

World War Two page and infox

I found the attached infobox over on the World War II page

{{World War II infobox}}

SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 00:45, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Replied on the main project talk page ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 00:49, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Campaigns

The campaigns added are exclusively US-centric. They hardly relflect the global nature of the war (heck, every event where the US isn't present, like the Battle of Britain, aren't even mentioned). Oberiko 01:23, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Sofixit ;-) (Slightly more seriously, I assume it's because the person adding them was in the U.S. military; and most of them are red links anyways, and should probably be removed.) —Kirill Lokshin 01:42, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually you are going to find that there will be a problem finding information of the sort available for US wars because few other nations have their information on line to the same extent that the US has its information on line. As it is, the US is the only nation I know that has all of its governmental information in the Public Domain, and thus freely accessable. SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 13:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

True, but there's no reason to insist that everything be available online, or be sourced directly from the government; we could just as easily use whatever campaign breakdown is used by the major historians in this area (is there a common one, incidentally?). —Kirill Lokshin 14:07, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

It has been my experience that the major US historians all use the US Government sources as their major primary source because of its availability, and the fact that the US government has a reputation for documenting its wars contemporaneously, at least from the Civil War forward. Theodore Roosevelt's history of the War of 1812 is still the standard document for both sides in that war, because it is based on his access to first-hand documentation. The US Army Center of Military History remains the single point of contact on wars that the US has participated in, and they even have source material for conglicts and portions of conflicts that we were only marginally involved in. Most of the other combatants still have World War II material in a classified status. The Soviet Union used to be the leader in the battle to maintain classified status of World War II material, but now Great Britain has taken the lead since the Soviet Union has departed the scene, and Russia released their archives in recent years. The importance of the Internet for historical research revolves around the idea of accessability. It was not long ago true that if I wanted to get access to most of the things I have posted here, especially the various graphic items, I had to make a pilgrimage to the USACMH at Carlisle Barracks, or the USAIOH, also at Carlisle Barracks, which is at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Visiting those venues still requires a reservation, and official permission to use their facilities, and they charge for all physical copies they make of their materials.. Some of them require Freedom Of Information Requests. By posting everything they have on the Internet, they get more bang for their budgetary buck, reduce the number of annual requesats for access to their information archives, and reduce the number of publications they produce and maintain. BTW, the US Government Printing Office Bookstore has closed all of their brick-and-mortar stores except for their flagship store at the Pentagon in Virginia, and they have reduced their publishing budget by 75%. Now, the primary media for the publishing of their publications - including all historical publications - is the Internet. Paper versions are still produced, but in significantly small numbers, and mostly in Hard Cover. I am not aware of any other government that has gone to this length, so I expect that if ytou want access to First-hand documents from other nations, you will have to make a pilgrimage to their archives, and hope they will grant access. SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 00:26, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

2000 Hours 11 April, 2006

You are making things up buddy boy. The US Army Center of Military History (USACMH) is at Ft. McNair, not Carlisle Barracks. The US Army Military History Insititue (USAMHI) is at Carlisle Barracks along with the War College Library. There is no US Army library or archive with the initials USAIOH. The Institute of Heraldry is neither an archive or a library. (Most heraldric items of the US Army are permanently housed at the US Army Historical Clearing House at Anniston Army Depot.)

I have never repeat never had to file a FOIA Request to obtain research materials at either of these facilities. The USAMHI collection does not include classified materials, and those held at USACMH are for the use of the organizational and command historians, and are not available to the public at all! You must be thinking of the NARA holdings, Modern Military Records, at College Park.

Finally, I can tell you with personal certainty that appointments, reservations and official permissions are not required for USAMHI or USACMH. Reservations are suggested for CMH, but you can pretty much walk in during normal operating hours, and do some research. At least I have.

Philippsbourg

Template talk:Campaignbox Axis-Soviet War

There's some intensive debate over how this should be organized and what should be listed in it going on; additional input from anyone with knowledge of the Eastern Front would be extremely helpful. —Kirill Lokshin 15:49, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I have now started to reorganise the templates. Please provide input, additions, and corrections, where you see those are necessary. Remember the goal is to reduce the size of the main campaignbox to a minimum, while being able to add smaller engagements that warrant an article. Andreas 08:56, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Battle - request for help

I would like to start an article on the Battle of Yelnia (first operational defeat of the Wehrmacht during Operation Barbarossa, but have seen a number of different spellings of the place. Could a Russian speaker please confirm that Yelnia is indeed the correct and current spelling? Thanks. Andreas 16:10, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean this? Kirill Lokshin 16:15, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

That's the one spelling I did not try. Thanks a lot. On my watchlist, hopefully soon to be improved. Andreas 16:26, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

RFC on Eastern Front

(Moved from project page. Kirill Lokshin 01:29, 20 March 2006 (UTC))

• There is currently a Request for Comments active on the Eastern Front page. This is the result of an edit war that has been going on since Dec 2005 or so. The page has been locked for weeks (correctly - otherwise it would degenerate to a mess). It would be great if some knowledgable people could take a look at the page, plus a thorough look at the discussion page. The discussion is quite lengthy but probably necessary to see the current situation. If you can weigh in, please do so on the Eastern Front discussion page in the 'Request for Comments' section. Thanks to anyone who can help. DMorpheus 18:21, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Done, hope it helps. Andreas 19:46, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you; those are very useful comments. DMorpheus 20:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I posted the following to try and get things going there. Deng seems to be happy with it, maybe that is a way out of the impasse? It would be good if we could gauge what support for this exists.

In an effort to move this forward

I have edited a bit in the proposed page. I must say that I can not find any fundamental problem with it other than that it is far too long and that the battle descriptions should be shortened. If that is not done, there is a risk that newer edits on the respective battle pages will not be reflected in the main article.

This does not mean there are no errors or questions remaining about the proposed page. I am sure there are some, that is normal in an article of this length, but I am quite impressed with the effort spent on the article and the attempt to source. I also believe it is reasonably balanced. I have added verify tags where I felt more work is needed.

I would therefore propose to:

a) Replace the currently locked article with the proposed article I linked to above since it is of much higher quality.

b) Archive this discussion in an attempt to calm things down, and to give those who participated in it the chance to make peace

c) Keep the new article locked, and ask for comments to be made on the talk page to avoid an immediate edit war.

d) Open the new article once we can be sure that a reasonable consensus has been reached on the talk page.

I have no idea if these suggestions are in line with Wiki policies, but it appears to me that something needs to be done to overcome the impasse. That's my 2 pence. Between them and another 73 pennies you can get a cuppa at a greasy spoon. Regards Andreas 08:22, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I think Andreas edits to my test page are very good and I agree with him and his edits to the page.(Deng 12:58, 11 March 2006 (UTC))

We need to get the numbers right

I have a dilemma with Soviet losses.
Here are the facts:

1. The Russian Academy of Science published a report in 1993 that detailed the data on the demographic impact of the war on the USSR. The losses were 26.6 million including 17 million draft aged males.
   
2. The official Russian military report published in 1993 listed 6.8 million confirmed dead plus 1.3 million POW dead and 500,000 MIA for a grand total of 8.6 million military war dead. They claim 4.0 million POW taken by Germans less 2.7 liberated in 1945 yielding a loss of 1.3 million POWs.
   
3. The Germans claimed to have taken 5.7 million POW not counting Sov MIA of whom 1 million were drafted into the German Army( Vlasov Army, SS)
   
4. Most western historians( I could make a list) list Sov POW losses as 3 million+. Not counting in MIA
   
5. An independent Russian researcher Vadim Erlikman published in 2004 a handbook of statistics on war casualties(with extensive footnotes, using Russian & Western sources) that claimed the USSR military losses were 10.6 million in the war including 6.9 million Killed, 700,000 MIA, 2.6 million POW and 400,000 partisans and milita. The number of POW and MIA is more credible than 1.8 million so I posted Erlikman's data for the USSR casualties on the WW2 Casualties page. Erlikman is not an apologist for the communist system or the Russian government. He listed an estimated 1.7 million dead due to Soviet repression in addition to war losses of 26.5 million
   
6. Back to the 2.7 million POWs and "Vlasovites" that were sent back to the USSR in 1945. I wonder how many are included in the total of 17 million draft aged males lost in the war. They were marched off to the Gulag. We just do not know their fate.
   
7. Please go to my talk page ----Woogie10w 01:29, 23 March 2006 (UTC)to see a posting I copied from the Dupuy Forum on Soviet Casualties. Today there is a high level Russian military official( now he is head of the military archives) who claims there is a card file in Russia today with the names of 13.8 million Soviet war dead.
   

I really need the help of people in Wikipedia who may have knowledge on this topic. We need to get the numbers right---Woogie10w 01:29, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't sound like we're going to be able to get the numbers right if so many credible (or at least useable) sources contradict each other. Our best bet is to place the numbers as a range and then provide readers with the list of sources and each of their figures. Oberiko 17:26, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. In fact I doubt if anyone could ever get the numbers right. The Red Army didn't do a very good job collecting the information in the first place, so it is not realistic to expect anyone today to have a very accurate number. That would be true even if none of the histories had an axe to grind. DMorpheus 18:46, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

New Category

Not sure if it was needed, but it helps me find my way through things. 'Red Army Operations in World War II' (sorry, no idea how to link it) - I just started it and will try to categorise as many articles as possible. I think I will also use Easter to consider how to clean up the current mess that are the Red Army WW2 related cats a bit. Andreas 13:58, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but won't such a structure cause some redundant categorization with, say, a potential "Wermacht operations in World War II" category? Maybe it would be easier to use a geographic category (e.g. Category:Battles and operations on the Eastern Front (World War II)) instead? Kirill Lokshin 14:15, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Good point. I am happy to see it moved. That would then enable us to clean up Category:Soviet-German War by moving all the operations/battles in it to a subcategory. Andreas 14:28, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that needs some cleaning up; I'm not sure if "Battles and operations of the Eastern Front" or "Battles and operations of the Soviet-German War" is the better name for the new category, though. Kirill Lokshin 14:32, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

US ARMY DIVISION CATEGORIES

What happened to the various categhories that were established to segregate the various types of US Army Divisions? I just went looking for them so i could find the units therein as a shortcut, and I find them not only depopulated, but deleted. SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 22:17, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Do you recall the names of the categories in question? Kirill Lokshin 22:18, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Category:Armored divisions of the United States

Category:Infantry divisions of the United States

SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 14:05, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

They seem to have been renamed (presumably through WP:CFD, although I can't find the exact archive) to Category:Armored divisions of the United States Army and Category:Infantry divisions of the United States Army, respectively. Kirill Lokshin 14:08, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much.SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 02:59, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Templates

I'm currently building up userbox templates conforming to the the style found on the Military history WikiProject. I'll be building one for this task force if its members dont mind. What would be a defining image representing World War II? Your help is appreacited.Dryzen 13:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

How about the Soviet soldiers on the Reichstag? Leithp 13:52, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Good image, but will it still be recognizable when small? (As an aside, whatever image is decided upon, you might want to update {{WPMILHIST World War II task force}} to use the same one, for consistency.) Kirill Lokshin 13:54, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

In that regard I've built the template with the image from {{WPMILHIST World War II task force}}, If its decide that an another image is more repressentative, its an easy thing to modify the template.Dryzen 14:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

• Here's a look of the Soviets at the Reichstag:

File:Red army soldiers raising the soviet flag on the roof of the reichstag berlin germany.jpg

This user is a member in the World War II task force of the Military history WikiProject.

• And here's how it looks with the current Supermarine image:

This user is a member of the
World War II task force
of WikiProject Military history.

Kirill was right, I can't make out any detail in the Soviet image. The Spitfire one is nice. I tested out a similar one with a Panzer IV below. Leithp 14:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

File:PanzerIVF2.jpg

This user is a member in the World War II task force of the Military history WikiProject.

Nice, I perfer the tank to the aircraft. What do the other participants think?Dryzen 18:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Since the Spitfire has apparently been axed by a member of our friendly neighborhood image death squad, I've replaced it with the panzer for the time being. Kirill Lokshin 23:22, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Looks like the decision was taken for us.Dryzen 15:16, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Mmmmm, more userboxes :)))) -- Grafikm_fr ^(AutoGRAF) 22:22, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I would try sticking with a photograph from WWII before filling in the blank space with a simple unit or symbol. Some of the WWII images I would suggest include: Image:Pennsylvania Lingayen.jpg, Image:1942 midway g17054.jpg, Image:NormandyLST.jpeg, Image:Yalta Conference.jpg, Image:WW2 Iwo Jima flag raising.jpg (inelligable, I believe, but forth the mention anyway), Image:USSArizonaPearlHarbor.jpg, Image:Mccarthur-peace.jpg, Image:Doolittle b-25.jpg, or something similar. TomStar81 22:46, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I haven't tried all of those, but I would think that any good photograph would have the same problem of not being identifiable at 40px that the Soviet flag-raising one did. Kirill Lokshin 23:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I know, but I would feel better about knowing that we at least tried. That and the fact that other people who join later are probably going to wonder why we did not pick one these photos for the project. In this way we can say that we tried, but it didn't work out :-) TomStar81 00:04, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

We should try to find a picture of the National World War II Memorial to see if it would be a good canidate for use. TomStar81 00:34, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Battle of the Oder Neisse

Is there any point in having this article? Battle of the Oder-Neisse I think a redirect to Battle of Berlin, or maybe Battle of Seelow Heights would suffice. Andreas 12:00, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Oder-Vistula and Battle of Berlin cover this perimeter I think. One could always check though... :) -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 12:04, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Not Oder-Vistula, since the article is talking about the Berlin Operation. Andreas 12:11, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

It still contains useful stuff IIRC (sorry I'm working at the moment, don't even have time to go check... :) -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 12:20, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, the information could be rescued by adding it to the other articles. Andreas 12:33, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Operation Punishment / Operation 25 / Invasion of Yugoslavia

I happened to notice that there are three articles that all cover the same event. Operation Punishment stands alone, and Operation 25 redirects to Invasion of Yugoslavia, which is poorly written. I'd fix this myself but I don't know how to edit redirects. 216.242.114.115 14:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I've redirected the lot of them to Operation Punishment, which seems to be the only one with actual content. Whether that's the best name for the final article is something that can be discussed at a later point. Kirill Lokshin 14:54, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Bombing of Belgrade in World War II, anyone? Andreas 18:15, 23 May 2006 (UTC)