Talk:Dieter Dengler

Sole Survivor?
The article says Dieter Dengler was the sole survivor of the escape. However, it seems that Pisidhi Indradat is still alive today and wrote a critique of the movie's historical accuracy at rescuedawnthetruth.com. Where did this fact come from?

Dengler is the only one who survived the escape. Indradat was captured and sent to a camp where Laotion prisoners were being held. He was freed by Royal Laotian troops in 1967. Dengler was very critical of Indradat in his book ESCAPE FROM LAOS, stating that he was not trustworthy and was feared to be overly friendly with the guards, that he was not interested in escaping and refused to participate in the plans until he discovered that his life would probably not be spared when the guards killed the prisoners. Indradat's account of his experiences is available on the Air America web site.

Sam McGowan

Its also interesting that in this entire article it doesn't say once how long he was actually a POW. Im guessing by just putting together the different dates used that it was around a year but I am not really sure.

-MP


 * Indradat was recaptured; he was one of the escapees who survived the escape with Dengler. --Faith (talk) 03:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Dieterpstr.jpg
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BetacommandBot 20:37, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:59, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

"Grandfather only citizen in his town who did not vote for Hitler"
Firstly, all elections (last one 1933) were performed as secret ballots. Secondly, throughout Germany support for Hitler was different at these last elections, some towns with slightly more than 50% for the Nazi party, some less than 50% (afak in Berlin only about 28%). There were no towns were virtually everybody voted for the nazis.

Clarifying/refuting the above statement. The reference in the article was to the August 19, 1934 plebiscite, which was referred to similarly in several web pages I checked. Here's a typical quote: "On August 19, about 95 percent of registered voters in Germany went to the polls and gave Hitler 38 million votes of approval (90 percent of the vote)." from http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/becomes.htm. Whether the story about his father is true or not is open to question, but the results on the plebicite are much higher than described above.

Eradicate false facts from the movie from this article
I am quite disappointed to discover after watching the movie "Rescue Dawn" and then reading the articles and letters on rescuedawnthetruth.com, that most of the facts in this article are taken directly from the movie - which as stated on that website, are mostly false, glorified to make Dieter look like the sole hero of his escapade. such things as the sentence describing Martin's death at the hands of a machete wielding villager and Dieter's escape are false - Dieter was in fact (well, according to rescuedawnthetruth.com) hiding in the forest while Martin went to the village alone to ask for food. it's stupid little things like this obviously taken from the movie that make this article look amateurish —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajlowndes (talk • contribs) 16:42, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070928045436/http://www.rescuedawnthetruth.com/ to http://www.rescuedawnthetruth.com

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Non-encyclopedic style
Much of this article reads like a breathless potboiler novel. There are far too many pointless quotations from Dengler; "Seven of us escaped," said Dengler. "I was the only one who came out alive." WP style for this is: "Of the seven prisoners who escaped, only Dengler survived." There is far too much narration, i.e., "Escape proved to be hazardous." An encyclopedia gives the facts and lets users draw subjective conclusions.

And it's just too long -- includes lists, "dramatic" details not necessary to answer the question "Who is Dieter Dengler?", and as others have pointed out above, barely-credible claims about a supposed "hero's journey". (Again, a literary device, not an encyclopedic one.) For example, the whole bit about his grandfather's anti-Hitler past should be distilled to one simple, straightforward sentence; something along the lines of: "According to Dengler, he drew inspiration from his grandfather, who was persecuted by the Nazis for opposing Hitler." WP mission accomplished.

Basically, we have an overlong, emotionally-charged NPOV swamp here. Could someone with expertise on this subject crop about half of it out and restore encyclopedic style to the summarised information that remains? Laodah 03:30, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090521070959/http://www.rescuedawnthetruth.com:80/Story_of_Escape.pdf to http://www.rescuedawnthetruth.com/Story_of_Escape.pdf

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Confusing sentence needs rewrite
Under the heading "Later life and death", the second sentence of the third paragraph, describing Dengler's post-war visit to Laos, states "He [Dengler] was taken to the camp from which he had escaped and was surprised to discover that at one point he and Martin had been within a mile and a half of it." This is confusing. I presume that it is referring to the time during which Dengler and Martin were escapees from the POW camp, but that still does not make the statement clear, since being "within (a distance of)" at some point while on the run from it is inevitable. The only thing that might make sense is if they had been in such close proximity of it after first having traveled a considerably greater distance, but that does not seem to have been the case. Can anyone clear this up? Bricology (talk) 22:00, 30 May 2022 (UTC)