Talk:German rearmament

Fritz Todt
Not to mention the Minister of Armaments, Dr. Todt, is a major failing in this start-class article. HammerFilmFan (talk) 04:29, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Tendentious Interpretation of History
" Nazism thus transformed the Weimar Republic's Reichswehr into Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht, a military large enough to launch another world war."

This is an interpretation of German rearmament in a manner consistent with the gist of Allied propaganda, that Hitler had intended "another world war" all along. It implies that all blame for "another world war" belongs to Hitler, when in fact it was Britain and France that declared war on Germany. Also, the change in the name of Germany's army from Reichswehr to Wehrmacht is neither here nor there. I am removing that sentence. Your Buddy Fred Lewis (talk) 23:46, 14 March 2014 (UTC)


 * "when in fact it was Britain and France that declared war on Germany." I wonder why they did that? Could it be because the Germans decided to mount an unprovoked offensive invasion of Poland, and when the British sent the Germans an ultimatum telling them to stop (otherwise they would be attacked), the Germans ignored them? The Germans were certainly the aggressors in the second world war. Unfortunately, as this talk page comment is over 6 years old, I don't remember where the sentence used to be, and therefore am unable to re-insert it. Hazard Gamer (talk) 20:27, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Suggested improvements
The article currently seems to be written largely from a sociological perspective, which is all well and good, but it is lacking in economic and military information--surely the key subjects for a rearmament program. What specific measures were taken to increase the production of armaments? How did the Wehrmacht become more powerful, and how were civil defense measures and the reserve military improved? Statistics and economic/military specifics would really improve the coverage of this topic. Knight of Truth (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 04:19, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Improvement request
This article is about politics and organizations. Almost nothing about armament itself or its development, not even references to other articles. Nothing at all about co-operation with e.g. Sweden, Soviet Union and Italy. 130.234.6.147 (talk) 10:04, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

The following is a rather technical issue (sorry if it's in the wrong place, correction welcomed): Under the heading: "Weimar era", the sentence: "The latter motive viewed the Treaty of Versailles, which was ostensibly about war reparations and peace enforcement." appears. There seems to be something missing here - the writer is about to tell us how the motive viewed the Treaty of Versailles, but, after the clause "which was ostensibly about war reparations and peace enforcement", leaves us hanging waiting for said writer's statement about how the treaty was viewed.

ZevFarkas (talk) 13:02, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

using an unwritten dissertation is a very bad idea-- the claims it makes do not yet exist
PhD dissertations Present new information on a topic, which has to be thoroughly sourced and approved by a dissertation committee of professors. The dissertation cited here has not even been written yet and cannot be called a reliable published secondary source. The editor who posted the description says that anyway everything is already well known-- in that case, it will not be approved as original research by the dissertation committee. The allegations are highly controversial, and are not at all well known or agreed-upon in the reliable secondary sources. The new scholarly books or journal articles even mentioned here. Rjensen (talk) 17:51, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Ph.D dissertations synthesize existing information before introducing new ideas or developments. This, as I already stated, is existing information, and you need only take a peek at the respective articles linked from within the text to get see more sources. Nevertheless, for your peace of mind I brought them here. François Robere (talk) 19:58, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
 * the dissertation is not yet written (and thus not yet approved) so it is not a reliable source. Rjensen (talk) 00:15, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Uncontroversial move
I renamed this, minus the superfluous hyphen. The spelling re-armament is not even a secondary spelling for rearmament. Mathglot (talk) 19:28, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 25 May 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved  Mdaniels5757 (talk) 00:01, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

German rearmament → German rearmament between the world wars – The current meaning of this title is imprecise and ambiguous (see related Move request at Talk:Wiederbewaffnung).

One meaning of "German rearmament" is the interwar arms buildup carried out by Germany after WW I and the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and the other is the post-WW II rebuilding of the German military facilitated by the United States. The Wikipedia article for the latter meaning is currently at "Wiederbewaffnung", and there is a pending move request there as well.

Both articles should have a WP:PRECISE, unambiguous name. This article should be renamed to a distinct, descriptive title that unambiguously refers to the interwar period, perhaps German mobilization after World War I, German rearmament between the world wars (or, "...in the interwar period"), Military buildup in Nazi Germany, or the like.

If the related move at Wiederbewaffnung and this one are adopted, then a disambig page should be created linking both titles. Mathglot (talk) 21:14, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Listed at WT:GERMANY, WT:MILHIST. Mathglot (talk) 21:25, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Survey

 * Support German rearmament (1919–1939), or alternately Interwar German rearmament per WP:CONCISE. What you do think about the dates? Article dates it to "shortly after the Treaty of Versailles [1919]". buidhe 21:30, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually Oppose move Judging from my Google Books search, the vast majority of titles which don't have "West German" in the title are referring to interwar rearmament, making this the WP:PRIMARY topic. Hatnotes should be used for navigation. buidhe 21:45, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * As per Buidhe--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:37, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Just noting here that User:Sturmvogel 66's "as per..." !vote above is (at this writing) a "Support"-vote, pre-WP:REDACT by Buidhe. Mathglot (talk) 21:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Notifying creator and top contribs: Mathglot (talk) 21:44, 25 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Support German rearmament (1919–1939), with a dab at primary. The dab can also point to West German rearmament and East German rearmament. I'm assuming those articles will exist in the near future. – Reidgreg (talk) 22:14, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , the former already exists: see Talk:Wiederbewaffnung. Mathglot (talk) 22:22, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment – Not sure if I get a !vote since I made the proposal, but based on this analysis I now support German rearmament (1919–1939), with German rearmament to become a 3-way disambig page (pre-*, east-*, west-*). Mathglot (talk) 00:38, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Support - I think it's probably wise - while a lot of people are familiar with "German rearmament" to mean policies during the interbellum era, and it is understood as such in academic texts, Wikipedia shouldn't assume this and the title to too generic. I mean the website is meant to be structured like an encyclopedia, so it would be wise to just add "(1919-1939)" to clear that up. Sdio7 (talk) 00:57, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Support German rearmament (1919–1939), with German rearmament to become a 3-way disambig page. And thanks for letting me know. Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 19:53, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose move, as West German rearmament and East German rearmament are clearly different and there is not any other period of German rearmament. It would be nice also if someone created those pages when we are done discussing this.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 22:14, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , You're right: West German rearmament and East German rearmament are indeed different, as everyone agrees. They both took place after World War II, in the Federal Republic, and the DDR, respectively. But there is, of course, another period of German rearmament, namely, the period between the two World Wars.  That is the period that this article covers, and it is exactly why this Move request was created in the first place. Mathglot (talk) 02:39, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , I understand that but since there is no other "German rearmament" period then it is unnecessary to change the title to begin with. Or am I missing something?Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 11:38, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , yes, you're missing the fact that there are two periods of rearmament. The first one was in the 1920s and 30s (interwar period), and the second one in the 1950s and 60s and beyond (cold war period). This article covers the interwar period. The article Wiederbewaffnung covers the cold war period, although only for West Germany. There is another move request at that article, related to this one. You are welcome to participate there, if you wish, at Talk:Wiederbewaffnung. Mathglot (talk) 18:22, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , Ok, I understand. I would think the obvious solution is to rename Wiederbewaffnung (which is meaningless to an English speaker) to West German rearmament and leave this article's title as is. I will write this on the Wiederbewaffnung page as well.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 19:33, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose move. Should stay at the present title, since "German rearmament" is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. A hatnote could be added to point to West German rearmament. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:48, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , can you elaborate on why you believe "German rearmament" is primary? I've discussed this below and provided some data. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 05:49, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment – should we relist? or add some more project listings, to try and get some more eyeballs? Afaict, the policy-based, data-backed, COMMONNAME argument seems clear, yet no one is responding to it. I'll see if there are some projects that might attract some new opinions. Mathglot (talk) 01:20, 7 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Listed at: WT:HISTORY, WT:RM.


 * Comment Just trying to succinctly restate my position for the benefit of any newcomers. This article should be renamed to a more WP:PRECISE title such as German rearmament (1919–1939), to avoid confusion with post-WW2 German rearmament. This is based on the actual data in reliable sources, showing that no title is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. The claim above (@ 21:45, 25 May) that the "vast majority" of results of a Google books search show that the current title is preferred, shows no work and is without foundation. (It probably resulted from an inaccurate, unquoted search which fails to take into account the difference between a title search and general search; but without the data, that's a mind-read.) In fact, the data from a carefully constructed search show that there is no WP:PRIMARYTOPIC; the data can be viewed here. Any claim to the contrary would have to deal with these facts.  Failing that, this article should be renamed, with a disambig page created at the current title. Mathglot (talk) 02:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Discussion
Regarding WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and the Google books search, I'm not so sure as User:Buidhe indicates above, and I'm doing some tests and will report back. For starters, looking at just the top ten results, of the top four it's two and two. But that's very preliminary and not too meaningful; the data may end up supporting Buidhe in the end. More soon, but I did want to separate this into its own section, so we don't clutter the Survey section with discussion. Mathglot (talk) 22:31, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Results with "West German rearmament" should be discarded as it's a WP:PTM. buidh</b><b style="color: White">e</b> 22:35, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

One additional point: the alternative "German rearmament (1919–1939)" has a nice feature in its favor, but it's almost an Easter egg; the fact that the dates are in parens, as one might see even in running text in a book, has the additional benefit of corresponding to Wikipedia's parenthetical disambiguation syntax. Among other things, this makes it very handy to use, where you want the article content as viewed by a reader to render, "German rearmament" but you want the link to point to the 1919–1939 article; the WP:PIPETRICK makes this trivial. This is not a reason to favor (or oppose) that choice, it's just a nice fringe benefit, and one I use all the time in similarly-named articles, and I thought I'd mention it. Mathglot (talk) 22:39, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Not relevant to this discussion; just takes up space. Mathglot (talk) 01:31, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Regarding WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, after an initial experiment in Google books checking the top ten de-duped results, I'm not seeing a preference in numbers in either direction, whether for titles about interwar, or cold-war rearmament:

Searching for "German rearmament" but not "West German rearmament" in the title in Google books
 * ( = interwar; = post-WW II):

1. 1.

2. 2.

3. 3.

4. 4. (thesis)

5. 5.

6. 6.

7. — Deist 1981 (dupe of #3; discarded)

8. 7.   series: Documents on British policy overseas. Ser. 2, Vol. 3 "subject:BRD"

9. 8.

10. — McGeehan 1969 ( dupe of McGeehan 1997; discarded)

11. 9.

12. — Butler 1986 (dupe of #7; discarded)

13. 10.
 * numbers 1 2 3 4 9 above; : 5 6 7 8 10. A five to five split, with the pre-WW II bunched at the top.

If this holds up on subsequent pages, there is likely no WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Mathglot (talk) 00:19, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I performed similar searches on Scholar, which pretty much confirm what we saw in books, although I didn't make an exact count this time, just eyeballed it. There are two searches, quoted intitle, and quoted unrestricted . The most striking thing I noticed, was that using the INTITLE keyword produces very different results than without it: you can see both senses showing up in the titles, whereas in the unrestricted search, the numbers are much more skewed. This shouldn't be surprising, as in the title-only search, where there is no context, the dates, or an era-settling keyword (such as Wehrmacht) is needed to show what the journal article topic is. I'm not sure why there's such a skew in the unrestricted one, although my conjecture is that it's because the unrestricted search excludes a book entirely if the string "West German rearmamant" appears in it anywhere even in a six hundred page book, regardless how many times it appears without the "West", whereas restricting the search domain to titles only, levels the playing field, so to speak, because they're simply not as long. To be certain, a new search combining two title-restricted keywords and two unrestricted ones could be carried out, and that might settle it. But from what I've seen thus far, I'm satisfied that neither topic jumps out as PRIMARY. Mathglot (talk) 03:56, 27 May 2020 (UTC)