Talk:Otto Beisheim

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I briefly put Otto Beisheim in Category:Nazis based on his documented service in an elite SS unit. However due to the highly sensitive nature of the category and the inherently defamatory nature of that tag, I thought it would be best to discuss this, and Talk:List of living Nazis first. Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Issues:
 * In one sense, there is no Nazi party anymore so there can be no "current" Nazis, only "Neo-Nazis." Should there be a separate category for "Former Nazis"?  Should there be a distinction based on whether or not people left or repudiated their affiliation in some way?  Should anyone who was a "Nazi" at any point during the the party's existence be categorized as such?
 * Another question is "What is a Nazi?" Is official, documented party membership needed? But surely service in the the premier SS unit as a bodyguard to Hitler is indicative of at a minimum absolute loyalty to the Nazi regime, so wouldn't Nazi apply to this case? Where do you draw the line? NTK 03:54, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

At the very least, the article in its current form needs a reference to the claim 84.9.96.231 (talk) 13:50, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * agreed, i gave two german references to the claim, and included some explanatory language from German wiki. rumors of membership in the unit is notable, it would be better, if there were some followon scholarship, rather than one claim. Pohick2 (talk) 14:33, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Edit Request: World War II
Hello. We updated and translated carefully the WWII-part of the de.wikipedia article. So now we request to extend the en.wiki article.

Otto Beisheim (3 January 1924 – 18 February 2013 ) was a German businessman and founder of Metro AG. In 2010, his net worth was estimated at US $3.6 billion.

In October 1942, Otto Besheim voluntarily joined the Waffen-SS. During this time, he temporarily served as Sturmmann (aka  Private) in the Waffen-SS division „Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler“ on the Eastern Front. As demonstrated in the detailed historical study of Otto Beisheim‘s childhood and adolescence, published in 2020, historian Joachim Scholtyseck found no indication in his research that Beisheim was involved in any war crimes during his assignment with the Waffen-SS. In the battle of Kursk in July 1943, Beisheim incurred a light injury. In December 1943 near Berdičev, he was severely injured. In July 1944, following an extensive period of recovery in various military hospitals, Beisheim served as a private in an administrative unit before he was taken as a British prisoner of war in May 1945. He was released in March 1946.

After the war, Beisheim went into business. The first Metro Market, opened in November 1963 in Essen-Altenessen. On 10 January 2004, Beisheim Center was officially opened on the northwest side of Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, built for 463 million euros, and including the Ritz-Carlton and Marriott chains.

In 2009, he sold 5.2% of the shares of Metro AG to various national and international investors; a further 3.1% could be sold. The WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management, in Koblenz is named after him.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Isarorange (talk • contribs) 07:53, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Who is "we" in your comment?
 * In any case, ✅. I have reformatted the request. It appears that you want to replace the second sentence with a short biography while leaving everything else unchanged.
 * I disagree with the notion of removing existing citations to reliable sources, so I attempted to retain them in a modification of the proposed text above. ~Anachronist (talk) 18:36, 9 January 2021 (UTC)