User:K.e.coffman/Statement C

Statement provided to the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee
Please see below - By Charles D. Melson, June 2018

In recent decades, some of the most enduring interpretations of World War II have been subject to revision. Indeed, military historians are using inter-disciplinary methods to answer original questions, and offer new perspectives in established debates. Scholars at present include both the military and political factors in their narratives of World War II. Most recent scholarship (Stephen Fritz, Ben Shepherd) show the intertwined nature of the battlefield and political action on the Eastern Front and elsewhere, to emphasize collective and individual responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi regime during the war.

That is why I would include such information in Hoepner's biography. The documentation exists, and the current approach is to link the German Army with what was happening in their area of operations behind the front. On Hoepner, I recommend David Stahel, Operation Typhoon: Hitler's March on Moscow, October 1941 (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Any of his work is balanced and worth reading. Also Geoffrey P. Megargee, War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 (Lanham: Rowen & Littlefield, 2006). Same for him and his work.

Let me also recommend Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies, The Myth of the Eastern Front (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008). It provides an interesting (or horrifying) look at the topic you wrote about in the newsletter of the Society for Military History. This line of thinking, or lack of awareness, is not uncommon. For example, while working at the U.S. Marine Corps history division, I had to deal with a query once from a senior officer: "What is the SS and why is it bad?"

More education is definitely needed to put the World War II German war machine in proper context, including what was happening behind the front lines. On the latter, my own works include: Kleinkrieg: The German Experience with Guerrilla Wars, from Clausewitz to Hitler (Havertown: Casemate Publishers, 2016) and "German Counterinsurgency Revisited," The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, March 2011.

The refusal of the Wikipedia editor in question to include ideological and criminal information in Hoepner's Wikipedia page shows that he may be out of touch with contemporary historiography. Or, this editor may simply lack the competence to realize the true aims of Hitler's racial crusade and the Wehrmacht's role in it.



Charles D. Melson is an American military historian and U.S. Marine Corps Chief Historian (retired). He spent more than two decades with the History and Museums Division at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps in Washington, D.C., and the Marine Corps University at Quantico, VA. Melson wrote and edited official histories in the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and the Global War on Terrorism series as well as World War II commemorative publications.

Explanatory notes

 * I asked the author (Melson) to review the Talk page of Erich Hoepner.
 * The statement is replicated verbatim, apart from the added Wikilinks, from the email that the author sent to ArbCom as part of WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/German war effort/Evidence.