User:Weiderm/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gestapo&action=edit&section=12#Population_ratios,_methods_and_effectiveness

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
It represents the revisionist history of Robert Gellately well, however it fails to properly address the other side of the coin - namely, the extent to which the Gestapo was successful, outside of denouncers.

Evaluate the article
The content of the Gestapo wikipedia article "Population ratios, methods and effectiveness" does not cover all of the researched aspects, and in some cases fails to accurately express itself. The content is relatively relevant, however oftentimes it fails to fully go into points. Specific examples of this include V-leute (or "V-men," as the article refers to them). The content is not incredibly up to date, with most of the information coming from secondary sources written in the 1990s; the few sources written after are used to further the argument of an ineffective Gestapo.

The sources used are alright, however it appears to over-cite Robert Gellately. More representation of Richard Evans (and others, especially Claire Hall's) points about Nazi coercion efforts, such as the aforementioned V-leute as significant contributors to Gestapo influence, and the Gestapo's considerable success in combating underground resistance cells within Germany. The article does not address a historically underrepresented topic; rather, there is a wealth of information on the Gestapo and Nazi Germany.

The article is not neutral; significant focus is placed on Gellately's work, and in fact the article presents the Gestapo as ineffectual and asserts that all modern historians believe this to be true, when in fact it is an active debate in the field. There is little to no representation for the coercion-aspect of the Gestapo, with Evans's argument being misrepresented in tandem with some of Eric Johnson's remarks (two historians that actively disagree with each other on the subject at hand). There are no fringe viewpoints expressed, or any other viewpoints besides the argument for an ineffective Gestapo.

The article is primarily backed up by respected historians, however in some cases (Gellately) the historian's actual work is not used, but instead a summary/explanatory side-text is used as the source instead, suggesting impure representation of the original text. The sources are not incredibly thorough, and in some cases statistics are used with no explanation, such as the 80%, 10%, 10% Gestapo investigations statistics (denunciations, response to information from other branches in the German government, and Gestapo found by itself). This could be mediated by including either statistics from Gellately on the topic, or using Hall’s extensive empirical research on the topic of denouncers, Gestapo, and V-leute.

The writing quality of the article leaves something to be desired. It does not have very good topic sentences, there are a few typos, and it is not written from a neutral perspective. Furthermore, the flow of the text is off, and it does not go from population ratios to methods to effectiveness, as the title might suggest; rather, it goes from effectiveness to population ratios to methods to effectiveness again. It reads as though it is a highschool argumentative history paper.

Overall, the article has much that could be improved upon, as stated above. One strength that could be taken from the article is that if one were to rewrite it in a neutral tone, much of the research for the argument on an ineffective Gestapo is already done; furthermore, the methods paragraph is short, concise, and appears to do a fairly good job of summarizing the Gestapo methods neutrally. Rewriting the article in a neutral tone, organizing it in the style of the title, representing the other argument from a historiographical perspective (initial coercion understanding with Crankshaw, Gellately’s revision, Evans’s and Hall’s step back) would help to ensure the article improved overall.