User talk:Cortagravatas

Free French 2nd Division
Considering the massive losses sustained by the Germans in Normandy and during the retreat across France, I do not consider the losses quoted as unreasonable. You may disagree; in that case, however, I would urge you to find other authoritative sources (such as the German casualty reports you mentioned) and quote from them - for example, a footnote appended to the statement of losses noting that "Work XX estimates the losses as ..." Simply declaring the losses as a "Rambo tale" is no basis upon which to edit Wikipedia articles, especially given Wiki's push to provide sources and references for articles. I am unclear as to why you wish to cast doubt on GUF. It is a national work and there will inherently be some bias. However, it is equally clear from the quality of the work that very serious research was performed by the officers in charge of the studies. W. B. Wilson 15:05, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Atrocity allegations against Free French 2nd Division
I read the original German to get a better sense of what was being said.

I am unfortunately unfamiliar with the work that was used to reference the crimes in question. As I have not seen the work personally, I can't pass any judgment on how well (or poorly) it may be researched - thus I'm unable to say if the claims are true or not. I think I will look around the web if nowhere else to see what is out there on the topic of Msr. Galley's wartime activities.

Nor was I familiar with Msr. Galley until I read your comment.

The acts described in the German Wiki article are war crimes. If true, they are not the only war crimes committed against German troops by Allied troops and form part of a larger pattern of brutalities committed by combat troops of (probably) all nations in the Second World War.

In strict terms of an encyclopedia article, though, the "Zweiter Weltkrieg" part of the article should have a slightly broader scope, for example, describing which battles that Msr. Galley may have participated in.

W. B. Wilson 15:22, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * One more note. A web search of "Robert Galley" and "Alençon" did not appear to have any hits referring to the crimes you mention. I take this to mean that the crimes in question are either not well-known or are a false accusation that has not been accepted by the public at large. W. B. Wilson 15:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Free French 2nd Division
>Considering the massive losses sustained by the Germans in Normandy and during the retreat >across France, I do not consider the losses quoted as unreasonable. You may disagree; in that >case, however, I would urge you to find other authoritative sources (such as the German >casualty reports you mentioned) and quote from them - for example, a footnote appended to >the statement of losses noting that "Work XX estimates the losses as ..." Simply declaring the >losses as a "Rambo tale" is no basis upon which to edit Wikipedia articles, especially given >Wiki's push to provide sources and references for articles. I am unclear as to why you wish to >cast doubt on GUF. It is a national work and there will inherently be some bias. However, it is >equally clear from the quality of the work that very serious research was performed by the >officers in charge of the studies. W. B. Wilson 15:05, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I did not edit your article about the Free French 2nd Division, but sent a message to you talk page. The problem is not the massive losses sustained by the Germans in Normandy, but the wide gap between losses allegedly inflicted by the Free French 2nd Division (4,500 killed) and losses suffered by this unit (133 killed). This ratio of 34 Germans killed for every man killed from the 2nd Division I find very hard to believe, also and especially considering what I know about overall German vs. Allied losses in Normandy. Consider, for instance, this information under http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_died_on_D-Day:

"Over 425,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded or went missing during the Battle of Normandy. This figure includes over 209,000 Allied casualties, with nearly 37,000 dead amongst the ground forces and a further 16,714 deaths amongst the Allied air forces. Of the Allied casualties, 83,045 were from 21st Army Group (British, Canadian and Polish ground forces), 125,847 from the US ground forces. The losses of the German forces during the Battle of Normandy can only be estimated. Roughly 200,000 German troops were killed or wounded. The Allies also captured 200,000 prisoners of war (not included in the 425,000 total, above). During the fighting around the Falaise Pocket (August 1944) alone, the Germans suffered losses of around 90,000, including prisoners.

Today, twenty-seven war cemeteries hold the remains of over 110,000 dead from both sides: 77,866 German, 9386 American, 17,769 British, 5002 Canadian and 650 Poles."

German dead buried in cemeteries amount to little more than one-third of the total of dead and wounded, so it can be assumed that all German troops killed in Normandy are buried in war cemeteries there. If we set 77,866 German against 37,000 + 16,714 = 53,714 dead on the Allied site, we get a ratio of about 1.45 to 1. So how can one Allied unit possibly have inflicted a kill ratio of 34 to 1?

As to the GUF, they may have performed "serious research", but on what basis other than the unit’s reports on casualties inflicted on the enemy vs. casualties suffered, which may well have exaggerated the former, for what military unit does not tend to exaggerate casualties it inflicted on the enemy? Unless the GUF checked the 2nd Division’s reports against other evidence, such as reports from the opposing German units about casualties they suffered in the same period, all they did was to uncritically record the 2nd Division’s claims, which as shown above are much at odds with the overall relation between German and Allied casualties during the battle in Normandy.


 * I have a couple of comments. Please understand that the article is not "mine". I have contributed to it before, but was not the original author who posted the losses figures for the Normandy Campaign. However, when I saw that you had deleted the part of the text about the losses and declared them "implausible", I recalled that the GUF included loss reports and so I reviewed what the report on the 2nd Division had to say about the campaign. Since the numbers in the article were called into question, I provided a reference which readers could consult and assess for themselves.


 * On the casualties themselves. First, thank you for providing your reasons for doubting the posted loss numbers. Looking at your numbers above, statistically they make a good case for your doubts. My problem with this approach is that battles rarely display even levels of engagement across their front; it is usual that a battle is very active in some places and less so in other places. It is possible that the French 2nd Division, being armored, was road-bound -- and the roads would have been prime targets of the Allied air force and artillery units, resulting in lots of dead Germans that might have been "claimed" by the 2nd Division. On the other hand, operating on the roads would have also brought the 2nd Division into contact with plenty of Germans trying to get out of the Falaise area by the quickest means possible. It is also interesting that the U.S. 90th Division, operating alongside the French 2nd Division, also recorded high kill counts against their German opponents. This may mean these two units were in a part of the battlefield where their artillery units and requested airstrikes were able to achieve particularly bloody results.


 * I suspect the German reports from the Falaise operations would be chaotic because they were in headlong retreat. As well, many of the Ostlegion battalions may have entirely perished with their loss barely being noted by a German high command that was confronted with a military catastrophe of high order.


 * All that said, your comments provide an interesting counterpart to the 2nd Division's claims on numbers of Germans killed. Perhaps you want to insert a footnote into the article outlining your numbers and why you find the figures for the 2nd Division exaggerated? Another approach would be to place a comment on the article's talk page. W. B. Wilson 04:10, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, I’ll add the following to your first GUF footnote, if you agree:

"The extraordinary ratio of casualties inflicted vs. casualties suffered that was reported by this unit is at odds with the overall relation between Allied and German casualties during the battle of Normandy that becomes apparent from the data under http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/faq.htm#casualities. German dead buried in cemeteries amount to little more than one-third of the total of dead and wounded, so it can be assumed that all German troops killed in Normandy are buried in war cemeteries there. If 77,866 German dead are set against 37,000 + 16,714 = 53,714 dead on the Allied side, the ratio is about 1.45 to 1, whereas the ratio of enemy troops killed vs. own fatalities reported by the Free French 2nd Division (4,500 vs. 133) was about 34 to 1. This disproportion may be due to the 2nd Division, as an armored unit, being road-bound; the roads were the main targets of the Allied air force and artillery units, resulting in many German dead that may have been "claimed" by the 2nd Division. It is also possible that the 2nd Division came across many German troops trying to get out of the Falaise Pocket by the quickest means possible, on whom it could bring to bear its artillery and requested airstrikes to devastating effect."Cortagravatas 09:51, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Looks good to me. I would only ask that you place it into its own footnote immediately after the footnote that references GUF, the reader would then see two footnotes like [1][2], where the second note is your comments on the casualties. Cheers, W. B. Wilson 15:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Done, thanks!Cortagravatas 16:21, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Atrocity allegations against Free French 2nd Division
>One more note. A web search of "Robert Galley" and "Alençon" did not appear to have any hits >referring to the crimes you mention. I take this to mean that the crimes in question are either >not well-known or are a false accusation that has not been accepted by the public at large. W. >B. Wilson 15:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

That’s also my opinion, especially considering where else Mr. Daniel Gueráin is mentioned: http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres/vj.pdf I thought you might know more than I do. Thanks for replying.Cortagravatas 19:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The claims of the 90th U.S. Division re: Falaise
I mentioned the claims of the 90th Division (on the eastern flank of the French 2nd Division); thought you might like to see the text on that. ''The 90th Division in four days took over 13,000 prisoners and 1,000 horses; an incomplete inventory of destruction revealed that in addition to 1,800 horses that were dead, 220 tanks, 160 self-propelled artillery pieces, 700 towed artillery pieces, 130 antiaircraft guns, 130 halftrack vehicles, 5,000 motor vehicles, and 2,000 wagons had been destroyed or damaged. . .'' (page 558 from Martin Blumenson's Breakout and Pursuit, 1989 reprint of the 1961 edition). Interestingly, Blumenson mentions only the claims of the 90th Division and the 2nd French Division, perhaps the other claims were not as spectacular? For purposes of comparison, The Victory Campaign (Canadian official history, page 265) notes that ''During the five days ending at 6:00 p.m. on 23 August, 208 officers and 13,475 other ranks passed through First Canadian Army's prisoner-of-war cage; many more, of course, were picked up by the other converging Allied armies. . . . In the "Gap" area. . . British investigators of No. 2 Operational Research Section found 187 tanks and self-propelled guns, 157 lightly armoured vehicles, 1778 lorries, 669 cars and 252 guns, a grand total of 3043 guns and vehicles (this was in addition to 1270 vehicles including 90 tanks, 31 self-propelled guns and 60 other guns found in what the British defined as the "Pocket" -of the Falaise area- )'' W. B. Wilson 15:46, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

>I mentioned the claims of the 90th Division (on the eastern flank of the French 2nd Division); >thought you might like to see the text on that.

Certainly, thanks!

>Intestingly, Blumenson mentions only the claims of the 90th Division and the 2nd French >Division, perhaps the other claims were not as spectacular?

A contemporary Stars & Stripes article quoted under http://www.lonesentry.com/gi_stories_booklets/90thinfantry/index.html contained the following claim:

"The 90th Div alone took 12,335 prisoners and killed an estimated 8000 from Aug 16 to 22. In addition, 308 German tanks, 248 self-propelled guns, 164 artillery pieces, 3270 motor vehicles, 649 horse-drawn vehicles, and 13 motorcycles were destroyed."

The number killed by the 90th Infanty and 2nd Free French Armored Division together would thus be 12,500. As the total of German KIA in the Falaise Pocket was around 10,000 according to most sources I have seen, at least one of these units would thus have exaggerated even if all other Allied units involved in the operation had done nothing.

Other claims from the Stars & Stripes article:

"The advance continued Aug 8. At L'Arche, the column met a German anti-aircraft battery trying to escape. First Lt. Charles H. Lombardi, Ozone Park, NY, firing the lead tank's 75, destroyed 15 tanks in about two minutes."

Did the anti-aircraft battery have tanks, all of a sudden?

"To the 90th fell the task of eliminating this obstacle. The 1st and 2nd Bns, 358th, punched across the hip-deep river in bitter fighting, but were so hard hit by superior German forces that retreat was the only practical move. Most were able to scramble back but four officers and 200 men were captured. The island was lost and the 358th resumed its old defensive position north of the river."

Actually Sergeant Uhlig’s company of German paratroopers was much inferior in number to the American units it attacked and defeated, as you can read under http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/world_war_2/3037886.html

Cheers, Cortagravatas 17:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * One more losses quote, from Müller-Hillebrand's Das Heer 1939-1945, Volume 3, page 171.Von der Verlusten für den Zeitraum vom Juni bis September (1944) entfielen 54,754 Tote, 338,933 Vermißte auf den Westen . . . Müller-Hillebrand notes the ratio of missing to dead (about 6:1) is extraordinarily high for any phase of the war, and compares it to the 2.9:1 ratio for the eastern front during the same period. While this quote includes German losses in the south of France, those bulk of the these losses can be understood as having been experienced in the June through August combat in Normandy. He makes no note of Germans becoming prisoners, one must assume that those numbers are included in the "missing" category which makes interpretation of the numbers more difficult (I've normally seen "missing" to mean those personnel whose bodies were so destroyed by the effects of combat that their mortal remains could no longer be identified but I don't think that meaning applies to Müller-Hillebrand's numbers.) I think all we've proven with our discussion is that casualty counting is an inherently inaccurate and controversial exercise. Your comment above about the AA battery and the "tanks" illustrates typical confusion (often seen today in press reports) about different kinds of combat vehicles and I would not be surprised to learn that the unit claims for capture of German equipment in the Falaise Gap/Pocket area were inaccurate in type designation if not in actual numbers. On the topic of the proficiency of the U.S. 90th and French 2nd Divisions, I would not underestimate them.  Both divisions performed quite well during the September operations in Lorraine, each handily defeating German thrusts that were directed at them by the re-formed Fifth Panzer Army. Whether their performances in Lorraine cast any light on the accuracy of their claims re: Falaise, I am not sure. Cheers, W. B. Wilson 18:08, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Please don't link to blogs or threads in discussion forums
Please review LINKSTOAVOID. Jayjg (talk) 03:09, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Interesting policy. It makes a website full of nonsense such as http://holocaustforgotten.com/ an eligible link, whereas a blog article exposing such nonsense, like http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2008/04/5-million-non-jewish-victims.html, is not. I'm sure this will enhance the quality of Wikipedia. Cortagravatas (talk) 13:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Please stop adding links to blogs to articles. Anyone at all can start a blogspot blog, so there is no guarantee that the writer knows about the subject or is writing without an ulterior motive. They therefore do not count as reliable sources. (I just took a quick glance at holocaustforgotten, and that wouldn't count as a reliable source either, FWIW.) Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  13:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

"Anyone at all can start a blogspot blog, so there is no guarantee that the writer knows about the subject or is writing without an ulterior motive."

If that's the criterion, why not ban websites as well?

This is a blog: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/

This is a website: http://vho.org/

Which of the two features writers who know about the subject and are not writing without an ulterior motive?

To reinforce the point that objections against blogs apply to websites as well, here's a link to a website that some mentally distubed character made in order to smear the person whose name appears under the link: http://www.robertomuehlenkamp.com/ .Cortagravatas (talk)


 * Saying that 'blogs are not acceptable' does not imply that 'anything that is not a blog automatically is acceptable.' That is an elementary logical point. Obviously, VHO and denier shit like that are not reliable sources.
 * Having said that, blogs are not acceptable as reliable sources. Please stop adding that link. Cheers, Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  13:42, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

"Saying that 'blogs are not acceptable' does not imply that 'anything that is not a blog automatically is acceptable.'"

I didn't say that. The point is that websites may be "acceptable" or not depending on the content, whereas blogs are "not acceptable" regardless of content. If content is the criterion for accepting or not accepting websites, why isn't it the criterion for accepting or not accepting blogs? "Anyone at all can start a blogspot blog ..." is not an appropriate criterion for discriminating against blogs regardless of content, as it also applies to websites.Cortagravatas (talk)


 * What you don't get to do is insert links to your own blog, and since you're one of the main contributors to that blog (a real good one, by the way), you'll be better off pointing other editors to it on the relevant article talk page, and asking if it's appropriate to include. None of us get to link to our own work on Wikipedia. --jpgordon:==( o ) 14:57, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Still don't understand the anti-blog rule, but I'll try that, thanks.Cortagravatas (talk)

Your recent edits
Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126; ) at the end of your comment. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 15:42, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

http://holocaustcontroversies.yuku.com
Please stop adding links to this site. It does not meet Wikipedia's critera for suitable external links - please see WP:EL. Nick-D (talk) 12:29, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism
This is your last warning. The next time you make personal attacks on other people, as you did at User:CarmeloLisciotto, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. Comment on content, not on fellow editors. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  21:09, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I understand your reaction as that of someone who doesn't know Carmelo Lisciotto. However, what I posted about this gentleman on the userpage he created to promote himself are demonstrable facts - all you have to do to check my assertions is follow this link, where you will find a collection of articles documenting the less-than-commendable online activities of Carmelo Lisciotto and Chris Webb. Further information about Lisciotto is available here and here. These articles, just like my info on Lisciotto's userpage, were written by persons targeted by Lisciotto's smear and stalking, who are merely reacting thereto. The day Lisciotto stops filling the web with libelous attacks against other people, these people won't spend another word on the fellow.

Carmelo Lisciotto is the North American Director of the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team (H.E.A.R.T.), which was created after the breakup of the "Aktion Reinhard Camps" research group following discussions due to the carelessness and arrogance of H.E.A.R.T. co-founder Chris Webb, which is documented in the blog article On the demise of deathcamps.org: how fakes and arrogance killed a great undertaking.

Carmelo Lisciotto claims that his contributions as a Holocaust historian "include the restoration of the Action Reinhard Camps website (www.deathcamps.org) after it suffered severe vandalism at the hands of documented Internet hate bloggers". Actually the only "vandalism" on that site is the work of Lisciotto himself, who defaced several pages of what formerly (i.e. before the Webb/Lisciotto takeover) was an excellent site, with false libelous accusations against perceived enemies of his and Webb's (especially the persons he, obviously projecting his own behavior and practices, refers to as "Internet hate bloggers").

The most blatant of these falsehoods can be found on the former ARC page about a "Münzberger Testimony" that has been removed, in which Carmelo now accuses his perceived enemies of having "created" and "maliciously inserted" into the ARC pages a fake alleged testimony by former Treblinka SS-man Münzberger. Actually, as was documented in the blog On the demise of deathcamps.org: how fakes and arrogance killed a great undertaking, ARC webmaster Chris Webb had received this fake from a person of his confidence (a certain "Andy Schmidt") and carelessly placed it on an ARC page despite the absence of an archival reference and despite warnings by a fellow ARC member (who, as can be easily guessed, is now one of Lisciotto's black beasts) that the document was in all probability a fake.

Carmelo Lisciotto has created a number of blogs (e.g. "Hate Blog Watch", "Sergey Romanov Watch", "Beware of Hate Blogger Nick Terry", "Muehlenkamp Watch") and a forum (Hate-Blog-Watch forum), which are essentially dedicated to attacking Lisciotto's perceived enemies through libelous false allegations. On the forum, these attacks take the form of monologues between various aliases of Lisciotto's about supposed evildoings of his perceived enemies.

If it's OK with you that such a character uses Wikipedia for self-promotion, I have nothing more to say.Cortagravatas (talk)

Response to Vietnam War Casualties post
The notion that certain countries committing war crimes are more serious, and thus should be given more focus and weighting, than crimes committed by other countries/forces in a war is wrong. Focus and weighting should be increased on sides/countries that commit more atrocities, in number of incidents and in scale, not according to which democratic or which authoritarian country committed atrocities. This type of mindset, that war crimes/incidents committed by (democratic) Americans are worse than crimes committed by (authoritarian) NVN/VC, basically fuelled the anti-war movement, forced the withdraw and cutting of aid to RVN (while the North's aid was uninterrupted), caused the South to fall, and forcing 1.5 - 3 million Boat People to flee their homeland from communist rule, not to mention continued oppression, human rights abuses and corruption from the current communist regime. The idea of the My Lai massacre, committed by US troops, that resulted in ~300 (suspected covert VC) dead is somehow far worse, more appalling, than the Hue Massacre, committed by the VC and Northern army, resulting in up to 6000 estimated dead (incl. anti-communist/fleeing civilians, intellectuals, business people, foreign residents like West German/American professors, religious people esp. Catholics, along with RVN government personnel and ARVN soldiers) is a serious injustice. It's similar to a comparison in saying that Nazi-caused atrocities (like the Holocaust or deaths caused during the Blitzkrieg over Britain) is not as serious, or "better", than the deaths caused by Allied aerial bombardment of German cities killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. I hope you can see the absurdity of this kind of logic there, especially from myself who came from the city of Hue and had glimpses of the mass graves and skeletons, and is frustrating to hear every time someone tells me the Americans/ARVN/My Lai are worse than the VC/NVN/Hue Massacre. No one, in their right mind, should be letting certain parties in a war, esp. those who have slaughtered more innocent civilians, get off "easier" and deserve less attention to their crimes, while overly demonizing certain other parties. Aside, as a correction, South Vietnam isn't authoritarian as what many Westerners believe. The South, politically, is what i call a flawed democracy or a quasi democracy. Yes, it often invoked martial law and often had to use special powers to quell unrest in the country and to fight against the VC, but some other basic freedoms were generally respected, like freedom of movement, to a degree freedom of speech (provided that opinion isn't pro-communist), to a degree freedom of religion (provided that these dont get out of control), cultural freedom, and economic freedom, unlike the North. Try having anti-war protests in the North or complimenting the South and you'll find yourself accused of being a counter-revolutionary or traitor and sent to a gulag. Everywhere you go in the North, even if just village to village, you need a special police permit and they'll interrogate you intensively before permitting it. Art, music, film, drama must be revolutionary, communist, pro-war in nature - love songs and romantic movies/books are prohibited unlike in the South. Private business and private property ownership is illegal, and if you try to do it, you'll be accused of being a capitalist, bourgeioise, landlord, and executed or sent for hard labor (look at the North's land reform where 50,000 to 200,000 perished). And another question, was there an exodus of refugees during the (so-called American puppet) South's existence, or after the (so-called nationalist) communist's takeover? I'll tell you something i've experienced while i was in Vietnam, after the takeover. Every week, sometimes every few days, local communist authorities force everyone to go to town meetings, which resembled Mao's struggle sessions. Everyone must confess their "crimes" or "mistakes" in the meeting, report on others they've witnessed/heard of committing a "mistake", and even tell everyone what they've done in the past week/few days. A communist cadre, originally from Ha Tinh province in the North, told everyone of how he came across his grandmother selling peanuts and legumes in baskets on the street, and how he often came up to her and kicked away her baskets, spilling her goods all over the place, accusing her of conducting a private business, and she ended up crying every time. He said it with such pride, with such Narcissism, and with a smirk i can never forget. Nguyen1310 (talk) 05:40, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback on User_talk:Binksternet
— Ed! (talk) 19:46, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

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ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:31, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Verdun
Thank you for taking such trouble. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 13:49, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Overmans
You wrote. However, many of the missing (O. calculated exactly 697,319) were first taken prisoner and died only in captivity This is wrong, you misunderstand Overmans. His figures represent the ultimate fate, the point of death of the individual.--Woogie10w (talk) 13:27, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

You wrote appraisals of Overmans' study by other historians Which historians? Can you cite a reliable published source that can be verified?--Woogie10w (talk) 13:30, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Please provide a reliable source for your recent edits and, otherwise I will assume that this is your own original research.--Woogie10w (talk) 15:01, 2 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I reverted your edit re:Zetterling because the article cannot be attributed to him. We must get the article right. Be very firm about the use of high-quality sources. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by an inline citation to a reliable, published source. Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.[1] Users who persistently or egregiously violate this policy may be blocked from editing.


 * If you revert my deletion my next move is the Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard--Woogie10w (talk) 19:17, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Cortagravatas (talk)The missing (697,319) must include deaths in captivity, for on page 288 Overmans mentions 400,000 missing in the East in 1945 and states that this figure of missing was based on his finding that two thirds of deaths during the "final battles" occurred in the East of Germany. He further argues (p. 289) that about half of the 1,536,000 missing in the East between 1941 and 1945, according to his calculations, may well have died in Soviet captivity. The positive review of Overmans is by Christian Hartmann, a German colleague of Overmans. As to Zetterling's review, you are right in that the article (which doesn't refer to Overmans' person but to his book) cannot be clearly attributed to Zetterling, so I'll leave it out. The threat ("my next move is the ...") is quite unnecessary.

Heeresarzt 10-Day Casualty Reports
,

Cortagravatas I want to put the Heeresarzt data on a spreadsheet and compare it to Overmans, I am curious to see what Heeresarzt tells us. Overmans says the data is not reliable. I was not making a threat, I am retired busy reading Francis Parkman and judging from your edit patters I suspect you are busy in the office. Lets not waste our time at a noticeboard,lets work together.--Woogie10w (talk) 21:43, 2 May 2019 (UTC) Cortagravatas (talk) Even in the office there is time to kill sometimes, and that's my business anyway. As to the Heeresarzt figures, they may be incomplete but I don't see why they should otherwise be unreliable, nor why they should not be taken as indicators of the distribution (especially as there were major battles in the East whereas the last months of the war in the West were rather anti-climatic, with German troops offering little or no resistance and surrendering en masse). If you want to check my calculations, add up the Heeresarzt figures for 1-31.1.1945, 1-28.2.1945, 1-31.3.1945, 1-10.4.1945 and 11-20.4.1945. Then add the total figures for "East" and "West" to get the figures for the "final battles". The divide the "East" figures through this "East"+"West" sums.

Overmans data breakout
If you go to Overmans pp.335-6 you will see the categories "Endkampfe" and Kreigsgefangshaft are separate as well as "Letze Nachtricht" -"Vermist" and Kreigsgefangshaft. The missing does not include POWS that died later. The Overmans figures are for the point of death. le

Here is the link on Google Books

If you send me an email at berndd11222@gmail.com I will send jpgs of the pages.--Woogie10w (talk) 22:12, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

I just started in Jan 1945, they lost 29,625 dead and missing in the East. LOL, oh! please give me a break. Now I know why Overmans believes the Heersarzt data is unreliable--Woogie10w (talk) 22:29, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Cortagravatas (talk)Nobody claims that the Heeresarzt figures are complete, as far as I know. There is certainly a considerable backlog in reporting, and many dead, at least on the Eastern Front, are probably listed as missing (in the West I would expect most of the missing to be PoWs). However, I don't see why the Heeresarzt figures should not be seen as indicative of the East vs. West distribution - which, incidentally, corresponds to the East vs. West distribution for the year 1944 according to Overmans himself, 244,891 deaths in the West in 1944 versus. 1,232,946 deaths on the Eastern Front (thereof 882,900 between June and December 1944), a relation of 16.57% in the West versus 83,43% in the East. There is no reason why this relation would have changed in the "final battles".

Even with a roughly 80:20 distribution between East and West of Overmans' 1,230,045 deaths in the "final battles", the implied number of deaths in the West (246,009) would be much too high, and the number implied by Overmans' 2/3 vs. 1/3 distribution (410,015) is just ludicrous.

Some time ago I put together a list of all engagements on the Western Front between 6 June 1944 and VE day that I could find information about, including such with a few hundred casualties like the city battles for Aschaffenburg, Heilbronn and Nuremberg, assuming in each case the highest number of German fatalities that is mentioned or suggested by the sources I consulted. The total I arrived at was 210,720, thereof 74,593 in 1945 (18 % of the 410,015 implied by Overmans). The total for 1944-45 is slightly higher than the Allied casualties in the same engagements and corresponds to the assessment of US historians Charles MacDonald (The European Theater of Operations: The Last Offensive, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington D.C., 1993, page 478) and Robert Fuller (Last Shots for Patton's Third Army, Portland, ME: NETR Press, ISBN 097405190X, p. 254.) whereby German casualties in the 1944-45 campaign, prisoners of war aside, were equal to or slightly higher than those of the Allies. The Chief of Staff of the United Stated Army, George C. Marshall (Biennial reports of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army to the Secretary of War : 1 July 1939-30 June 1945, Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1996, p. 202) assumed 263,000 deaths on the German side on the Western Front in 1944-45. This is probably too high (as one would expect for a belligerent's assessment of enemy casualties), but according to Overmans German military deaths on the Western Front in 1944-45 would be 654,856. Do you consider it plausible that Marshall should have underestimated German deaths by a factor of 2.5?

The aforementioned list is part of a larger article about the plausibility of Overmans' figures, which I published on the Axis History Forum. I also sent it to Overmans requesting his feedback. He first replied that he was busy and would get back to me as soon as possible, and some time thereafter his only reply was that he admired the effort I had made. That doesn't read like he had any arguments to refute mine, does it?

One of the great weaknesses of Overmans' book is that he hardly bothers to cross-check his findings with other works of military history, especially works about individual campaigns. He refers to Soviet demographer/historian Urlanis as supporting his 5.3 million order of magnitude, however Urlanis' figure of 5.5 million fallen on p. 181 of Bilanz der Kriege (1965) expressly refers to "Germany and its former Allies", i.e. it includes Italy, Romania etc., whereas for Germany itself Urlanis assumes 4 to 4.5 million dead (pp. 185f.).

Last but not least, you are probably aware of the book Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste - 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, a 2005 publication of the Search Service of the German Red Cross with a foreword by German President Horst Köhler and the German interior minister Otto Schily, whereby German military fatalities in WW2 were about 4.3 million (3.1 million confirmed dead, 1.2 million missing). Published 5 years after Overmans' book, it doesn't even mention him, unless I missed something. Which I can understand, for Overmans' study implies the somewhat absurd proposition that all German search services, in decades of meticulous work, somehow failed to record about 1 million military dead.

You don't have to send me scans from Overmans' book, for I have the book. However, I'll be glad to share with you my calculations and my assessment of Overmans' figures, if you are interested. Just let me know and I'll send you both by e-mail. You can reply on this page or to cortagravatas@yahoo.com.Cortagravatas (talk) 11:11, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Bacque
Your new addition is much better and cites sources, which is much appreciated. It would be good to familiarize yourself with the way that sources are cited on Wikipedia, such as by writing  (without spaces) to place things in footnotes. Also, we tend not to like links to websites directly from Wikipedia text - that sort of thing should also go in the references section. All of this is explained much better than I can at wp:CITE, or, perhaps even better Help:Referencing for beginners.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:25, 27 August 2021 (UTC).

Thanks Ermenrich.

A question: A certain Emu, seems to be a robot, has reverted changes on various pages stating that I'm pushing far-right sources.

Where do you see a far-right source in this?

"Estimates of the number of German civilians in Königsberg on the eve of the final Soviet assault (6-9 April 1945) in the Battle of Königsberg range from 90,000 to 130,000. According to the director of the city’s German hospitals for infectious diseases the number was in the order of 110,000. German historian Andreas Kossert assumes about 100,000 - 126,000 German civilians. An unknown number of civilians were killed in the battle, were murdered by rampaging Soviet troops, died from exhaustion when taken by the Soviets on forced marches across the countryside, or were deported to Soviet camps.

The first effort after the battle to establish the number of the city’s inhabitants, by the Soviet administration’s passport department, yielded 63,247 Germans living in the city in late April 1945. The number was about 60,000 in June and 68,014 (out of a total of 140,114 in the Königsberg region including the city and other communities) in September 1945. The Soviet administration recorded a massive die-off in the city in the period from 1 September 1945 to 1 May 1946. On 20 September 1,799 deaths outside of hospitals and 881 in hospitals were recorded, 2,933 outside and 901 in hospitals on 20 October 1945, in the whole period 21,111 deaths. The Soviet administration attributed this mortality to two epidemics of typhoid fever, which in turn were attributed solely to the crowded conditions in which the German population lived. However, the non-working part of the German population, ca. 42,000, received just 200 g of bread per day against payment, 15,900 unskilled workers received 400 g, 1,100 skilled workers 600 g. Moreover, the nutritional value of this bread was very low. As the rations granted to non-workers and unskilled workers were by no means sufficient to ensure survival, malnutrition was the main reason for the high mortality. According to Starlinger mortality from infectious diseases was comparatively low, with 2,700 deaths among 13,200 patients treated in the hospitals for infectious diseases. Violence, hunger, cold and exhaustion were far more prolific killers than all epidemics together. Hunger and violence were also mentioned as the main causes of death in the diaries of physicians working at the city’s central hospital.

A total of 102,407 German inhabitants of the Kaliningrad Oblast were deported to the Soviet occupation zone between April 1947 and May 1951. How many of these were from Königsberg does not become apparent from Soviet records. It is estimated that 43,617 Germans were in the city in the spring of 1946. According to Kossert (as above), about 24,000 survivors from Königsberg were deported in 1947/48, while the rest of the population at the time of the Soviet conquest, about 76,000 out of 100,000 to 102,000 out of 126,000, had perished in the interim. Hunger accounted for 75 % of the deaths, epidemics (especially typhoid fever) for 2.6 % and violence for 15 %. Starlinger estimated 75,000 deaths out of a population of 100,000, Deichelmann assumed about 80,000 deaths and 17-20,000 survivors , Wieck 20,000 survivors out of 130,000.

Wieck was under the impression that the Russians wanted all Germans to starve and to this effect tried to hinder their efforts to survive by work, black-market trading or otherwise. Deichelmann considered some official measures - reducing the number of hospital beds at a time when they should have been increased, barring starving people from hospital treatment, chasing away begging children – to be sadistic. He left it open whether this sadism was a matter of the local administration only or the Soviet central state was also behind it. A commission from Moscow was reportedly horrified about the living conditions of the German population. Wieck mentioned the great mortality of Königsberg’s German population alongside the Holocaust, stating that Hitler wanted Europe without Jews and Stalin East Prussia without Germans. Nevertheless he pointed out that the two events cannot be compared with each other. "

Lasch? A Wehrmacht general's self-aggrandizing memoir, but not far right as far as I know.

The publisher Motorbuch Verlag? Not far right as far as I know, but if they are please let me know.

Starlinger? Not that I know. The publisher Holzner-Verlag Würzburg? Not far right as far as I know, but if they are please let me know.

Fisch and Klemeševa? Certainly not a far-right source.

The journal Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung? Don't think so either.

Wieck? A Holocaust survivor, certainly not a far-right source.

C.H. Beck oHG Munich? Not far right as far as I know, but if they are please let me know.

Kossert? A noted German historian. Certainly not a far right source.

The publisher Pantheon Verlag? Not far right as far as I know, but if they are please let me know.

Graf von Lehndorff? Hardly far fight, he had relatives in the German anti-Nazi resistance.

Biederstein Verlag? Not far right as far as I know, but if they are please let me know.

Deichelmann? His diary happens to be also published by the far-right Verlag Bublies, which is why I sourced it to a genealogy journal also referred to by Kossert.

I'm the last person who would want to push far-right sources as per Emu's insulting remark, but WP should avoid seeing far-right stuff where there is none. Cortagravatas (talk)

September 2021
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. You appear to be repeatedly reverting or undoing other editors' contributions. Although this may seem necessary to protect your preferred version of a page, on Wikipedia this is known as "edit warring" and is usually seen as obstructing the normal editing process, as it often creates animosity between editors. Instead of reverting, please discuss the situation with the editor(s) involved and try to reach a consensus on the talk page.

If editors continue to revert to their preferred version they are likely to lose their editing privileges on that page. This isn't done to punish an editor, but to prevent the disruption caused by edit warring. In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, and violating the three-revert rule is very likely to result in loss of your editing privileges.

 RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:41, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!
Hi emu, thanks a lot and glad you like Holocaust Controversies. I wrote about the great mortality in Königsberg for several reasons, one being that an elder person I was very fond of came from there, another that I think addressing the topic in publications that do not serve an ideological agenda is a useful counterweight to its instrumentalization by extreme-right propagandists. I also like Königsberg-style marzipan. Cheers, Cortagravatas (talk)

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Ukrainian military fatalities
Dear Cortagravatas, regarding your edits here, please read the source more carefully. 51,245 is the overall figure of Ukrainian military fatalities both during the War in Donbass (2014-2021) and the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022-present). On the ualosses site, beside the overall figure (at the top), they list a breakdown of Ukrainian military dead between the two phases of the overall Russo-Ukrainian War. 46,450 killed during the invasion (2022-present) and 4,795 killed during the Donbass war (2014-2021). Thus, the number of killed Ukrainian servicemen per the source during the invasion phase (where you made your edits) is 46,450. The 4,795 killed during the 2014-2021 phase are listed separately. The 51,245 figure should actually be added to the article on the overall conflict (Russo-Ukrainian War). Hope this clears it all up. Best regards, happy editting and thank you for looking to make everything up-to-date! EkoGraf (talk) 19:08, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Introduction to contentious topics
TylerBurden (talk) 19:45, 17 May 2024 (UTC)