User talk:Rapid Move

Hallo Rapid Move! Welcome to Wikipedia!

I've noticed that on several occasions during the past months you have inserted material by Paxton about the causes of the Allied defeat in the Battle of France. You've probably noticed that every time I've speedily removed said material and you are no doubt wondering why your sincere efforts are so under-appreciated. I'll try to explain.

The Fall of France is a very contentious subject. Over the years many conflicting theories have been published about the precise reasons for the German victory. Though it may hardly be claimed that finally a complete consensus has been reached, nevertheless some progress has been made, resulting in a better common understanding of many of the issues at stake. Sadly, not only popular history books but even many more general academic historical publications have been unable to keep up with the debate. Paxton is a "good" example, reflecting the level of understanding that had been reached by about 1955. It thus contains a number of typical factual mistakes (wrong number of divisions; failing to understand that the DLMs were armoured divisions also) and interpretative failings (assuming that French tactical doctrine had seen no development since 1918; the "penny-packets" myth about French tank deployment).

Now, precisely because the subject is so contentious, we had to keep our distance and instead of vainly trying to amalgamate all views into a single account about the causes of the defeat (or victory), a historiography chapter was created with a higher level treatment of the general outlines of the debate. It would not serve the purpose of such a chapter to give too much detail of each theory — and in this case Paxton's work, being of a non-specialised nature, would not be deemed of sufficient importance to be mentioned anyway. The article in general is based on the results of modern research. Though it would be very helpful for the average reader to be explicitly informed about common misunderstandings in detail, this is not in the scope of an encyclopedia. We can't state "You might have read otherwise, but...". For this we have to (and do) refer the reader to the more recent literature on the subject.

I hope this makes thing more clear (and acceptable ;o) to you.

Greetings, --MWAK (talk) 08:03, 5 December 2009 (UTC)