Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Erna Flegel


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Although the arguments for deletion are prima facie valid, they have not attracted enough support in this discussion to result in consensus to delete.  Sandstein  08:19, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Erna Flegel

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

A nurse whose claim to fame and notability is that she worked with Hitler on his staff. Some of Hitler's entourage and staff are certainly notable, but she is one of the most obscure members of that group. Even through a ton of works have been written about Hitler, she was mostly forgotten, and only gave it seems a single interview in 2005, shortly before here death, that generated a bit of media attention, but nothing enduring. I couldn't find a single work about her that meets WP:SIGCOV. The BBC article here is the best we have, and it's pretty short. There may be something in this academic article but I am unable to access it (paywalled/downoload limit exceeded). There is also a Russian probably academic-level article here, but it doesn't play nice with my machine translation tools, so I can't judge if it is of much help. I am not sure if we have a good merge target. I'll end by noting that our short biography of her does not suggest that she did anything notable in her life outside serving as part of Hitler's medical staff, so WP:NOTINHERITED logic is worth considering. Arguably, her association with him generated very little notoriety, and maybe too little for her to have a stand alone article. Thoughts? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 12:35, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  12:35, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  12:35, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete There is not enough sourcing to justify the article. I agree with the well reasoned argument of the nominator. I would also say that having reviewed every article we have on people born from 1908-1928, I think we have several articles on members of the SS who really do not rise to the level of notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:14, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  19:57, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment - the complete contents of declassified interview are also available, and that is now linked on the page. DaffodilOcean (talk) 02:37, 24 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep She gave two interviews, one in 1945. The interview was declassified in 1981 and shows up in a series of books because it conveys the final days in the Fuhrerbunker. The second interview is the 2005 Guardian interview. The interview itself was covered given the importance of her role in portraying the final days of Hitler's life. I added all those citations and the following sentence to the page
 * The notes accompanying the interview note that the final days of the activity within the Führerbunker was of interest to westerners and "none depicted the final days more graphically than Erna Flegel", and Helms himself notes the interview was "solid history". DaffodilOcean (talk) 03:54, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
 * (minor edit for readability) DaffodilOcean (talk) 04:16, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I am not sure if two sentences of commentary about her old interview pass muster at WP:SIGCOV... if anything, there is a chance her 1945 interview could be notable as a historical document, but she still isn't notable. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:17, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry I was not clear here, the sentences about her 1945 interview I listed were to show the importance of the original interview. The news coverage of her 2005 interview with the Guardian is quite extensive, and was covered in multiple news outlets. DaffodilOcean (talk) 13:37, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
 * @DaffodilOcean Since the Guardian piece is not very long, is here something better I am missing? Can you list the best sources that you think pass SIGCOV? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:49, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The Guardian piece (though I realize it is an interview) is 1600 words long. Two other articles that pass WP:SIGCOV are the US News and World Report. and the book Hitlers death: Russia's last great secret from the files the KGB The article in Bulletin in Anesthesia History would also pass SIGCOV. DaffodilOcean (talk) 12:36, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
 * @DaffodilOcean Thanks. The Guardian piece is problematic per WP:INTERVIEW/WP:PRIMARY, and I'll note it seems to contain no analysis by the journalists. The piece in the US News and World Report is not, I fear, SIGCOV - it discusses her report for a paragraph  in a piece that is not focused on her. The book has even less, it doesn't seem to mention her report outside citing a fact from it (presumably), and otherwise just mentions her in passing as one of the bunker's residents.  As for the Bulletin, do you have access to it? Each time I try to access it (over several days) I just get the 'Download Limit Exceeded' screen. If you can access it, can you provide a description of the coverage, or quote it? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  09:47, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Since WP:SIGCOV says that ".. does not need to be the main topic of the source material", the two paragraphs about Flegel in a article on the Allies role in World War II is relevant and SIGCOV.
 * The interview is interesting since the fact that she gave the 2005 interview was picked up by the Associated Press and stories appeared in the news of multiple countries. I have added these stories to the article.
 * I also added details from two articles published in the Bulletin of Anesthesia History (one linked above, and a second that is the first part of the work published by Defalque). These two articles discuss Flegel and her work with Ernst-Günther Schenck. DaffodilOcean (talk) 13:06, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Jerome Corsi's 2015 book adds details about the intelligence community's response to Flegel's about the caskets holding Hitler and Braun (in the page), and I have added coverage from Jonathan Mayo's book on Hitler's final days. All of this adds up to WP:BASIC. Also, given that she was in the final group of seven people in the Führerbunker when captured by the Soviets makes her an historically relevant person, even if nothing is known of her life between the 1940s and 2005. DaffodilOcean (talk) 13:11, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
 * @DaffodilOcean Thank you for expanding the article. While I am still not sure we have much SIGCOV here, there is arguably a lot of borderline SIGCOV then when added together do make it an interesting case. We will see what happens, but I think your improvements are likely to save this article, unless someone else raises any significant objections. Thank you for your efforts! Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:02, 1 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Piotrus, a footnote worth noting (no matter the outcome), you have shown objectivity and courtesy without ego driven pointy comments. I commend you. AfD discussions are not always conducted in such fashion. Cheers, Kierzek (talk) 17:27, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment She turns up in mentions in GBooks, one snippet mentions an article in the Guardian in 2005 I think, she might be notable is we can dig up enough sorcing. Oaktree b (talk) 04:10, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   18:48, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep; just enough to meet notably. Kierzek (talk) 18:43, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
 * @Kierzek Would you mind elaborating to move your comment beyond WP:ITSNOTABLE? TIA. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:31, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Originally, I was thinking her short bio information could be transferred to another article, such as Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenck or Dr. Werner Haase. But, I decided to wait to see what might be further developed, before replying here. I was already aware of her and her portrayal in the film, Downfall. Since then, User:DaffodilOcean has added sufficient information for a "weak keep". She has been interviewed several different times and quoted in newspapers' and books. With that said, I hope that further details can be added as to her observations and opinions given. Kierzek (talk) 15:36, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   19:31, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep There is secondary coverage of the interviews (2005 and 1940s) sufficient to qualify. For example, CLOSE-UP: ERNA FLEGEL Australian, The, MAY 07, 2005 covers both interviews and discusses her. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 17:44, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
 * <p class="xfd_relist" style="margin:0 0 0 -1em;border-top: 1px solid #AAA; border-bottom: 1px solid #AAA; padding: 0px 2em;"> Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Keep She received significant coverage in major sources (for example The Guardian, The Baltimore Sun, The Australian, DW: "Former Nurse Tells of Hitler's Last Days" ) around both interviews, multiple of the sources listed don't just have the literal interview but add additional context/reporting. The article mentioned in the nomination, "A Sequel to 'Surgery in Hitler's Bunker", is nearly a full page mostly covering the declassified interview. Skynxnex (talk) 20:21, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. I wander by WP perhaps twice a year and it seems to never fail that WP has topped its own absurd state of what it includes versus what it rejects. WP has hundreds of thousands of articles on obscure artists, academics, singers, activists, etc who have a few ephemeral/local sources, but here it wants to reject an individual whom fate placed at a pivotal time in world history and who has thus appears in literally hundreds of books (do quick G book search), who has been portrayed in historically-based movies like Downfall, who has been interviewed extensively by news organizations like the Guardian. Please save any whataboutism rebuttal. That itself is an argumentative fallacy whose purpose is to procedurally disqualify comparisons that one doesn't like. 128.252.11.235 (talk) 14:24, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep per the sources outlined by DaffodilOcean, the Guardian article in particular. Ficaia (talk) 11:17, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep There is a template on the page related to the final occupants of the Führerbunker, if we delete this article, she will be only who was in the bunker till 2nd May, without an article on her. The guardian article is completely about her, and many books turned up on G books search. Elmisnter! (talk) 04:33, 14 April 2022 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.