Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/World War II atrocities


 * 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 of the debate was delete. Johnleemk | Talk 14:28, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

World War II atrocities
Inherently POV article --Philip Baird Shearer 20:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

--Philip Baird Shearer 21:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Anything can be put in here as an atrocity. For example Hitler and others thought that the binding of prisoners hands by Commandos on Sark and Dieppe raids was an atrocity, so he issued the Commando Order that resulted in a number of war crimes and prosecutions for war crimes after the war. That the commando order resulted in war crime trial with guilty verdicts is documented with reliable and reputable sources, but almost anything which someone at some time thought was an atrocity could end up on this page, because unlike a war crime there is no definition of what constitutes an atrocity in war.
 * There are lots of other pages which cover this area and are subject to some sort of NPOV and can be verified in already been published by reliable and reputable sources. See the list of articles under Nuremberg_Trials. So if this one is removed no useful information on this page will be lost from the Wikipedia project.
 * One further possibility is as there is an Allied war crimes article is to move this one to Axis war crimes which would duplicate information in other lists but would give a central list for disambiguation purposes althought there is a list called List of war crimes which already does this.

The concept of atrocity is indeed inherently POV (your side commits atrocities, whereas mine takes extreme measures for reasons of operational necessity) ... but that doesn't stop an NPOV article being written, as reportage on the controversy. This article is actually just a list of existing articles, and it's one which a historian would find very useful -- not as an objectively accurate list of atrocities, but as a list of events which are frequently labelled as atrocities. As such, it is a very useful point of entry to the historical and historiographical debates. I think it does need an introductory section problematising the concept of "atrocity", but that's an editing issue, not grounds for deletion. --BrownHairedGirl 00:19, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * delete Irredeemably POV. Calsicol 21:47, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete One big WP:NPOV violation. Surely every action taken by one side in a war can be interpreted as an atrocity by any other side? The list would never be definitive or agreed upon by all contributors.   (aeropagitica)   23:14, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete I contributed to this page too, but your arguments are sound. Delete. Maustrauser 23:39, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep for more or less the reasons cited by aeropagitica!
 * At the moment the list includes 3 British air raids and half a dozen American ones. As this was bombing on an industrial scale, if all the air raids throughout the war by both sides are added to this list then it will be huge. If not every air raid then which ones are chosen (Why for example is the bombing of Dresden by the British an atrocity but not the bombing of Dresden by the Americans)? Did you know that there were 262 separate air raids on Cologne alone ? It can not argue that some were violations of the law of war (for example because a city was undefended), because the criteria is atrocity not war crime, and some think that all civilian bombing was an atrocity (Bishop G. Bell for one). As it grows, I don't see how this list can be of any use to anyone as "a very useful point of entry to the historical and historiographical debates". --Philip Baird Shearer 02:25, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. --Hyphen5 04:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, do not merge, do not redirect, do not pass go. Such is the nature of a POV fork. — Mar. 29, '06 [07:03] <[ freakofnurxture]|[ talk]>


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. 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.