Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Prokhorovka/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 04:07, 17 December 2016.

Battle of Prokhorovka

 * Nominator(s): EyeTruth (talk) 22:34, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

This article is about one of the largest tank battles in history, which occurred in July 1943 during the Second World War in the Eastern Front, between Nazi German and Soviet forces. It was the climax of the wider Battle of Kursk, which was a turning point of the strategic balance in the Eastern Front: The Soviet Union permanently gained the strategic control, and the Germans permanently lost the capacity to launch any more major offensives in the Eastern front. EyeTruth (talk) 22:34, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Comments: G'day, thanks for your efforts with this article. I have a couple of suggestions: AustralianRupert (talk) 05:22, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * is there a reference for this: "Thus the artillery fire which the tankers depended upon to sweep their path of advance and suppress German anti-tank gunners was not adequately present."?
 * No ref for it. Removed. EyeTruth (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * same as above for: "Nonetheless, the battle is still regarded as one of the largest tank battles in military history"?
 * No ref added for now. I know a lot of relatively recent tertiary sources, like documentaries, regard it as such; a compromise around the former epithet that is now increasingly becoming known to be erroneous. EyeTruth (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * same as above for: "...with another 212 tanks and self-propelled guns under repair, and 7,607 casualties."?
 * just a summation of the numbers. EyeTruth (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * For citations 1 to 8 where you have the excerpt, is this really necessary, as none of the other citations use this style? If it is necessary, potentially putting them into the Notes section rather than the Citations section might be a more consistent approach.
 * Those are citations for the results in the infobox. In the past, they have been the subject of endless edits and argument for years, and over time this solution materialized. See archived talkpage discussions for more details. EyeTruth (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * in the Further reading, is it necessary to use Russian language here: "Замулин, Валерий" and "Москва: Xранитель" (I think it might be best just to translate this)?
 * fixed, except for the publisher "Xранитель".


 * "...and other historians corroborate his narrative" (probably best to name these historians in the text here)
 * done. EyeTruth (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * "...tanks in the Eastern Front, July 1943" --> "..tanks on the Eastern Front, July 1943"
 * fixed. EyeTruth (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * there are a few duplicate links per the duplicate link checker: Tiger I, Panzer IV, Operation Kutuzov, assault gun,
 * fixed. EyeTruth (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * is there an ISSN or OCLC that could be added for the The Journal of Slavic Military Studies?
 * Fixed. Added DOI. EyeTruth (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * "reposture" --> "re-posture"?
 * Fixed. Reworded. EyeTruth (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Initial comments -- I'm a bit concerned about the use of Healy:

I'm not personally familiar with the work, but I had followed this link from the main Battle of Kursk article (Licari, Michael J. A Review Essay: Books on the Battle of Kursk. Archived from the original) and the review was rather negative: "Healy's book is like most others in the Osprey series: it is a bland, somewhat uneven overview of the battle, and contains several important errors." From my experience editing the main article, I recall removing some rather POV statements cited to Healey, such as "burden" & "forced", so I was not surprised by a critical review. History Press seems like a minor publisher too; I'm not confident about their reputation for fact checking and accuracy. With many excellent sources cited in the article (Glantz & House; Clark; Showalter, etc), perhaps Healey is not needed?

Separately, I have some concerns about the POV of George Nipe, especially the article that is linked from bibliography link, which states: "Thus, the battle for Prochorovka ended, not because of German tank losses (Hausser had over 200 operational tanks on July 17) but because Hitler lacked the will to continue the offensive." This seems to echo Manstein's self-justification after war, with the article appropriately named "Battle of Kursk: Germany’s Lost Victory in World War II" (see Lost Victories). I had previously encountered Nipe's Platz der Leibstandarte: A Photo Study of the SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" used as a source in POV-challenged articles relating to Waffen-SS.

It looks like Nipe wrote a solid operational study (e.g. this review: link). But some of his conclusions are questionable, and are not in line with what I've read in other sources, such as Robert Citino & Showalter.

K.e.coffman (talk) 00:48, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Healy wrote two books. One back in the 1990s, and the other (the one cited above) more recently. The former draws heavily on the inflated version of the battle from Soviet/German postwar accounts (not archives). The latter replies heavily on German archival material. Nipe's POV may be overreaching at times, but he's been credited by several other historians as a pioneer in piecing together a more accurate picture of the battle using German archives. He certainly has a weaker knowledge of the Soviet perspective and archives (seen him giving very inflated figures for Soviet losses, due to quite sloppy inferences from weak sources). EyeTruth (talk) 07:29, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * The POV statements cited to Healey that you removed are the works of one of the primary contributors to the article, who had a very high regard for the German view and pushed it into the article a little too hard. We clashed over that sometimes. EyeTruth (talk) 07:33, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Image review Nikkimaria (talk) 22:31, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * File:Kursk-1943-Plan-GE.svg: particularly as the legend is non-English, suggest providing more explanation in the caption
 * What kind of information do you think might be useful? I'm thinking of restating relevant names in familiar terms (e.g. "5. GPzA" is the 5th Guards Tank Army, and "Pokrowka" is Prokhorovka); would that be helpful? EyeTruth (talk) 22:23, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * That's a good start. More broadly, think about what information someone unfamiliar with the subject would need to understand the map - what do the colours and symbols mean, etc. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:20, 14 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Similarly, File:Prokhorovka,_Battle_of_Kursk,_night_11_July.png needs more explanation, and suggest scaling it up
 * Do you mean scaling the image in the article, or scaling it in its own image page? If the latter, then I have not done that before, and I may need some cue to the right direction. EyeTruth (talk) 22:23, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I mean scaling within the article. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:20, 14 November 2016 (UTC)


 * File:Rotmistrov_portrait_WWII.jpg: you're going to need a much stronger rationale to use a non-free image here, and suggest not using the "unique historic image" tag, and last source link is dead. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:31, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I assumed fair-use claim (which you had suggested that I consider) was sufficient, going by our last discussion over that image. I would like to retain the image because it brings a much needed balance between German and Soviet pictures in the article (an issue that I've seen become a point of contention in other WWII articles), so if there is anything else more acceptable than the fair-use claim that I can try out, please let me know. Alternatively, do you think the only acceptable outcome possible is to remove it? EyeTruth (talk) 22:23, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No, I think there is a potential fair-use claim to be made, but the one currently in use just isn't strong enough to explain why we need a non-free image. Basically any claim you make should explain how the use meets each of the non-free content criteria, particularly point 8 - how does having this image enhance reader understanding and/or why would leaving it out be detrimental to the article? You should also use a different tag - non-free biog-pic might be possible depending on your rationale, or non-free fair use. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:20, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Frieser 2007
 * Is due to be published in English in March 2017, or so OUP tells me. It might be worth postponing the review until copies are available in research libraries. ÄDA - DÄP VA (talk) 13:08, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Closing comment -- Sorry but as it's been open around six weeks without approaching consensus to promote, and there's been little-to-no activity this month, the review appears to have stalled, so I'll be archiving it shortly. Perhaps the best thing would be to do as ÄDA suggests and incorporate material from the new work when avilable, then submit the updated article to a formal or informal peer review before re-nominating at FAC. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:06, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 04:07, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.