Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 December 3

= December 3 =

Greatest population under Nazi German control
What was the population of the Nazi German Empire at its greatest extent? (Nazi Germany and List of largest empires seem to only give the population of Germany itself, and my Google Fu is proving inadequate).--Wikimedes (talk) 08:21, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * That would have to be a fluctuating number, given the millions they were extinguishing in the process of their temporary conquests. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:32, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The date when the population reached its maximum would have been 9 September, 1943, give or take a few days, when Germany took direct control of Italy and before it had lost much ground in Russia. (The population under German control would have been declining since the summer of 1942, when the extermination camps swung into high gear, followed by some losses of territory in Russia and North Africa, but the roughly 38 million Italians outside Allied control almost certainly would have more than made up those losses.) It would be necessary to take the latest pre-war population estimates for various territories under German control in September 1943, then attempt to estimate the net loss of life in those territories since the time of the last population estimates. Starting with the estimates on this site and doing a very rough calculation, I get a total of about 323 million for the territory under Germany's control (not including Finland) in September 1943.  This is a very rough number and could be off by about 10 million in either direction.  Marco polo (talk) 17:19, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Good work! I was hoping to find a reliable source, but like the OP, Google hasn't been been able to find one for me. Alansplodge (talk) 17:48, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I do not pretend to count as a reliable source, but I thought I would offer a ballpark number in the absence of such a source. Not good enough for mainspace, but I think okay for this space, with disclaimers.  Marco polo (talk) 21:32, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you. It does indeed give a good ballpark number, as well as the means for me to refine the estimate if I ever have the inclination.--Wikimedes (talk) 03:13, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Remember, whilst the population under nazi control may have been "growing" in terms of new areas coming under their rule, it was "shrinking" in pretty much any given area, as millions were shot in cold blood, exterminated in gas chambers and crematoriums, or "simply" died on the gruesome battlefields. 101.188.7.126 (talk) 13:43, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Women in the US Military
It was just announced that female soldiers / sailors will soon be welcome in all positions within the US military. Yahoo News reports that most of the branches of the armed forces welcomed this news, but that the US Marine Corps was reluctant to integrate females into such roles as "infantry, machine gunner, fire support reconnaissance and others." For anyone who understands these particular roles, what is it, exactly, that makes these roles unique that one might speculate there was hesitation.  DRosenbach  ( Talk 20:54, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The bigotry of the people currently filling those jobs? -- Jayron 32 20:58, 3 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Here's one Naval Postgraduate School Professor of Defense Analysis' take on things. It's a long story. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:07, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The question was why the Marines would resist this more than other branches of the U.S. military, and as far as I can tell nothing in that article touches on that question. The article boils down to "men won't be able to concentrate on their work with women around", which is an argument that's always made against integration of the sexes in any context whatever. -- BenRG (talk) 01:59, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Or, pretty much exactly my answer above. -- Jayron 32 02:29, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Just because some people don't agree with your ideas doesn't make them a bigot. Personally I don't support young men or women being in combat positions. 24.57.54.196 (talk) 03:08, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * You'd prefer the defenders of your country to be geriatrics? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:31, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Worked for John Scalzi. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 14:34, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Believing that arbitrary and unrelated facts related to a persons appearance, genetics, gender, ethnic, religious, or national background should be used to decide how to treat that person is the basic, textbook definition of bigotry. That you don't want any people to serve in the military is perhaps noble as a general concept; but really unrelated to the question at hand.  So thanks for sharing, but your opinion, while noble, is irrelevant to the concept of bigotry.  That one would prevent a person from applying for and serving in a job which they would otherwise be qualified for, for reasons entirely unrelated to the qualifications for said job, is clear bigotry.  -- Jayron 32 03:32, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

OP here -- what I meant to ask was: why are these roles in particular singled out by the Marines. How come women can, I don't know, fly a helicopter, but not be a machine gunner? But perhaps what you're all saying is that none of it really makes any good sense.  DRosenbach  ( Talk 03:09, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I thought bigotry did pretty much exactly answer your question. I tried to keep it simple and unconfusing.  -- Jayron 32 03:33, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I was thinking misogyny, but bigotry works too. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:39, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The second is a subcategory of the first. -- Jayron 32 03:44, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not misogyny. It's the opposite. Misopedia is not the reason most people don't support child soldiers. See missing white woman syndrome then think of the difference in the media coverage between female soldiers captured by non-state actors and captured male soldiers. 24.57.54.196 (talk) 04:02, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No, once again, you're confusing liberty and force. Allowing women to serve in roles they are perfectly qualified for is not the same as forcing children to kill people.  It is misogyny to prevent women from doing things they would otherwise be able to do, except that you just don't want women to do it.  It isn't "misopedia" or whatever word you're inventing now, to oppose forcing children to fight as soldiers.  -- Jayron 32 04:10, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Misogyny is hatred (or at least dislike) of women. Not wanting women to do jobs that could get them killed/maimed is patronizing and sexist, but not hatred. Iapetus (talk) 12:46, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * And with that we finally get to the crux of the issue: "...things they would otherwise be able to do". Studies so far show they wouldn't. the Physical differences between men and women are real, they get injured twice as often and don't perform as well as men and the Marine Corps would have to lower standards to accommodate women in combat.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 04:24, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No, that's not what that last article states, despite the headline. It's a scare article which, based on a limited basis of anecdotes of a statistically insignificant sample size of three, that then attempts to extrapolate to all women in the world, based on the experience of the three specific women they cherry picked to prove their point.  It doesn't actually demonstrate that no woman could be qualified to hold the job.  The other articles don't either.  The fact that there are real physical differences between men (as all of maledom) and women (as all of womendom) taken as averages does not mean that zero women are more physically able than all men.  So, none of your articles actually demonstrates that it is useful to exclude women merely for being women, without actually allowing them to compete on a level playing field with other applicants for those jobs.  -- Jayron 32 04:32, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The British Armed Forces have undertaken a similar review, reporting in December 2014. Result - more research is needed, leading to a decision in 2016. You can see the details here. Alansplodge (talk) 08:54, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm going to expand on what Jayron wrote because I think there's an important misunderstanding of statistics going on here. Imagine a trait called strength that ranges from 0 to 100, and members of group A have strengths uniformly distributed over 0–80 and members of group B have strengths uniformly distributed over 20–100, and some job requires a strength over 60 and (in this toy example) nothing else matters. Then qualifying members from group A will have an average strength of 70 and those from group B will have an average of 80. A team of group B members will, on average, outperform a team containing one or more group A members. This is equally true if group A is all women, or if A is the women with strength 0–20 plus half of the people with strength 20–80 chosen by coin flip, or if A is the women with strength 0–20 and the men with strength 20–80. It would make no sense to bar members of group A from qualifying in any of these cases, for the same reason: membership in these groups is not what you care about. What you care about is strength, and you can measure strength. -- BenRG (talk) 17:45, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Dexterity, intelligence and constitution, too. Charisma, wisdom and luck are not so easy. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:38, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Women-specific skills that would benefit the army?
Of course women should be allowed to apply for any job in full equality with men, including in the army, but the level of tests should not be lowered, the fighting skills, the running speed, the endurance, the physical strength etc, should not be lowered, as that would weaken the level of special forces. However, shouldn't the army try to study and develop more women-specific skills where women are better than men? In order to do that, isn't it that army should begin with welcoming more women? (women-specific skills where women are better than men do exist, they are just less studied and less reasearched, precisely because of the same everlasting (and wrong) lack of imagination in believing "men are better than women in everything anyway". Thanks in advance for your answers. Akseli9 (talk) 08:28, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I looked for a reference but couldn't find one, but I've read that in some places cultural norms makes it easier for female soldiers to approach female civilians for e.g. intelligence gathering. Sjö (talk) 09:05, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, thanks. Another good point is made in the PDF document Alansplodge linked above from the UK army, see chapter 7. I was thinking also of purely physical approaches of combat situations, where some feminine skills could be used if studied and developed and recognized, thinking particularly of quick adaptability and quicker physical ability to teach to own physiology (own body) without long and painful mental struggling. Extreme divers like Tanya Streeter, Audrey Mestre, Natalia Molchanova come to mind for the quick and painless way they trained and teached to their own body, compared to their male counterparts. Akseli9 (talk) 09:28, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * What's a woman specific skill? Childbirth?  Breast-feeding? Seriously, I'm at a loss to explain any job related skill that one gender is exclusively qualified for but where the other is entirely unqualified for... -- Jayron 32 11:57, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * It's not that women are exclusively qualified for it, it's that they may be better at doing it for operational reasons. Sjö gave an example above. --Viennese Waltz 12:02, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * If it's not exclusively female or male, I'm not sure what the need would be to exclude the other gender from doing it, then... -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 13:50, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * There could be men who are better nurses than they are foot soldiers, and vice versa for women. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:12, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * That's true, but if we had a rule which forbade men from becoming nurses, then who wins? -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 15:38, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Do we have such a rule? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:35, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * No - and I don't see where anyone advocated for that, Jayron's responses notwithstanding. Given equivalent amounts of training, men find it disproportionately easier to become stronger than women. This is the (often unstated) assumption behind much of the gender-related discrimination in both the military and elsewhere. However, the top 5% of female athletes might well be stronger than the bottom 5% of male athletes, making the blanket bans both sexist and ill-conceived. Akseli9's question seems to be if there are other skill sets out there where females have a similar sort of advantage, where perhaps only the top 5% of men could displace the bottom 5% of women. 99.235.223.170 (talk) 17:27, 5 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Well put, thanks for expanding on my point. Akseli9 (talk) 19:57, 5 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Some skills women might be better at which may be important in a military context:


 * 1) Negotiating. Better to get the enemy to surrender than have to fight them.


 * 2) Dealing with native women and children.


 * 3) Being a "team player". Teenage males, in particular, are quite bad at this, so it takes quite an effort to train them to work as a team.


 * 4) Higher body fat percentage can mean more endurance in cold conditions, especially without food.


 * Also, when the ability of a soldier to carry things is considered, it seems to me you must also figure in how women, on average, are lighter and thus they are themselves easier to carry, if wounded. And being shorter, on average, means their foxholes wouldn't need to be as deep, etc.  Being smaller also means they present a smaller target. StuRat (talk) 20:31, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, very interesting and valid conventional points. Then there is most probably an entire unknown area, unconventional, that we don't think of, that we don't study, that we don't think it even exists, for the simple reason that we see war and the military through the same concentional male filter. When it comes to discover completely new, unexplored areas of the human body and skills, like for example what the extreme divers above explore, and when some women in these unexplored fields, prove to succeed faster than men with less pain, less mental struggle, less faintings and less physiological damage, it opens more possibilities, not yet invented, that would come up if only there were more women available in the army and involved to think about them? Akseli9 (talk) 21:00, 5 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The advantage would mostly seem to be in propaganda and social issues. If the Army ever did send a force to fight a set piece battle with ISIS in Dabiq, obviously it would make better press to defeat them with an army of women.  Also, women may be somewhat better suited to combat in the region since if they're captured they'll be raped, which is horrible, but men would be burned alive in a cage (or, at best, beheaded with a small knife), which would be worse than horrible. Wnt (talk) 14:13, 7 December 2015 (UTC)