Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian)

13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian)
This nomination predates the introduction in April 2014 of article-specific subpages for nominations and has been created from the edit history of Today's featured article/requests. 
 * This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page. 

The result was: scheduled for Today's featured article/April 23, 2014 by BencherliteTalk 19:51, 7 April 2014‎ (UTC)



The 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian) was a German mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS during World War II. In 1944, it fought a counter-insurgency campaign against Yugoslav Partisan resistance forces in the Independent State of Croatia. It was the first non-Germanic Waffen-SS division, and was composed of Bosnian Muslims (ethnic Bosniaks) with some Catholic Croat soldiers and mostly German and Yugoslav Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) officers and non-commissioned officers. It took an oath of allegiance to both Adolf Hitler and the Croatian leader Ante Pavelić. It established a designated "security zone" in north-eastern Bosnia between the Sava, Bosna, Drina and Spreča rivers. It also fought outside the security zone on several occasions, and earned a reputation for brutality and savagery, not only during combat operations, but also through atrocities committed against Serb and Jewish civilians.

Comment by nominator: Over a year since the article was promoted, and this date is the 70th anniversary of the launching of Operation Maibaum, one of the largest counter-insurgency operations of WWII, in which this division played an important part. No Warfare - Unit article has been TFA in the month prior to this date. The 13th was the first "foreign" Waffen-SS division, and started the huge expansion of the Waffen-SS to 38 divisions. Consisting mostly of Bosnian Muslims led by Germans, they wore the fez in both the field and barracks. Regards, Peacemaker67 (send... over) 12:51, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Support, high quality page, both educational and historic value. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 15:31, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment: Noticed that Pavle Đurišić  is also nominated for a nonspecific date above, this would make two former Yugocslavia/ German WWII articles in the same month.  This one may have date preference, but IMHO only one of the two should run, maybe bump the other out another 2-3 months.   Montanabw (talk) 21:25, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Support - Excellent article, I don't see a problem with the Đurišić article running in proximity to this...it's an often-neglected part of the European war that warrants more attention. Coincidentally, I grew up with a guy whose father was in this unit, and after emigrating to the US in the 1950s, the local vets who knew that he "fought in the war" thought he was with the Yanks and invited him to join the American Legion which he politely declined. --ColonelHenry (talk) 12:36, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Support It would be good to see this one run on the 70th anniversary of Maibaum. 23 editor (talk) 18:06, 5 April 2014 (UTC)