Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allied occupation of Europe

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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.

[edit] Allied occupation of_Europe

The result was No consensus. Vassyana 10:10, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

AfDs for this article:
Articles for deletion/Allied occupation of Europe Articles for deletion/Allied occupation of Europe (2nd nomination)
Allied occupation of_Europe (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This article is a WP:POINT attempt to artificially lump together Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe 1939-1991 and Allied occupation of Germany 1945-1955, apparently in attempt to reduce the significance of the former. It had an associated category; I went through the category and found all its entries better described by one (and in few cases both) of these more precise categories.

In its current form, the article is non-salvageable WP:OR and ought to be deleted. Digwuren 09:44, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Votes

Bad faith nomination for two reasons:
  1. User has also removed 80+ articles from the related category Category:Allied occupation of Europe. The nominator has a history of removing tens of backlinks to articles, and then taking them to AfD, claiming thet they should be deleted, as no article links to them. The nominator should have waited for the outcome of this process, before taking such desruptive action.
  2. The nomination is part of a personal vendetta by the nominator, whose contributions to Wikipedia so far are limited to WP:TE, WP:DE, WP:ATTACK, WP:POV, WP:3RR, WP:TROLL and other forms of disruptions. The POV he is trying to push is narrow nationalistic agenda of "my country was more occupied then yours", or more generally "some countries of Europe were liberated by the Western Allies, while others were occupied by the Soviet Union", a nonfactual rewrite of the history of WWII and the Holocaust.
Also, it seems to be generally agreed that the nominator is headed for WP:ARBCOM and most likelly a WP:BAN well, I do not really like the prejudge what the com might or might not do. -- Petri Krohn 10:36, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
P.S. (Some of the former content of Category:Allied occupation of Europe has been placed in Category:Allied occupation of Germany and Category:Soviet occupation, the later is classic WP:POV. Both of these cats are now uncategorized.) -- Petri Krohn 10:36, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
P.P.S. The article and the related category is under attack and revert warring by the nominator. Before placing judgement, please see the hitories of the article, the related category and the article space edits by the nominator. -- Petri Krohn 14:32, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Seems the only person conducting a vendetta is Petri Krohn against ethnic Estonian editors generally, check out this page here: User:Petri_Krohn/Evidence and his efforts to get these people banned as sock puppets en masse: Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Digwuren. Martintg 12:40, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • If you pardon my NEO, I would call the latter event the Big Sock Fishing. Digwuren 12:50, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • If Petri thinks that it is time for WP:ARBCOM then I would suggest him to start it.--Staberinde 15:30, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep- lead article for the Allied occupation categories Thunderwing 11:32, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, that's definitely an idea. Let's create category: Estonian_Nuclear_Warfare_Against_USA, and article for it. Although the topic is total fantazy of a sick horse, the category justifies the article and vice versa. Suva 11:55, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - legitimate article although scrappily written at present. PatGallacher 11:58, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - an overview of the occupation forces in post ww2 europe is neededAnonimu 12:46, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
What about austria, italy, iceland, denmark... all go in "allied occupation of Germany"?Anonimu 13:06, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Occupation of Austria, a partner of Germany in Anschluß and a long-time cultural relative, belongs to Category:Allied occupation of Germany. Brief presence of Allied forces in the immediate aftermath of World War II belong in the WWII-related articles, such as ... let me think ... perhaps aftermath of World War II. Digwuren 14:58, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Not to mention Greenland, the Faroe Islands and all the forces stationed in Western Europe in support of the "offical" occupation forces in Berlin until 1991. In fact there were quite many of these in category:Allied occupation of_Europe before the cat was nuked by the nom. -- Petri Krohn 14:40, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
There has been no Allied occupation of Germany since 1955 when Bonn-Paris conventions entered into force. Since then, West Germany has been sovereign, and the American military bases on its soil are there in accordance with corresponding international treaties, to which West Germany itself is a party. (Don't forget to take a look at North Atlantic Treaty, to which Germany has been a party since the Bonn-Paris conventions restored its sovereign power to participate in international relations.) The remaining occupation in the East Germany was a clear-cut case of Soviet occupation of parts of Germany; no Four Powers' activity was in it whatsoever.
Your inclusion of Greenland and Faroe Islands are just red herring. But what else is new? Digwuren 14:58, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Not a red herring: You removed the category from British occupation of the Faroe Islands in World War II. I do not remember if we also had an article on the occupation of Greenland. I cannot find it, as you obviously have removed the category, if there ever was one. -- Petri Krohn 08:49, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete - per nom. This is a transparent attempt to create a moral equivalence between the brutal Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe (and the imposition of Communism there, for decades), and the US/UK/French occupation of Germany and Austria in 1945-1955 (which led to the Wirtschaftswunder, instead). As such, it's misleading, and only meant to prove a point (whatever the point is, I don't really care). Turgidson 13:31, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete or Split per Turgidson. Should be deleted or split into two articles, one about USA, UK and co actions in Western Europe and other one about USSR doings in Eastern-Europe. Putting them together in one article is ridiculous.--Staberinde 15:19, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Now as I have little time I explain my point little more in detail. Biggest problem with article is that it puts together occupations during World War II and occupation after World War II. Concept of Allies of World War II applies after end of war only to occupation of Germany and Austria which main allies did jointly(although even there cooperation was quite "problematic"), in everythere else they acted independently and trying to make some arbitary connections is breaking WP:OR and WP:NPOV. Also could anyone explain to me how Allies could occupy Benelux, Greece or Palestine(British colony) then those were also members of Allies?--Staberinde 10:51, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Europe-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 14:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 14:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: This article needs a POV cleanup. It is a one-sided view, weighted to the "occupation" viewpoint. — ERcheck (talk) 15:27, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • keep and rename to Allied occupation in Europe following World War II to cover the entire subject of World War II allies (Western and Soviet) occupations--which did not exist in a vacuum from each other. Hmains 15:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. Petri's arguments seem to be convincing. --Ghirla-трёп- 17:05, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - this is not a good article at present, but is useful as a partner article to those on the Allied Occupations of Germany and Austria. There is a lot of POV in the article, but the solution to that is to edit it out, not to delete the article. If the nominator has deleted unjustifiably 80 articles from the related category, should he not be considered for adminstrative action? Peterkingiron 17:12, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete - largely unreferenced, or taken from very biased sources. Plus, we have relevant articles for actual occupations of individual countries, so this is a transparent content fork. Biruitorul 18:12, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • It's not as much a fork as an unfork -- an unsourced synthesis of several distinct categories into one Big Ball of Mud. The obvious motivation is to deny that Soviet occupation was real, and qualitatively distinct from the occupation of what became sovereign West Germany and neutral Austria. Luckily, the Truth(tm) has Google on its side: [1] yields 475,000 results referring material from Soviet occcupation of Austria to Soviet war in Afghanistan, and things like the Kiev Museum of Soviet Occupation inbetween. Digwuren 08:37, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
    • This is not a content fork, but a main article for the category for the "articles for actual occupations of individual countries". The invividual articles should be referenced from this article, with some content duplicated. -- Petri Krohn 07:33, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep but only if it is immediately made the target of a significant improvement campaign. It's a valid historical concept and can be presented quite neutrally and encyclopedically, but I agree that what it currently is is a bunch of unreferenced POV nonsense. Renovate, don't delete. K. Lásztocska 01:57, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep clearly an article with this title is needed; how it handles its subject matter is another matter. JJL 17:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete or Split - awfully POV at present, and the limited information could be split into East/West or even specific country based articles. Rgds, --Trident13 20:21, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete or Split - Title is wrong, both France and Spain are significant parts of Europe and they were not occupied by the Allies. In fact Frane was one of the occupying powers in Germany, ditto for the UK. Ireland, Switzerland and Sweden were not occupied either. To say the Allies occupied Europe is not correct. So split and merge sections into country specific articles, such as Allied occupation of Germany, US occupation of Iceland, Soviet occupation of Poland, etc. Martintg 21:00, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
P.S. This article is really a POV fork as per reasons of Turgidson: "to create a moral equivalence between the brutal Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe (and the imposition of Communism there, for decades), and the US/UK/French occupation of Germany and Austria in 1945-1955 (which led to the Wirtschaftswunder, instead)". Martintg 21:06, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
moral is against NPOVAnonimu 21:19, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Come again? Biruitorul 04:18, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep seems to be a valid main article for many other post WW2 articles Alex Bakharev 21:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep On the WWII page, everybody always complains we have too much info in that article, and need to merge it into other articles. Many articles that are recently made are POV, it takes time to work them out.--LtWinters 00:23, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
  • The article really just duplicates existing country level occupation articles, at best it is merely a category, it adds no extra information that should be available in the individual country articles. It really is a content fork. Martintg 00:45, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
It's a good summarization of all those countries' after the war, instead of chunks of information taking an hour to read on each one. Some of the countries listed don't even have those articles on them. And you are saying this is a category, we there are many individual articles, well I mean you could say the same of the WWII article and that we don't need it because there are subcategory articles for each topic mentioned in the WWII article. --LtWinters 13:14, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep, improve and expand. First point in favour of keeping: since one guy's POV is another guy's NPOV, POV is not really a good reason to delete articles - only if they cannot be improved or expanded to get rid of it, deletion or merger is a possible way out. Looking at this article it is so obvious that improvement is perfectly possible that I agree this is a bad faith nomination. Second, who is to say that lumping together what the USSR and the Anglosaxons did in 1945 was not comparable. Example one: King Leopold III of Belgium is on record as having said that Americans and British (actually most of the first entrants in Belgium were Canadians) coming to Belgium in 1944 was an occupation, and not a liberation. Example two: I know people who even today consider the arrival of Russian troops a liberation, and their subsequent replacement by Polish ones an occupation. Hint: it is to do with religion. (Zełwągi) And yes, there is a second point I want to make for keeping this: most of this end-of the war stuff is now either in a limited number of articles that are getting too long, or in a string of stubs which usually start with the nice POV word "Massacre". Congratulations to Petri Krohn on this one: he really hit the jackpot big time. This article could solve a lot of the problems we are having, by incorporating that information. --Pan Gerwazy 14:19, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Comment. King Leopold II of Belgium died on December 17, 1909. Where and when did he make the alleged statement about "Americans and British ... coming to Belgium in 1944"? Turgidson 16:44, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
OK, I see that you changed now to King Leopold III of Belgium. Same question, though: where and when did he make the alleged statement? Is there a source for that? Turgidson 16:48, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
There is a long list of articles where a particular brand of users seem to be very fast on the draw. Now for the occupation: I know that this is a very difficult part of Belgian history, which nobody really wants to live through again (people old enough to be interested do not write blogs or create websites). But there are books about it and Maurice Dewilde in his TV series paid a lot of attention to this political testament of Leopold III. Of course, they can be traced on the web, if you know Dutch or French: "Leopold nam ook een redelijk negatieve houding aan tegenover de geallieerden, die hij beschreef als "les autorités occupantes".[134]" 134 (at [2] this) gives links to several books in French and Dutch. There is no doubt whatsoever that he used "occupants" and that word later came back to haunt him and his supporters during the Royal Question (unfortunately, there is no English or German article on that constitutional crisis, only Dutch and French - and only the Dutch article mentions the testament - work to be done)--Pan Gerwazy 17:11, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Not sure what you mean by "particular brand of user", " very fast on the draw" -- is that a criticism of my drawing attention to your incongruous statement about Leopold II? As for what Leopold III may or may not have said in his "political testament" (I still do not see any reliable reference for that claim, just some kind of a blog, and sorry, I can't read Dutch), I don't see how this affects one way or another the case for or against the article under discussion. Turgidson 18:38, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
How is this related to the issue at hand? Why don't you take this to Talk:Leopold III of Belgium. -- Petri Krohn 19:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
  • delete b/c this article was created by copying fragments from already existing WP articles (compare Aftermath of World War II). This article is an example of selective soursing from WP articles to create a virtually new article supporting a certain POV. I don't care if the POV is legitimate or not, this style of writing (copying from sourses without any thought about how the content is presented in the encyclopedia as a whole) is at the level of 7th grade at best. :Dc76 10:54, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. See results of google scholar search: [3]. There is no such thing as allied occupation of Europe. It was invented in Wikipedia.Biophys 05:30, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

The article needs to balance between several POVs. The WWII occupation cannot be discussed separately from the liberation of Europe. As an example, we now have an article, with a POV title Soviet occupation of Romania, which also covers the events of the liberation of Romania. This article tries to avoid this POV, by pointing out (in the very first sentence), that the foreign troops entered Europe as liberatrors. Another POV issue is what constitutes an occupation? Are foreign troops stationed by agreement in a souvereign member state of the United Nations occupation forces? There is a point of view that such toops are in fact occupation. We should however avoid stating this as the only interpretation. On the other hand, the occupation of Berlin only ended in 1991, it can be argued, that troops outside Berlin and Germany, but in support of the front line troops also constituted part of an occupation. -- Petri Krohn 16:52, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

P.S - There are strong arguments presented in Talk:Soviet occupation of Romania (and archives), that for something to be called an occupation, it does not have to be a military occupation in the strict sense. -- Petri Krohn 17:49, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

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.