Talk:Battle of Smolensk (1943)

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Featured article star Battle of Smolensk (1943) is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do.
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Grafikm_fr (talk • contribs • email)
This in no way implies article ownership; all editors are encouraged to contribute.

I have made one minor correction to the reference to Operaton Uranus. This previously talked of "the liberation ofStalingard." Stalingrad was never captured by German forces, so "liberation" is the wrong term. I have changed it to "German defeat at Stalingrad" which is more accurate. The page overall is really good. Man, this page took ages to create, but it's finally done!!!

To-do:

  • Spelling, copyedit and so on (you can help!)
  • PICTURES!!! It is desperately in need of 'em. Pictures of German fortifications and of Soviet troops advancing are welcome :)
  • Add a section on partizan warfare (working on it)
  • Get a better map somewhere... :(

Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 22:03, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a great article. It has a potential to become featured with time. Kudos to the creator! --Ghirla -трёп- 07:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] DYK!

I agree with Ghirla... fascinating stuff! ++Lar: t/c 20:22, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

don't grok the whole good article thing... seems to be at the whim of one person. Someone nominated one of mine, Gaylord Building and then it was gone again, with no real feedback on why it wasn't good enough. I never quite got the process. I think it's a good article though. Maybe even a potential Featured Article some day... ++Lar: t/c 18:40, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
I nominated one of my articles straight for FA without any GA nomination. Go for it, we can never have too many war articles. :D -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 23:21, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A suggestion

First I would like to say congratulations to everyone who contributed to this article. Attaining FA status is a real achievement, and makes this article part of the top 0.1% of all Wikipedia articles.

I do have a suggestion for improving the article still further, however. Below, I post a comment which I made (much too late) on the FA Candidates discussion page.

"A very good article for the technical details of the battle, and an in depth description of unit movements, etc. However I felt that the terrible destruction of the battle needed to be brought out more. What would it be like if you were actually there, a Russian or a German soldier caught up in this horrendous battle? Nowhere in the text is the human cost of the battle mentioned, and nowhere is the immense human suffering of battle mentioned. What about an account from a soldier who was actually there, instead of a general talking about the numbers and titles of 'units' involved? I recognise this might be hard to do, but if possible it would be a worthwhile addition to the article. Where is the human element in this article? It talks about units being able to continue the advance because they were 'reinforced'. Think what that word means - it means that hundreds and thousands of men met their deaths in wretched circumstances amid the blaze of gunfire and artillery explosions. We shouldn't forget that an entire generation suffered death and injury on the eastern front in WW2."

Please don't take this as an attack on the article, or its right to be a FA. All I am trying to say is that war is hell. There should be at least some reflection of that in this article. If this was done, I think this article could be made much better still. Bigdaddy1204 13:33, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello there! You are oh-so-right about that. However, there are several reasons that unfortunately led to this particular result:
First, this battle got in general absolutely crappy coverage even from Soviet sources (and don't even get me started about Western). I once had a whole tome of soldiers' memoirs about Kursk, and not a thing about Smolensk. Istomin's and Voronov's books are about the only sources and both are written from a general's point of view...
Second, this is unfortunately a particularity of the whole Soviet war history school. People talk about heroism, about sacrifices, but seldom about losses and blood among soldiers (not in detail that is)
Third, in Histomin's book, there are quite a few examples of soldiers dying and sacrificing themselves to make things happen. However, the distinction of what was true and what was propaganda is oh-so-unclear. The risk of being accused of POV was too high for me, given the sources.
Even Stalingrad, which has a 10000 times wider coverage in books is quite scarce about human details (well, at least compared to the sheer volume of material).
As for German sources, I do not speak German so I can't go and read their memoirs, if there are any... :(
I will see what I can do of course, but that's why I wanted it to pass FA first and think of this second. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 21:57, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for responding to my suggestion, I do appreciate that it's not always easy to add everything into an article. I am glad that you have said you will look into it. At the end of the day, you can only do so much with an article, based on the resources available, so I respect your answer. Thanks once again for your helpful response - it is nice to see someone answer in the way you have done. I have recently had a bad experience on the M2TW forum, where my posts have been flamed. The kind and helpful way you have answered my suggestion really does mean something to me. Thanks again! :) Bigdaddy1204 01:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stavka or STAVKA?

A minor point, but the article is inconsistent as to whether to use stanka or STANKA. It would be nice to clear that up before it goes on the main page. HenryFlower 22:40, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

First it's Stavka. :) Second it is an acronym that is also a word (Stavka means command camp and it is also an abbreviation of Shtab verkhovnogo komandovanya. In western literature it is sometimes written capitalized as STAVKA. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 22:42, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
There was no such thing, as "Штаб Верховного Командования" (Shtab Verkhovnogo komandovaniya). Red Army had a General Staff (Генеральный Штаб Красной Армии), that's it. But there is a part of truth in there - the full title of Stavka after August 8, 1941 was Stavka Verhovnogo Glavnokomandovaniya (Ставка Верховного Главнокомандования).Fat yankey 22:48, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Update: I set all to lower caps just to be sure... :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 22:44, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Hey, I got it right in the heading, at least. ;) HenryFlower 22:49, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyedits

Congratulations to the editors thus far on chronicling an important battle. I have one question - what the heck is a "depeche"? I tried to edit this out but honestly couldn't figure out if it meant "officer", "staff officer", "briefing" or something else based on context clues.

I've also made some copyedits and tightened up the prose - the article was very conversational in tone but otherwise quite good as far as content; hopefully the number of edits won't seem alarming, they are almost all stylistic rather than factual. I've also changed "Wehrmacht" in some cases to "German" though perhaps "Axis" would be better. Wehrmacht refers to the Air Force, Army and Navy. Axis would include Romanian, Hungarian, Italian etc. troops. I also deleted the phrase about Germany "losing their best men" in two years of war as a POV statement that is unprovable and probably false in any event. Again, good work so far, I enjoyed reading it.Michael Dorosh 08:24, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

A depeche is a dispatch, or message. I'd agree a more common word would be better. HenryFlower 09:03, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Sources

It might be good idea to search also for other sources than Russian ones. I remember that for example the Zhukov Memoirs (cited as source in article) are often heavily criticised for their blatant inaccuracy.

[edit] Repulsed?

Has the use of "repel" been considered? "Repulse" does not sound like a verb, and even though the dictionary lists it as such. "Drive back" would be an anglosaxon alternative (studies show that texts written predominantly in anglosaxon words are easier to understand than texts written in Latin-derived vocabulary; I will not provide a reference for this). - Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:54, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wholesale reverts

Whoah....I spent a lot of time cleaning up language that was misleading and historically inaccurate - please don't simply revert wholesale without considering why the changes are made. I've outlined the reasons for some of the changes above - ie use of "Wehrmacht" where "Germans" is more appropriate, and the use of "best men" which is POV and really has no meaning. The article would benefit from an examination of these points one by one rather than assuming pride of ownership and making blanket revisions. Can we not work together?Michael Dorosh 14:27, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Umm... WTF gives?!

Is it just me, or is there an enormous picture of a penis in this article? The thing took me off guard and nobody is editing it out, and I can't seem to figure out how to remove it.

Someone added it top the military conflicts template. Gone now. Gillis 18:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Willy?

lol.

[edit] Liberate vs. Retake

Okay these areas were indeed part of Russia and in that way were "liberated from germany" but i doubt anyone would say Germany would have liberated anything in case it would hae retaken land belonging to it in the end of the conflict.

I just think liberate is quite POV when what encyclopedicly is done is the action of retaking an area.

Gillis 18:11, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

You may have a point there. I think "liberation" is more often used to refer to the taking of concentration camps. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 00:42, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
No, liberation is commonly used to refer to any formerly Allied area retaken from the Germans (not just concentration camps). It is commonly used in histories of Northwest Europe, for example. It's use in eastern Europe becomes sketchier due to conflicting territorial claims, especially in places like Poland, etc.Michael Dorosh 01:02, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but smolensk is in Russia afaik. I clearly oppose to using liberate for eastern european areas independent before the war that then became satellite states or such. And still i disagree on the use of Liberate here either. I oubt we can have a census on the definition "everything taken by the allied from germany or its allies during WWII was liberated", this is something that is probably commonly used in history writing in different countries, especially such that is intended for a national audience. But as we are writing an itnernational encyclopedia we should account on this. If this definition was used it would be fair to say "eastern carelia was liberated by russia from Finland", which I doubt would be easily swalloed. I think wikipedia would need a common policy on this. Gillis 22:21, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
There were endless discussions on the subject here and what emerged was that it was 100% okay to use the term for ethnically Russian territories, while the word applied to Ukraine, Baltic states, Finland and so on... is indeed disputed. The battle of Smolensk took place entirely in RSFSR, so there's no problem. The example of Finland is different, so don't compare them please. I'm not even talking about the fact that in Western literature tje word is used even for Poland or Ukraine. If you want to know all the details, read Talk:Battle of the Dnieper and the two archives, but prepare for a long read beforehand :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 22:45, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Title

The infobox and the intro both give "Second Battle of Smolensk." Why isn't that the title of the article. It might be too cumbersome to move this while its on the mainpage, but is their a reason why the title is Battle of Smolensk (1943). "1943" should also appear somewhere in the first sentence or at least first paragraph. savidan(talk) (e@) 18:18, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

See WP:MILHIST#Naming conventions. While terms like "first" and "second" are commonly used in article text (when the context of a particular war is present), years are preferred for disambiguation in titles. (In this case, we have Battle of Smolensk (1941), Battle of Smolensk (1812), and a bunch of others to disambiguate with. Having "Second Battle of Smolensk" as a title—where the context of WWII would not be present—would be very confusing.) Kirill Lokshin 18:22, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ok ok

I accept it now. Peace. Kurt.

[edit] Irrelevant quotation

Rokossovsky quotation in the "Main breakthrough" section is irrelevant. His front didn't take part in the operation "Suvorov". Central front of Rokossovkij was busy in the Battle of Dnieper, mentioned earlier in the article. 22:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

In the strict sense of the term you're right. However, first, the operation aimed at clearing the Orel Salient and the Operation Suvorov were pretty much interrelated. Second, Rokossovsky was not limited to his own front and his memoirs largely mention the operation Suvorov as well. A front commander had to know more than his own front. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 22:45, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
That's exactly the point - the quotation would be relevant in the article about Kursk battle, part of which was the operation "Kutuzov" (cleaning up Oryol salient). I'll tell you more - Rokossovskij himself found suitable to tell about this in "Operation Citadel" chapter, where this quotation is from.Fat yankey 23:00, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
This is a wiki, so you're welcome to fix anything you can think is out of place. :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 23:24, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Rationale first. Fat yankey 03:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References

It seems to me that many of these references are only available in Russian. If so this should be noted in the References section. For example the only reference in English to "Nikolai Shefov Russian fights, Lib. Military History, Moscow, 2002." is at Recent Acquisitions: January 2007 "Shefov, N. A. Bitvy Rossii / Nikolai Shefov. Moskva : AST, 2002." and it is in Russian not English. If the cited books are in print in English then there will be ISBN numbers which can be added to them. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:38, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Update and revise

Hi gang. As you can see I have made some changes. Please do not panic. If this is FA quality article then by the time its finished they will have to invent a new category a bit higher ;o)
Not that I do not appreciate the work and effort that has gone into the article so far, and at least its here. However there is a drive to add Soviet operations and update them, and also add Soviet Armies and Corps (and divisions). I would also like to add more detail on the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe side. Actually I got here because of the partisan operation Concert that was completely left out of the article despite its significant. PLEASE lets talk before you edit or undo anything--Mrg3105 (talk) 07:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] maps

Would like to hear from the person who did the maps for this article--Mrg3105 (talk) 07:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Western USSR

This was a general region of combat operations, and roughly corresponds to the Eastern European Theatre of operations. The republics are political entities, and several operations were conducted simultaneously over territories of several republics. The best way to describe these are as Western USSR where they were large strategic operations.--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 00:39, 1 March 2008 (UTC)