Talk:Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff

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An entry from Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 30 March 2007.
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Good article. I think this one will become a DYK myself. I read it in the suggestions. Very interesting DYK. Good job all who contributed. ♣ ÅñôñÿMôús Dîššíd3nt 20:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

How did he discover the Katyn graves? This should be expanded and noted in the Katyn massacre article.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  21:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


Dear  Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk ,

when attached to Army Group Center as an intelligence officer, von Gersdorff most probably just came across some testimonies given by locals willing to give somewhat information to the Wehrmacht and get paid for it. The actual circumstances are of such meaningless proportions that I could not find any source reflecting on this. But I shall try to satisfy your demand, if possible.

Dionysos 20:01, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Changes

Dear JALockhart,

I do appreciate your contributions to the article “von Gersdorff”. Nevertheless I do feel uncomfortable with some of your changes:

Re: “lastly as a colonel under Sepp Dietrich during the final phase of Germany’s 1940 invasion of France.” … The invasion of France is a specific article in Wiki which states: Decisive Axis victory. … Though the German article is said von Gersdorff had served under Sepp Dietrich this can be considered nonsense because a colonel would have not served in an SS-Army. Sepp Dietrich just took command over Fifth Panzer Army between 9 Aug 1944 - 9 Sept 1944.

Re: “A group of top Nazi and leading military figures—among them Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz—was present as well.” …. I neither consider Keitel nor Dönitz “top Nazi figures” like Göring or Himmler!!

Why did you remove the pic?

--Dionysos 16:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand your point about “the invasion of France,” but the rest of the sentence is harmonized with the German article, which states that v.G served under Sepp Dietrich; I am in no position to make accuracy judgments about the statement, but since it appears in the German article, I have to consider it accurate from that standpoint. The German refers specifically to the Westfeldzug 1940. If the information is wrong, please remove it, or remove only the mention of Sepp Dietrich if v.G was a Stabsoffizier at the time but under some other commander—from the chronological order, it seems right.

As for “A group of top Nazi and leading military figures...”, I think anyone who reads a bit further can tell that top Nazi refers to Göring and Himmler, and that leading military refers to Keitel and Dönitz, and that there is some overlap between all four of them, though it is well known that Dönitz was not much of a Nazi sympathizer. In any case, I took this information for the German article, and I have also seen it in other sources.

I did not remove the pic. It stopped appearing earlier today and I thought perhaps it had been deleted for copyright reasons or something similar. (It could also be because of some problem with Wikipedia’s servers—I noticed that a lot of other photos were not loading today, and this sort of thing happens every once in a while.) The photo should go back in as soon as possible.

Note that I also inserted two {{fact}} tags regarding v.G’s service as intelligence liaison with the Abwehr, and about his cousin Fabian von Schlabrendorff’s involvement in drawing v.G into the von Tresckow resistance group; can’t you provide citations for this info or clear up any inaccuracy as I’ve edited it? Someone is quite likely to query this in the future (this information is not present in the German article, so I assume you’ve drawn it from another source).

I agree with you that it would be nice to learn more of v.G’s post-war work and accomplishments. Best regards, Jim_Lockhart 16:58, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The German article has just been a somewhat guideline for me. I do not consider the English article a translation from its German counterpart. Re {{Fact}} tags: I did my very best. Concerning von Schlabrendorff I shall see what I can do. But there are many things in this articile could be tagged like that. Personally I think anybody doubting this should buy on the books presented as references.

Thank you again for your great help! Good night then! --Dionysos 17:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks also to HanzoHattori for his contributions and helping me creat my first article on Wiki!--Dionysos 18:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Excellent changes!! You've got the hang of the Wikilinking, too! :) I hope many people read this and learn something about the German resistance against Hitler and his henchmen. Best regards, Jim_Lockhart 03:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Excellent addition to Wikipedia. oldcitycat 18:35, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] German article

From today on the German article is actually a copy of the English Version. I just felt free to do so.--Dionysos 09:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Both look good to me! :) And the photo is finally back, too. Happy editing, Jim_Lockhart 14:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Minor edit in the article. You don't "visit" schools in English. You attend them. oldcitycat 18:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Thx Oldcitycat! I have never attended any English school ... that's the problem --Dionysos 19:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't let it bother you: Oldcitycat might be right concerning his dialect of English, but in the variety I use you can visit (in the meaning of attend) a school. Several of the other changes that have be introduced since your (Dionysos's) final edit are also arguably not improvements, and some—such as the spaces before and after the em-dashes, before the en-dash, the disagreement is number between "group (of leading...figures)" (singular) and "were"...—are outright wrong or inconsistent with the AmE typographic conventions used in the rest of the article. :( Best regards, Jim_Lockhart 01:16, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Changes of 31 March 2007

The following are my reasons for today’s changes, just so there are no misunderstandings.

  • The translated names of the military units v.G belonged to as well as proper nouns (such as that of Bundesverdienstkreuz) are capitalized as per WP:CL and CMOS (15th ed) 10.8.
  • Translated titles of reference works are capitalized or italicized or both as per CMOS 10.6.
  • Translations of German terms and concepts are rendered in parentheses, without enclosure in quotation marks, as per CMOS 6.99.
  • Titles and ranks are capitalized as per English convention: capitalized when immediately preceding a person's name and used as a part thereof, but lowercased when used generically (CMOS 8.21–8.35, and specifically 8.27, and WP:CL).
  • Commas are placed on dates as per WP:DATE, including in dates of birth and death.
  • Quotation marks (inverted commas; both single and double, as well as apostrophes) are set as typographer’s quotation marks/apostrophes since these are far easier to read on screen than the old typewriter style.
  • En dashes (–) and em dashes (—) are used properly and consistently (i.e., always tight), following CMOS conventions.
  • “Prey weapons” is not a readily understood English term (if, indeed, it is an established one or a term of art at all—I could find no relevant examples of it with a Google search); I’ve therefore replaced it with “captured Soviet weapon” since this should be clear to any reader. Likewise the reference to the explosives and fuses used by Col. v. Stauffenberg.
  • I’ve removed redundant Wikilinks to help avoid the “sea of blue” phenomenon; indeed, I could even be argued that the article would be much easier to read if inline Wikilinks that coincide with ones in the infobox could be removed. See WP:CONTEXT and WP:MOS-L for details.
  • I’ve italicized Generalmajor in the infobox so readers will not confuse it with a English word, though normally foreign proper nouns are not italicized.
  • Noun (subject)–verb number agreement: I changed “A group of top Nazi and leading military figures—among them Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz—were present as well” to “A group of top Nazi and leading military officials—among them Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz—was present as well” because subject of the verb is “group,” which is singular. (Would you normally write or say “a group were present”? Don’t let inserted phrases separating a subject from its verb confuse you! :))
  • When a translation gloss follows a Wikilinked German term or concept, I've included the gloss with the original term so that it is clear that the term and its translation belong together.

HTH and best regards, Jim_Lockhart 17:36, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Great work!--Dionysos 09:10, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Pic Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff

Dear Howcheng, For further verification of copyrights, weather existing or not, I wrote the following letter to the Memorial to the German Resistance [1]:

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, in der englischen Version der Internet- Enzyklopädie „Wikipedia“ habe ich mir erlaubt, einen Beitrag über Rudolf Christoph von Gersdorff zu schreiben. Dabei habe ich in Unkenntnis der Rechtslage die auf Ihrer Website verwendete Photographie desselbigen verwendet. Ich bin nun von so genannten Administratoren dieser Enzyklopädie darauf hingewiesen worden, dass es unbedingt erforderlich ist, einen zweifelsfreien Beleg dafür zu liefern, dass die Photographie rechtlich einwandfrei dort platziert werden darf. Ich denke, dass Sie mir prinzipiell zustimmen, dass von Gersdorff dort seinen Niederschlag finden sollte und dass zum Abrunden eine bildliche Darstellung nicht fehlen sollte. Da Sie diese Photographie in Ihrem Internet-Auftritt nutzen, können Sie mir sicherlich Auskunft darüber erteilen, wie ich mich richtig zu verhalten habe. Um eine derartige Auskunft möchte ich Sie hiermit freundlichst bitten. Hochachtungsvoll und mit freundlichen Grüßen signed Montréal, Qc, Canada 1-Apr-07

As soon as I receive any reply I shall inform you. Best regards --Dionysos 09:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MOS

As per the Manual of Style, "avoid putting links in the boldfaced titles and synonyms." That is why I made Freiherr have a footnote. Olessi 16:26, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Dear Olessi , Thank you! In my opinion your edits to this article are great work! But, nevertheless, I think a footnote in the header is just not appropriate but also confusing. The article doesn’t sink into a “blue sea” and thereby anybody, who does not know “Freiherr”, may just click it. Anyway, I am aware of the problem from my own experience (e. g. see my comments here [very last edit]) . Maybe we should find an even more elegant way in this matter. ... e. g. just leaving it as: "Rudolf Christoph von Gersdorff, Freiherr" Sincerely yours --Dionysos 18:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)