Talk:Hans Waldmann (fighter pilot)

Nazi propaganda

Did Nazi propaganda credit him with victories, or was it the Luftwaffe!? We don't say "Wing Commander so and so from 1000 squadron RAF was credited by British propaganda with shooting down a German aircraft". These edits look like a cynical attempt to portray these articles as untrustworthy. They also suggest the author doesn't have a technical understanding of the subject. Need I say, they are also unsourced. These kind of personal views from someone who seems to have a personal problem with German personnel from this conflict, degrade the quality of Wikipedia and have no place here. Using "intricate detail" to justify deleting information that does not expand the article unnecessarily and also is entirely relevant to its subject is also unhelpful. Dapi89 (talk) 15:01, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that yesterday, but with all the other edits around the same time I didn't have time to make the judicious reversions or comments I would have wished. That particular insertion did seem problematic; I couldn't see anything in the main body of the article supporting the notion that his tally was purely a fabrication of propagandists, indeed if we say "Nazi propaganda" credited him with 134 victories, we may as well say that Osprey Publishing are in bed with the Nazis, because Morgan and Weal also credit Waldmann with that total. There may be cause for tweaking "victories" to "claims" in places, but that should be based on how reliable sources couch it, not on our personal opinions. As for "intricate detail", I've said elsewhere that this is often in the eye of the beholder; the ACR commentators (me among them) didn't seem to find the article overly detailed, and clearly Dapi doesn't either, so the next thing would be to discuss here on the talk page anything that K.e. considers superfluous. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:57, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Tags

The article is largely sourced to Bracke, which comes from an extremist publisher:

• Bracke, Gerhard (1997). Gegen vielfache Übermacht—Mit dem Jagdflieger und Ritterkreuzträger Hans Waldmann an der Ostfront, an der Invasionsfront und in der Reichsverteidigung (in German). Zweibrücken, Germany: VDM Heinz Nickel. ISBN 3-925-480-23-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

Given the WP:QS nature of the source, the level of the detail in the article is WP:UNDUE. I tagged the article accordingly. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:50, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

@K.e.coffman: please stop your wreckage of previously approved material. The level of detail isappropriate. This has been determined. If a citation style is deprecated, we can fix the template. auntieruth (talk)

• Comment Have started a discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Gerhard Bracke AIRcorn (talk) 02:15, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Bracke is a retired teacher and former headmaster of the Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Brunswick. He taught German and history. He is known (a little, I should say) for his activities in the Bund für Gotteserkenntnis (BfG). That's a small esoteric group founded by Erich and Mathilde Ludendorff, reformed by Mathilde in 1951, banned in 1961 because it was considered to be anti-constitutional. The ban was lifted in 1977 for procedural errors. It is a racist and decidedly anti-semitic group, known for denial of the Holocaust and of German guilt of war. Regardless of the publisher you could make a strong case that Bracke is an extremist. If needed I may quote from one or two of Bracke's essays in Mensch und Maß, the magazine of the BfG, from the 1990ies, to give you an impression. The book in question was first published in 1977 by Motorbuch. Bracke's most well known book is probably his biography of Melitta Gräfin Stauffenberg (1st ed., 1990). A reviewer in the Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen deemed it valuable, because it was the first biography, but found that Bracke had often presented the historical context with too little differentiation and that some of the literature Bracke had used was questionable.--Assayer (talk) 10:44, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Translation notes

The translation notes are nicely done, from an organizational and technical viewpoint. These notes give brief explanations of English expressions such as "separation shot", which may not be familiar to most readers, in footnote form. These translation notes have their own separate section (here), which is nice. So, that's the good news.

But there is a problem with some of these notes, and more to the point, with the use of some English terms in the body where a German equivalent is more common. Where English reliable sources normally would use the German term, so should we. Note "Tr 4" is a good example: it explains the use of the term "separation-shot" in section War against the Soviet Union, or rather, the text of the note gives the original German term, namely, herausschuss.

But this is backwards—what the article should do, imho, is to call it herausschuss, like reliable English sources do. By all means, let's keep the Translation note if desired, to go into more detail about what this actually means, perhaps after a brief explanation in the running text of the article. See, for example, how herausschuss is handled at Gustav Rödel, Werner Schröer, or Wilhelm Lemke. These articles all follow what reliable sources in English do, i.e., they use the German herausschuss, and then explain as necessary. (If you search, beware of search engine results: some "separation shot" results are from WP mirrors or copiers.)

If there's no objection, I plan to change this article to follow the style at the others, and use German expressions in the body in those cases where the German expression is the common name in English. I think we can keep the Translation notes, but with inverted or altered content as applicable, so that they could explain the unfamiliar German term, rather than an unknown English one. As far as the other five translation notes, the analysis should be similar; namely, we should follow in the body of the article, whatever term reliable English sources use, and then explain as necessary. Mathglot (talk) 04:30, 1 April 2018 (UTC)