This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Johann Mickl article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Johann Mickl was one of the Warfare good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
There appears to be a dispute about exactly where Mickl was born and the ethnicity of his mother. The two sources being used by me are the Austrian and German Biographical Encyclopedias. User:Doncsecz appears to have formed the view that the mother's name is Prekmurian, and the spelling of her maiden name in the sources is wrong. so this should be included even though no source has been cited that states this, and that the naIt appears that the user has then concluded that the name of the town in which she was born was known by its Prekmurian/Slovene name of Zenkovci. The ethnicity of his mother is WP:OR unless there is a reliable source for it (none has been provided by the user). The name of the town at the time was Zelting, and this is what the source says. These changes need citation to a reliable source, otherwise they will be reverted as not being compliant with WP policy. Regards, Peacemaker67 ( send... over) 14:00, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
This article is mainly based upon two sources:
Both sources are strongly biased, and both sources are used uncritically. The result is an article which reproduces their respective bias. Richter & Kobe phrase their bias as such:
Such a clearly biased source has to be treated with extreme care. It is a questionable source, self-published by or with Mickl’s hometown, i.e. presumably with no editorial oversight. The accounts based upon Richter & Kobe provide too much details to be true. I will contrast two accounts with other sources:
Not only are these different numbers from the numbers given in the article. The article furthermore provides an unbelievably detailed account, including
Even more dramatic:
Such a narration is full of intricate details, creating some sort of inappropriate suspense, transforming the Austrian soldiers into heroes and featuring even a cameo appearance by Benito Mussolini.
A second example from Richter & Kobe is their depiction of the Battle of Sidi Rezegh. The literature on this battle is sizable, so it is possible to compare accounts. W. E. Murphy wrote in The Relief of Tobruk (1961), part of the Official History of New Zealand in WW II (p. 373), that about 960 POW were held in a POW cage near an undefended MDS. This was taken by German soldiers and Mickl thus freed. (p. 385) The whole story of Mickl single handedly freeing himself and his men provided by Richter & Kobe is not supported by this source and it certainly reads like fiction.
Author Gerd Kobe served under Mickl as Major im Generalstab. He is the source for numerous quotes and anecdotes, reproduced by Wikipedia as fact, that create an unabashedly heroic image of Mickl, including, but not only, Mickl defining the role of the soldier (e.g. “We fight not only when victory is guaranteed, but we do our duty and fight where we are, even if that means our inevitable doom.” “My place is with the guns!”), and the notion that Mickl protected the Serbs. I really, really do not see how anyone could take these stories at face value. The Report on the crimes of Austria and the Austrians against Yugoslavia and her peoples (1947) charges Mickl's 392nd division with war crimes (pp. 64-66), e.g. raids of small detachments into territory taken by the partisans with the purpose of killing the peasant population (p. 65).
I may illustrate that further by addressing the problems with the other prominent source. Franz Schraml headed the Kameradschaft of the German-Croat divisions, i.e. the veteran’s organization. He describes the difficulties he faced while putting together this divisional history. He mainly relied on sources and recollections of the German veterans. His revisionist political attitude shimmers clearly through his foreword and introduction. The article cites numbers given by Schraml, p. 186 in regard to Partisan losses during Operation Morgenstern. It is important to give the full numbers: 438 dead, 4 sMG, 5 mGrW, 11 IMG, 1 Panzerbüchse, 88 Gewehre, 157 Pferde, 2329 Schafe, 350 Rinder, sowie Nachrichten-, Flieger- und Sanitätsgerät.
Historian Ben Sheperd explains how such numbers are to be read in his book Terror in the Balkans (2012). He describes in detail the conduct of the 369th Croatian division and explains the increasingly more brutal warfare waged by the Germans in the NDH. Sheperd makes clear that not all divisions were behaving as brutally as others and names the 718th Infantry Division. He challenges the German numbers of killed “Partisans”, however. He argues: ”And as so often before, the contrast between “Partisan dead” and Partisan weapons captured was horribly disproportionate. […] Granted, the Partisans were retrieving some of their weapons themselves, some among their number would have been unarmed in any case, and the figures for Partisan dead were subject to other distortions also. Yet this was still the kind of massive shortfall that had hundreds of noncombatant deaths written all over it.” (p.223) The proportions between the numbers he cites for the 369th Croatian division resemble those between the numbers of deaths and weapons given by Schraml.
In general the article is written in unencyclopedic, glorifying language. The appropriate German term for this would be Landserromantik. A couple of random examples are:
A sort of icing on the cake are some of the images. There is an image of some German trucks from October 1941. The caption reads: Mickl's regiment struggled through heavy snow and freezing conditions to help stop a Soviet breakthrough south of Rzhev. These are some trucks at a different place and different time than any struggle south of Rzhev by Mickl's regiment. Another image Image of soldiers in Yugoslavia from October 1943 carries the caption: In late February or early March [1944), the 847th Infantry Regiment was unable to advance due to the winter weather. Is there any specific reason to use some random images from six months ealier to illustrate the “struggle” of Mickl’s men with bad weather? I really don’t get it, and, frankly, I think it is grossly misleading.-- Assayer ( talk) 20:39, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
The article fails criterion #2b "all in-line citations are from reliable sources". The article is mainly based upon two sources by:
According to this review of the sources, the article also fails criterion #4 as being non-neutral MisterBee1966 ( talk) 07:50, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
If I ctrl-f "knight's cross" in this article, I get 3 hits in the lead (including first sentence), 2 in the infobox and another 7 in the article. This strikes me as fanboy-ish writing. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 10:36, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
Preserving here by providing this link. My rationale was: "reducing non-RS Richter & Kobe, per Talk:Johann_Mickl#POV issues because of unreliable sources; excessive intricate detail; npov; rm image of a generic uniform". -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 14:50, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Article no longer meets A-Class criteria - Hawkeye7 ( talk) via MilHistBot ( talk) 19:20, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
Instructions for nominators and reviewers
Johann Mickl ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Toolbox |
---|
This article failed a good article review in 2019 due to alleged POV issues because of unreliable sources. This is a routine A-class review to determine if this article still meets the A-Class criteria. Schierbecker ( talk) 18:30, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Comment, strongly leaning towards delisting I know nothing about this person, but it's surprising that the material on his lengthy and fairly senior service in the fighting in Yugoslavia makes little reference to the civilian population of the area: it's like the war was being fought in a desert or similar. Given that civilians are central in all partisan warfare and atrocities against civilians were common in this fighting, this doesn't seem credible unless there are sources explaining the matter. The tone of the article as a whole is similar, and never acknowledges the political and criminal aspects of the war Mickl was involved in. Likewise, there appears to be no material on his views towards the rise of the Nazis and the resulting Nazi-led government. This doesn't reflect the way in which modern biographies of senior(ish) German officers of World War II are written, and I don't think the article would pass an A-class review now in its current form. Nick-D ( talk) 01:57, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Johann Mickl article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Johann Mickl was one of the Warfare good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
There appears to be a dispute about exactly where Mickl was born and the ethnicity of his mother. The two sources being used by me are the Austrian and German Biographical Encyclopedias. User:Doncsecz appears to have formed the view that the mother's name is Prekmurian, and the spelling of her maiden name in the sources is wrong. so this should be included even though no source has been cited that states this, and that the naIt appears that the user has then concluded that the name of the town in which she was born was known by its Prekmurian/Slovene name of Zenkovci. The ethnicity of his mother is WP:OR unless there is a reliable source for it (none has been provided by the user). The name of the town at the time was Zelting, and this is what the source says. These changes need citation to a reliable source, otherwise they will be reverted as not being compliant with WP policy. Regards, Peacemaker67 ( send... over) 14:00, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
This article is mainly based upon two sources:
Both sources are strongly biased, and both sources are used uncritically. The result is an article which reproduces their respective bias. Richter & Kobe phrase their bias as such:
Such a clearly biased source has to be treated with extreme care. It is a questionable source, self-published by or with Mickl’s hometown, i.e. presumably with no editorial oversight. The accounts based upon Richter & Kobe provide too much details to be true. I will contrast two accounts with other sources:
Not only are these different numbers from the numbers given in the article. The article furthermore provides an unbelievably detailed account, including
Even more dramatic:
Such a narration is full of intricate details, creating some sort of inappropriate suspense, transforming the Austrian soldiers into heroes and featuring even a cameo appearance by Benito Mussolini.
A second example from Richter & Kobe is their depiction of the Battle of Sidi Rezegh. The literature on this battle is sizable, so it is possible to compare accounts. W. E. Murphy wrote in The Relief of Tobruk (1961), part of the Official History of New Zealand in WW II (p. 373), that about 960 POW were held in a POW cage near an undefended MDS. This was taken by German soldiers and Mickl thus freed. (p. 385) The whole story of Mickl single handedly freeing himself and his men provided by Richter & Kobe is not supported by this source and it certainly reads like fiction.
Author Gerd Kobe served under Mickl as Major im Generalstab. He is the source for numerous quotes and anecdotes, reproduced by Wikipedia as fact, that create an unabashedly heroic image of Mickl, including, but not only, Mickl defining the role of the soldier (e.g. “We fight not only when victory is guaranteed, but we do our duty and fight where we are, even if that means our inevitable doom.” “My place is with the guns!”), and the notion that Mickl protected the Serbs. I really, really do not see how anyone could take these stories at face value. The Report on the crimes of Austria and the Austrians against Yugoslavia and her peoples (1947) charges Mickl's 392nd division with war crimes (pp. 64-66), e.g. raids of small detachments into territory taken by the partisans with the purpose of killing the peasant population (p. 65).
I may illustrate that further by addressing the problems with the other prominent source. Franz Schraml headed the Kameradschaft of the German-Croat divisions, i.e. the veteran’s organization. He describes the difficulties he faced while putting together this divisional history. He mainly relied on sources and recollections of the German veterans. His revisionist political attitude shimmers clearly through his foreword and introduction. The article cites numbers given by Schraml, p. 186 in regard to Partisan losses during Operation Morgenstern. It is important to give the full numbers: 438 dead, 4 sMG, 5 mGrW, 11 IMG, 1 Panzerbüchse, 88 Gewehre, 157 Pferde, 2329 Schafe, 350 Rinder, sowie Nachrichten-, Flieger- und Sanitätsgerät.
Historian Ben Sheperd explains how such numbers are to be read in his book Terror in the Balkans (2012). He describes in detail the conduct of the 369th Croatian division and explains the increasingly more brutal warfare waged by the Germans in the NDH. Sheperd makes clear that not all divisions were behaving as brutally as others and names the 718th Infantry Division. He challenges the German numbers of killed “Partisans”, however. He argues: ”And as so often before, the contrast between “Partisan dead” and Partisan weapons captured was horribly disproportionate. […] Granted, the Partisans were retrieving some of their weapons themselves, some among their number would have been unarmed in any case, and the figures for Partisan dead were subject to other distortions also. Yet this was still the kind of massive shortfall that had hundreds of noncombatant deaths written all over it.” (p.223) The proportions between the numbers he cites for the 369th Croatian division resemble those between the numbers of deaths and weapons given by Schraml.
In general the article is written in unencyclopedic, glorifying language. The appropriate German term for this would be Landserromantik. A couple of random examples are:
A sort of icing on the cake are some of the images. There is an image of some German trucks from October 1941. The caption reads: Mickl's regiment struggled through heavy snow and freezing conditions to help stop a Soviet breakthrough south of Rzhev. These are some trucks at a different place and different time than any struggle south of Rzhev by Mickl's regiment. Another image Image of soldiers in Yugoslavia from October 1943 carries the caption: In late February or early March [1944), the 847th Infantry Regiment was unable to advance due to the winter weather. Is there any specific reason to use some random images from six months ealier to illustrate the “struggle” of Mickl’s men with bad weather? I really don’t get it, and, frankly, I think it is grossly misleading.-- Assayer ( talk) 20:39, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
The article fails criterion #2b "all in-line citations are from reliable sources". The article is mainly based upon two sources by:
According to this review of the sources, the article also fails criterion #4 as being non-neutral MisterBee1966 ( talk) 07:50, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
If I ctrl-f "knight's cross" in this article, I get 3 hits in the lead (including first sentence), 2 in the infobox and another 7 in the article. This strikes me as fanboy-ish writing. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 10:36, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
Preserving here by providing this link. My rationale was: "reducing non-RS Richter & Kobe, per Talk:Johann_Mickl#POV issues because of unreliable sources; excessive intricate detail; npov; rm image of a generic uniform". -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 14:50, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Article no longer meets A-Class criteria - Hawkeye7 ( talk) via MilHistBot ( talk) 19:20, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
Instructions for nominators and reviewers
Johann Mickl ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Toolbox |
---|
This article failed a good article review in 2019 due to alleged POV issues because of unreliable sources. This is a routine A-class review to determine if this article still meets the A-Class criteria. Schierbecker ( talk) 18:30, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Comment, strongly leaning towards delisting I know nothing about this person, but it's surprising that the material on his lengthy and fairly senior service in the fighting in Yugoslavia makes little reference to the civilian population of the area: it's like the war was being fought in a desert or similar. Given that civilians are central in all partisan warfare and atrocities against civilians were common in this fighting, this doesn't seem credible unless there are sources explaining the matter. The tone of the article as a whole is similar, and never acknowledges the political and criminal aspects of the war Mickl was involved in. Likewise, there appears to be no material on his views towards the rise of the Nazis and the resulting Nazi-led government. This doesn't reflect the way in which modern biographies of senior(ish) German officers of World War II are written, and I don't think the article would pass an A-class review now in its current form. Nick-D ( talk) 01:57, 10 March 2024 (UTC)