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A former country infobox is being used for this article [1], but a Reichskommissariat was in fact a type of administrative office headed by a government official known as a Reichskommissar, so a government agency infobox is better suited.
More broadly, a commissariat is a department or organisation, headed by a commissary who is a government official charged with oversight. A government agency is defined as an organisation in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions. Since a Reichskommissariat was an organisation that was responsible for the oversight and administration of territory occupied by the Germans, it was in fact a kind of Nazi government agency, not a country and so a former country infobox isn't really applicable here. -- Nug ( talk) 21:04, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
Agree with Peacemaker and strongly oppose the change (can't a guy take a break without everything going south?? :)). The "government agency" in this case is the governing body of this civil occupation territory. Its like changing the infobox at Illinois with an infobox for the Government of Illinois. Its fundamentally silly, and seems to rest on someone being over-enthusiastic about his/her discovery of the meaning of the word "commissariat" :). -- Director ( talk) 09:56, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
This article and the related articles Reichsgau Flandern, Reichsgau Wallonien and District of Brussels all claim that some sort of annexation happened on 15 December 1944, but provide no reliable sources for this claim whatsoever. Upon review, all sources indicate that these were just plans, that were never really carried out. The only action that appears to have been taken on 15 December 1944 is the appointment of Jef Van de Wiele as "Head of the Flemish Liberation Committee" (Dutch Hoofd van het Vlaamsche Bevrijdingscomité, German Leiter des flämischen Befreiungskomitees) by the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop ( Willem C.M. Meyers, La "Vlaamse Landleiding", p. 250-251, NEVB). This doesn't necessarily mean that the (envisioned) 'Reichsgau Flandern' was established/created on 15 December 1944, nor the 'Reichsgau Wallonien', nor the 'District of Brussels', nor that the Reichskommissariat of Belgium and Northern France (which most definitely was created by Hitler's decree on 13 July 1944) ceased to exist on that same day. This is jumping to conclusions. If Van de Wiele wasn't appointed Gauleiter, there is no reason to assume that a Reichsgau had been established. Moreover, if we do accept this hypothesis for the sake of argument, why wasn't the 'Reichsgau Wallonien' established a few days earlier on 8 December 1944 when Degrelle appears to have received a similar appointment as leader of the Comité de Libération wallon? (Meyers p. 250-251) Why are the same dates for Flandern, Wallonien and Brüssel given?
A self-proclaimed government-in-exile led by Van de Wiele (self-proclaimed title "National Leader of the Flemish people", Dutch Landsleider van het Vlaamsche volk), Verschaeve, Broms and Jacobs (Meyers p. 246), called the Landesleitung Flandern / Landsleiding Vlaanderen, was already established several weeks earlier, apparently in Pyrmont Castle in Bad Pyrmont, which they had to evacuate on 1 November 1944 (Meyers p. 247). The meeting scheduled for 16 November 1944 in Bad Pyrmont never took place; instead, the Landsleiding fled to Potsdam, and eventually held its first meeting in Ústí nad Labem (German Aussig) in Sudetenland, as Van de Wiele told Himmler in a 7 December 1944 telegram (Meyers p. 249). The appointment that Von Ribbentrop bestowed upon Van de Wiele on 15 December 1944 was Leiter des flämischen Befreiungskomitees (French "Chef du comité de Libération flamand"), apparently not legalising his self-proclaimed title Landsleider van het Vlaamsche volk in the process (Meyers p. 250-251), let alone appointing him to Gauleiter of any Reichsgau Flandern. This is WP:SYNTH. Moreover, there is evidence that in January 1945, Van de Wiele was still talking to Foreign Ministry representative Diehl about his ideas about the establishment of separate Reichsgaue or Reichsmarken for Flanders and Wallonia; he didn't care whether they were called Reichsgau or Reichsmark, as long as the 'artificial' Belgian state was split and destroyed and the 'unnatural union' of Flemings and Walloons was brought to an end (Meyers p. 263). This tells us that this apparently had not yet happened under German law, and negotiations about the future political/administrative division were still ongoing and had not yet settled, and Van de Wiele was still trying to convince the Nazi German leadership of his own vision. I think it's pretty unbelievable to claim that Van de Wiele had been appointed as the Gauleiter of a newly created Reichsgau Flandern on 15 December 1944, but a month later he was still complaining about how the German leadership had not yet split Belgium in two. He's not talking about how the German military should expel the Allies from Belgium (because everyone in the Axis camp agreed on that), but about the legal future of Belgium (which they apparently still disagreed about).
I think we've got enough evidence to conclude the Reichsgau Flandern, Reichsgau Wallonien and District of Brussels were never formally established, let alone annexed by Nazi Germany, that they were all just plans that were never carried out, and that the 15 December 1944 date only refers to Van de Wiele's appointment as "Head of the Flemish Liberation Committee", which is not even close to being appointed Gauleiter of the Reichgau Flandern. Josef Grohé probably nominally remained Reichskommissar of Belgium and Northern France until 8 May 1945. And, since all three pages are mostly just WP:CONTENTFORKs of each other about political entities that were never actually established, I think it's appropriate to merge them all to Reichskommissariat of Belgium and Northern France. They are mostly unsourced anyway, and their existence as separate articles can only be misleading for our readers. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw ( talk) 10:05, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Reichskommissariat of Belgium and Northern France 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 |
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
A former country infobox is being used for this article [1], but a Reichskommissariat was in fact a type of administrative office headed by a government official known as a Reichskommissar, so a government agency infobox is better suited.
More broadly, a commissariat is a department or organisation, headed by a commissary who is a government official charged with oversight. A government agency is defined as an organisation in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions. Since a Reichskommissariat was an organisation that was responsible for the oversight and administration of territory occupied by the Germans, it was in fact a kind of Nazi government agency, not a country and so a former country infobox isn't really applicable here. -- Nug ( talk) 21:04, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
Agree with Peacemaker and strongly oppose the change (can't a guy take a break without everything going south?? :)). The "government agency" in this case is the governing body of this civil occupation territory. Its like changing the infobox at Illinois with an infobox for the Government of Illinois. Its fundamentally silly, and seems to rest on someone being over-enthusiastic about his/her discovery of the meaning of the word "commissariat" :). -- Director ( talk) 09:56, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
This article and the related articles Reichsgau Flandern, Reichsgau Wallonien and District of Brussels all claim that some sort of annexation happened on 15 December 1944, but provide no reliable sources for this claim whatsoever. Upon review, all sources indicate that these were just plans, that were never really carried out. The only action that appears to have been taken on 15 December 1944 is the appointment of Jef Van de Wiele as "Head of the Flemish Liberation Committee" (Dutch Hoofd van het Vlaamsche Bevrijdingscomité, German Leiter des flämischen Befreiungskomitees) by the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop ( Willem C.M. Meyers, La "Vlaamse Landleiding", p. 250-251, NEVB). This doesn't necessarily mean that the (envisioned) 'Reichsgau Flandern' was established/created on 15 December 1944, nor the 'Reichsgau Wallonien', nor the 'District of Brussels', nor that the Reichskommissariat of Belgium and Northern France (which most definitely was created by Hitler's decree on 13 July 1944) ceased to exist on that same day. This is jumping to conclusions. If Van de Wiele wasn't appointed Gauleiter, there is no reason to assume that a Reichsgau had been established. Moreover, if we do accept this hypothesis for the sake of argument, why wasn't the 'Reichsgau Wallonien' established a few days earlier on 8 December 1944 when Degrelle appears to have received a similar appointment as leader of the Comité de Libération wallon? (Meyers p. 250-251) Why are the same dates for Flandern, Wallonien and Brüssel given?
A self-proclaimed government-in-exile led by Van de Wiele (self-proclaimed title "National Leader of the Flemish people", Dutch Landsleider van het Vlaamsche volk), Verschaeve, Broms and Jacobs (Meyers p. 246), called the Landesleitung Flandern / Landsleiding Vlaanderen, was already established several weeks earlier, apparently in Pyrmont Castle in Bad Pyrmont, which they had to evacuate on 1 November 1944 (Meyers p. 247). The meeting scheduled for 16 November 1944 in Bad Pyrmont never took place; instead, the Landsleiding fled to Potsdam, and eventually held its first meeting in Ústí nad Labem (German Aussig) in Sudetenland, as Van de Wiele told Himmler in a 7 December 1944 telegram (Meyers p. 249). The appointment that Von Ribbentrop bestowed upon Van de Wiele on 15 December 1944 was Leiter des flämischen Befreiungskomitees (French "Chef du comité de Libération flamand"), apparently not legalising his self-proclaimed title Landsleider van het Vlaamsche volk in the process (Meyers p. 250-251), let alone appointing him to Gauleiter of any Reichsgau Flandern. This is WP:SYNTH. Moreover, there is evidence that in January 1945, Van de Wiele was still talking to Foreign Ministry representative Diehl about his ideas about the establishment of separate Reichsgaue or Reichsmarken for Flanders and Wallonia; he didn't care whether they were called Reichsgau or Reichsmark, as long as the 'artificial' Belgian state was split and destroyed and the 'unnatural union' of Flemings and Walloons was brought to an end (Meyers p. 263). This tells us that this apparently had not yet happened under German law, and negotiations about the future political/administrative division were still ongoing and had not yet settled, and Van de Wiele was still trying to convince the Nazi German leadership of his own vision. I think it's pretty unbelievable to claim that Van de Wiele had been appointed as the Gauleiter of a newly created Reichsgau Flandern on 15 December 1944, but a month later he was still complaining about how the German leadership had not yet split Belgium in two. He's not talking about how the German military should expel the Allies from Belgium (because everyone in the Axis camp agreed on that), but about the legal future of Belgium (which they apparently still disagreed about).
I think we've got enough evidence to conclude the Reichsgau Flandern, Reichsgau Wallonien and District of Brussels were never formally established, let alone annexed by Nazi Germany, that they were all just plans that were never carried out, and that the 15 December 1944 date only refers to Van de Wiele's appointment as "Head of the Flemish Liberation Committee", which is not even close to being appointed Gauleiter of the Reichgau Flandern. Josef Grohé probably nominally remained Reichskommissar of Belgium and Northern France until 8 May 1945. And, since all three pages are mostly just WP:CONTENTFORKs of each other about political entities that were never actually established, I think it's appropriate to merge them all to Reichskommissariat of Belgium and Northern France. They are mostly unsourced anyway, and their existence as separate articles can only be misleading for our readers. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw ( talk) 10:05, 6 October 2022 (UTC)