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On 21 November 2021, it was proposed that this article be moved from Battle of Smolensk (1943) to Smolensk operation. The result of the discussion was moved. |
To-do:
I agree with Ghirla... fascinating stuff! + + Lar: t/ c 20:22, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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. Henry Flower 22:40, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
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)
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.
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)
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)
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.
lol.
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)
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)
I accept it now. Peace. Kurt.
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)
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)
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)
Would like to hear from the person who did the maps for this article-- Mrg3105 ( talk) 07:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
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)
Hello Yura, You deleted the following from the Battle of Smolensk with the comment "Delete soviet propaganda"
Russian sources: 200.000–250.000 casualties
[1]
That is not how Wikipedia works. Wikipedia tries for a NPOV, and that usually involves listing the opinions of both sides as long as they are reliable sources. If you believe that Zolatarev is not a reliable source, then you should explain the reasons for that belief.
We do not want to end up with an unbalanced Wikipedia that lists the views of only one side. NPOV is an important goal of Wikipedia, and without it Wikipedia's reputation will suffer. Your edits to Brusilov Offensive have created a rather absurd article that says in the introduction "Brusilov Offensive of 1916 the worst crisis of World War I for Austria-Hungary and the Triple Entente's greatest victory" yet lists Russian casualties as twice of Austria-Hungary and Germany. Numerous edits made by you to articles involving Russia seem to violate NPOV.
Best,
JS ( talk) 23:47, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
Second, I removed the introduction "Brusilov Offensive of 1916 the worst crisis of World War I for Austria-Hungary and the Triple Entente's greatest victory" by mistake. I just do not agree with the figures of losses.
all the best, Yura2404 ( talk) 01:41, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
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The result of the move request was: moved. Unopposed RM. ( non-admin closure) Colonestarrice ( talk) 18:30, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
Battle of Smolensk (1943) → Smolensk operation – The term "Battle of Smolensk" in reliable English language sources appears to refer exclusively (or almost exclusively) to the 1941 battle. Even searches like "Battle of Smolensk" "September 1943" return almost exclusively results where "Battle of Smolensk" refers to the 1941 battle. In contrast, "Smolensk operation" refers mostly to the 1943 operation with no results for the 1941 battle. This article already primarily uses the term "Smolensk operation" and the article subject is not a single battle but rather an entire offensive operation. From Google Scholar it appears that most sources lowercase "operation". ( t · c) buidhe 10:20, 21 November 2021 (UTC)— Relisting. Spekkios ( talk) 01:47, 29 November 2021 (UTC)— Relisting. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 14:34, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Smolensk operation 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 |
Smolensk operation is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on July 29, 2006. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
On 21 November 2021, it was proposed that this article be moved from Battle of Smolensk (1943) to Smolensk operation. The result of the discussion was moved. |
To-do:
I agree with Ghirla... fascinating stuff! + + Lar: t/ c 20:22, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
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)
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)
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. Henry Flower 22:40, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
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)
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.
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)
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)
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.
lol.
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)
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)
I accept it now. Peace. Kurt.
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)
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)
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)
Would like to hear from the person who did the maps for this article-- Mrg3105 ( talk) 07:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
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)
Hello Yura, You deleted the following from the Battle of Smolensk with the comment "Delete soviet propaganda"
Russian sources: 200.000–250.000 casualties
[1]
That is not how Wikipedia works. Wikipedia tries for a NPOV, and that usually involves listing the opinions of both sides as long as they are reliable sources. If you believe that Zolatarev is not a reliable source, then you should explain the reasons for that belief.
We do not want to end up with an unbalanced Wikipedia that lists the views of only one side. NPOV is an important goal of Wikipedia, and without it Wikipedia's reputation will suffer. Your edits to Brusilov Offensive have created a rather absurd article that says in the introduction "Brusilov Offensive of 1916 the worst crisis of World War I for Austria-Hungary and the Triple Entente's greatest victory" yet lists Russian casualties as twice of Austria-Hungary and Germany. Numerous edits made by you to articles involving Russia seem to violate NPOV.
Best,
JS ( talk) 23:47, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
Second, I removed the introduction "Brusilov Offensive of 1916 the worst crisis of World War I for Austria-Hungary and the Triple Entente's greatest victory" by mistake. I just do not agree with the figures of losses.
all the best, Yura2404 ( talk) 01:41, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
References
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Battle of Smolensk (1943). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 05:54, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved. Unopposed RM. ( non-admin closure) Colonestarrice ( talk) 18:30, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
Battle of Smolensk (1943) → Smolensk operation – The term "Battle of Smolensk" in reliable English language sources appears to refer exclusively (or almost exclusively) to the 1941 battle. Even searches like "Battle of Smolensk" "September 1943" return almost exclusively results where "Battle of Smolensk" refers to the 1941 battle. In contrast, "Smolensk operation" refers mostly to the 1943 operation with no results for the 1941 battle. This article already primarily uses the term "Smolensk operation" and the article subject is not a single battle but rather an entire offensive operation. From Google Scholar it appears that most sources lowercase "operation". ( t · c) buidhe 10:20, 21 November 2021 (UTC)— Relisting. Spekkios ( talk) 01:47, 29 November 2021 (UTC)— Relisting. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 14:34, 6 December 2021 (UTC)