Talk:188th Reserve Mountain Division (Wehrmacht)

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Why is the abbreviation 'Nr.' used here? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:54, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's for German Nummer, "number", the description of a class of paper divisions that had headquarters but usually no assets. Thanks for calling attention to this; I need to find a clean way to explain it in all the articles. There's a definition at Glossary of WWII German military terms#N and at List of German divisions in WWII#Types of division in the series, but if I link to them people will have to search down a list to find it. It might be easiest to link to an article that defines it, but there doesn't seem to be much to write in such an article, and I don't think we're supposed to create articles that are just dictionary entries. For now I'll just define it in each article about this kind of division (there aren't many yet), but other suggestions are welcome. — B.Bryant 09:11, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'd assumed that that was the case, but as the rest of the title is in English, should the abbreviation be in German? After all, the new name is given as the '188th Mountain Division', and this is one of only two articles that use the German abbreviation. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:22, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm really struggling with that issue. I've been trying to browbeat various people into using English-style names for German units, such as "1st Mountain Division" instead of 1. Gebirgsdivision. However, things get complicated really quickly. For example, no one writing in English would say "1st Tank Division" instead of "1st Panzer Division". But then the issue of where to draw the line arises, and in difficult cases I'm trying to be guided by the traditions of the English literature on WWII. "15th Panzergrenadier Division" sounds familiar to me, and "15th Tank-Grenadier" or the less literal "15th Tank- Heavy Infantry" seem really perverse. Likewise, "578th Volksgrenadier Division" sounds fine, and the literal "578th People's Grenadier" not only sounds perverse, but may be misleading to English speakers who are accustomed to seeing "People's" in reference to Communist propagandistic terms for institutions that were supposedly "of, by, and for the people" rather than the nationalistic sense of German Volk which seems to be the meaning here. Or course, Panzergrenadier and Volksgrenadier will be unfamiliar to the average English reader who has not read much about WWII, but fortunately those topics (unlike Nr., IMO) merit an article that can be linked to for an explanation. But then what do we do with 1st Volksgebirgs Division, a late designation for the 1st Mountain Division? I left it as is because the translation "People's Mountain Division" has the semantic pitfall described above, but I'm not very happy about leaving it untranslated because only one division bore that name, and it won't be familiar to a lot of people who are familiar with things like Volksgrenadier. And there are lots of other awkward cases, such as the 7th Flieger Division, the varying use of Gebirgs vs. Gebirgsjäger within the series of mountain divisions and of Waffen-SS Division vs. Division der Waffen-SS within the SS divisions, English-language usage of Jäger vs. Jaeger vs. Jager, etc. It has really become a big pain deciding how to handle this stuff.

At any rate, I've always seen this class of division listed as "Nr." or "Nummer" in English-language literature, so that's what I went with. Perhaps I should use "Division #188" or "188th Division" instead... though it's going to require some explanation in any case.

Several people (reasonably, IMO) want to include the German names in addition to the English-ized ones, and I've been intending to start a discussion somewhere to solicit opinions on how this should be done. Right now I'm leaning toward putting them in the "alias list" that I've been putting at the top of these articles, with the English form left-justified and the German form right-justified, if Wiki supports right-justification. However, even my alias list is strictly speaking out of spec for Wikipedia, though I think it's essential for keeping readers from being confused as to why their click on e.g. 116th Panzer Division redirected them to German 16th Infantry Division. (Maybe I was wrong to try to put all the "aliases" for a division into a single article, but when working with the cites I'm using as references, which generally split them up into one article per name, I find it very annoying when some of the names/articles are missing or not linked. I was hoping to make it easy for a reader to see everthing about "a division" at one article, though this is proving almost as problematic as the translations.)

OK, sorry for the long-winded response; I've been thinking about this stuff for a couple of weeks now. Regarding discussions of standards for this stuff, I was thinking about starting one at Talk:List of German divisions in WWII, but we probably ought to do it somewhere where people working with other nations' units will see it and participate, since the same sort of problems surely exist for them as well. Let me know if you have a suggestion for where to start the discussion, because I was going to start it when I finish one of the series at List of German divisions in WWII (either the mountain divisions or the panzer series, which should be complete in a few days), since that should provied enough examples to illustrate the scope of the problem. — B.Bryant 10:08, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You could start a discussion (at Talk:List of German divisions in WWII, or Wikipedia:Naming conventions/WWII military units, even User:Bobby D. Bryant/Naming conventions), and leave a note on the main relevant Talk pages and on Wikipedia:Naming conventions letting people know what you're doing and where. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:12, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the tips... there's always more stuff on Wiki that I don't know exists. I think I'll skim some 'reputable' English-language books about WWII and build a big list of relevant examples, so that when the discussion starts maybe we can focus on inducing rules from the 'reputable' examples rather than everyone just arguing in favor of their own opinion. — B.Bryant

WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008

Article reassessed and graded as stub. --dashiellx (talk) 19:16, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Recent edit

Preserving here by providing this link; my rationale was: "non RS; excessive and unneeded orbat; unneed / uncited explanatory note". --K.e.coffman (talk) 03:45, 5 December 2018 (UTC)