Talk:Battle of Višegrad

POV/sources issues

There is a serious POV and partisan source issue with this article. Firstly, there is no mention of the Chetnik massacre of 2,000 members of the Muslim population of Višegrad that occurred when the town was captured. The main sources are also highly partisan and pro-Chetnik. For example, Николић, Коста is not transliterated, and that is obviously to conceal from the general reader that the author is Kosta Nicolić, a co-author of the Serbian school textbooks which are filled with unverified and scientifically highly controversial claims, "whose goal was to adorn the glorification of the Chetnik commander Draža Mihailović with a scientific nimbus and who introduced their own “original” interpretations and “creative explications” of the past", according to Marko Škorić and Milivoj Bešlin in Filozofija i društvo per this and Dubravka Stojanović in Revisions of Second World War History in Serbia in Sabrina P. Ramet's Serbia and the Serbs in World War II (2011). Nicolić is unusable on Wikipedia due to highly revisionist and nationalistic views and departure from global scholarly history norms. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:30, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Further, another heavily cited source for this article is David Martin, whose paper is included into the book edited by David Charters & Maurice Tugwell, who is an advocate/lawyer not trained historian, and whose main goal was to exonerate Mihajlović and his Chetniks to which cause he devoted considerable effort and has written two books in attempt to do exactly that.--౪ Santa ౪^99° 16:44, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Santasa99:That is just one part of the article which you have removed. Learn to behave yourself and stop acting paranoid, like you did in your diff, considering that I have edited this article before. [1]

You have removed key information and sourced content. Explain what is "OR". It is your obligation. The version was stable.

Quoting "global scholarly history norms" means nothing, even less so if you are not a historian or can give us a link for those "global norms", which is just globalistic mindset, that is - POV. Sadkσ (talk is cheap) 18:40, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

There is nothing stable with an article tagged with multiple template messages, alerting both readers and editors that article is written from biased perspective based on highly prejudicial and partisan sources - which is, then, elaborated by editor Peacemaker here on TP - that describes and present historical event through revisionist lens. The article explains nothing about the circumstances, it outright paints Chetniks as resistance and ant-fascist movement, it misrepresents them as "allies" by misrepresenting mission as "allied forces", not to mention that it does not say a word about the fact that mission actually wasn't anything special and specifically Chetniks oriented, that it was a mission which included one group of officers embedded with Partisans and another with Mihajlović's Chetniks; the article says nothing about the the attack on Višegrad being also attack on its Muslim civilian community, which was wiped out. The article tagged as this one, and its state clearly explained on TP by Peacemaker, who is, by the way, editor well-versed in Balkans WWII history and historiography, is not a "stable", instead it invites editors to fix it.--౪ Santa ౪^99° 20:42, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps @Peacemaker67: can chime in as he had opened this discussion? OyMosby (talk) 00:22, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

That is not true, the article has its problems but abusing WP:STABLE like this means nothing. Just before there are issues doesn't mean you can nuke articles to be per your POV, like you did with figures of civilian victims, which is just an example of the abuse done on this article, which is even less okay because the editor who made the article is not able to respond.

Puffery and loud noises aside, you have removed sourced content and attempted to marginalize the article and the meaning of this and other related operations led by Chetniks (some people, generally speaking, can't see nothing but the civil victims massacred by the group, which is not how history works), which can only be attributed to one's ideology. It seems that nothing is usable as a source when it comes to Allied operations led by the Chetniks. Information about massacre/s, which are not disputed, can be mentioned in a few sentences, but going into details is WP:UNDUE, just like with any article. Sadkσ (talk is cheap) 19:34, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Attempts to remove every mention of Axis and Allies as well (which Chetniks de jure and from time to time de facto were, no matter who likes it or not) is just simply - sad POV pushing and disruptive editing, which would not be the first time. Sadkσ (talk is cheap) 19:34, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

You are really pushing your luck with this kind of insinuations and accusations.--౪ Santa ౪^99° 22:08, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Not at all. 1) Civilian victims who died during the fighting should not be the part of the infobox in this manner, that is not the practice, as far as I know and I did not see that to be the case on other related articles, even loss so placed in this column. 2) Tag-bombing the article is not looking good, even less because it was not explained in details - and it was disputed on the talk page. 3) Why were the members of the British and American mission removed from the infobox and their very real role (which just shows that the battle can be seen as a battle led by Allies) squashed via disputed POV (in my book) edits? 4) How is it possible that information about local Serb civilian involvement was left out? Such cases should be praised, not left out. It is absolutely important and on-topic and it shows how complicated WWII was, which was one of the point I was trying to make. Sadkσ (talk is cheap) 23:55, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Aftermath

The BBC credited communist forces of Yugoslav Partisans for the successful anti-Axis campaign of Chetniks in Višegrad. The BBC did not make any corrections although the people and institutions who protested because of this misinformation included Kenneth Pickthorn and officials of Yugoslav government in exile in London. After the capture of Višegrad, the Chetniks also captured Rogatica on 14 and 15 October and killed more than 200 of the enemy. The BBC again credited communist forces with this success.

• This information's are according to BBC and they are WP:PRIMARY information's. I suggest deleting this information's from the article because information's of some radio in time of WWII are not reliable information's. Mikola22 (talk) 08:57, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Mattingly as a source

Mattingly is hardly a reliable source. This is an internal paper produced in 1979 by a Marine officer of the rank of major at the time who was a student at a course at Quantico, which was published by the Marine Corps a decade later to make it more widely available. It uses very limited sources on Yugoslavia (of the key texts you would expect to see used in 1979, only Roberts is used, despite the fact that Quantico surely had a copy of Tomasevich's 1975 book at the time), and he fails to mention the massacre of Muslim civilians that followed this attack. He used Mansfield extensively, depsite the fact that Tomasevich is scathing of Mansfield lack of understanding of the background to the Chetniks or their wartime policies. A few pages after Mattingly's laudatory description of the battle and the "foul play" of the Partisans claimed by the Chetniks, he mentions that OSS operatives Seitz and Mansfield went on a tour of inspection of Chetnik units in November 1943, and got the impression that the Chetniks controlled large swathes of territory. Of course, at this time there were two collaboration agreements between the Germans and Chetniks in operation (explained in full in Tomasevich, but also outlined in Roberts - although not mentioned by Mattingly), and the Germans were supplying the Chetniks with ammunition. So it is hardly surprising the Germans left them to their own devices. Mattingly has not held up well over time and was clearly dated and less than a fulsome account when it was written, partly due to the limited sources used. It is also very general, being about all Marines who served with the OSS, so its examination of this battle is by necessity brief and cursory. It is extremely limited as a source for this battle, and should not be used for this article. I will shortly begin removing all material sourced to it. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:59, 28 August 2022 (UTC)