Talk:Josef Selmayr

Dubious citations and even more dubious claims.

I have just removed a sentence which while weasel worded seemed to suggest Selmayr was innocent despite his conviction, and a link to Axis History Forum. For a start, Axis History Fourms is not a RS and it seems incredible anyone could think it was. Even if it was, the citation doesn't link to anything at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte and the poor quality photograph available could easily be a forgery. I have left the Nuremberg trials transcript as it is quite interesting but none of the information in the paragraph is actually referred to in it. I think we must assume the egregious Martin Selmayr, who is known to be something of a wiki warrior has again been trying to downplay his family's past, apparently on the assumption people hate him because they think he's a Nazi (which is doubly pointless as it isn't true so far as I know and in any case isn't the reason people hate him). The Irish Question (talk) 19:56, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Selmayr was not convicted of anything in Germany, or any other western country (as is, among other things, apparent from his later career). I've not heard of any convictions by communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe being recognised in western countries, which is not surprising, given their flagrant violations of the rule of law. I don't know whether he was guilty of anything, but a conviction in communist Yugoslavia, a country where rule of law didn't exist, isn't proof of that. --Tataral (talk) 08:55, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

In a related context, restored the deleted relation of his appearance as a "witness" at the Nuremberg Military Tribunal. Feel free to condense, though, but not simply delete. 195.62.68.228 (talk) 06:19, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Your proposed addition of highly WP:UNDUE intricate detail about some technicality relating to his name having been briefly mentioned in the context of someone else's trial doesn't belong in this article, and certainly not as the dominating part of it. It also doesn't add any information of value relating to Selmayr.

This is an article about a major figure in the history of the intelligence services of the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War who is not notable for anything else and who was a highly obscure, relatively low-ranking, non-public figure figure before 1955. Alas, the article is sometimes attacked by IP editors, typically from the economically struggling parts of the UK where UKIP receives the most votes, usually when British far-right newspapers like The Daily Express write fake news about his grandson. This is not an appropriate place to campaign against the EU. --Tataral (talk) 14:58, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

That last claim is demonstrably unfounded and off-topic. On topic, Selmayer was "only" a decorated colonel who got away at Nuremberg claiming that what he did in the war was either Hitler's or the Oberstleutnants' fault. Er hat es nicht gewußt — in railway jargon, we call that the "système parapluie". It's notable, lest we forget. 195.62.68.228 (talk) 05:58, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Your comments demonstrate why your "contributions" don't belong in this article. Selmayr wasn't even charged with anything "at Nuremberg" and has in fact nothing at all to do with "Nuremberg" other than the fact that some attorney apparently briefly mentioned his name once in someone else's trial. All the highly chauvinist British claims (most of which are simply and demonstrably fake news, that he was a "Nazi" [he was never a member of that party, and as is apparent from his memoirs he didn't even like Nazis], that he served directly on "Hitler's staff" [he didn't; pure invention; he never met the guy], that he "ruled Yugoslavia" [he didn't; the claim is bizarre; he was an obscure captain and a major most of the time, and didn't "rule Yugoslavia" any more than any random British captain or major "ruled Iraq" following the UK's illegal invasion of Iraq which is quite comparable to what the Germans were doing in Yugoslavia], and now that he "got away at Nuremberg" [he didn't]) about Josef Selmayr that have surfaced in certain British newspapers since his grandson's rise to prominence seem to originate in far-right extremist tabloid newspapers The Daily Express and The Daily Mail, neither of which are regarded as reliable sources on Wikipedia. Get yourself a blog or send a letter to the editor to express your opinion about Martin Selmayr and his family. This is not the place.

The only reason for this newfound British interest (among the UKIP types) in the founding Director of the Military Counterintelligence Service of the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War and key figure in the western intelligence community in the 1950s and 1960s seems to be far-right Brexit extremism where fake news about the grandfather is simply used to attack his grandson(!). It's telling that the British press showed no interest in him prior to about 2016. --Tataral (talk) 06:03, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm not paid to edit Wikipedia. The topic at hand is Josef Selmayr's role in World War Two — not Martin's relation with his grandfather or populism in Britain. 195.62.68.228 (talk) 05:55, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Ultimately, he was convicted, he was swnetenced. There is no evidence or information from an RS presented that the conviction was unsound. I also think it's pushing things a bit to say Yugoslavia in 1946 was a place 'where the rule of law wasn't respected' and this western/eastern split is overegged (there were Soviet judges at Nuremberg)! If such a claim is to be made, it needs to be properly sourced. It isn't. The Irish Question (talk) 21:29, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

In Tito's Yugoslavia, which was at the time a one-party dictatorship and "considered in its earliest years a model of communist [which here means Stalinist] orthodoxy" as our article describes the country, you could be convicted and receive a draconian sentence for receiving a letter from someone in a western country, for being a social democrat, or for no reason at all. The same was true in the many countries occupied by the Soviet Union in Central and Eastern Europe during the second half of the 1940s, where you could be sent to the Gulag for decades for such "crimes." Hence, we do not treat "convictions" by totalitarian regimes in an uncritical way because that would not be neutral or encyclopedic. There doesn't seem to be any solid sources dealing with his time in Yugoslavia other than his own memoirs. The claims about him in the Brexit press all originate in The Daily Express and The Daily Mail, neither of which are regarded by the Wikipedia community as reliable sources because they are both far-right, anti-immigrant, racist, sensationalist tabloid newspapers with a long history of spreading fake news. Since virtually every single other claim those newspapers made about him have been proven to be pure sensationalist fiction/fake news (such as him being directly involved with Hitler and so on), we need to treat any other claims they make with extreme caution. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, or Yugoslavia itself, no longer exists, and no country on the planet currently recognises any such conviction of him, least of all his own country. The fact that he was freed after about a year (instead of 15) after Yugoslavia abandoned its alliance with Stalin and sought a new relationship with the west is also quite telling; apparently the Yugoslav communists saw little reason to hold onto him and to carry out the sentence they had given him about a year earlier when the country's "courts" were still quite ardently stalinist. He was immediately employed by the CIA upon his return to the west. --Tataral (talk) 10:07, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Also, this is not about commie bashing, but about what is reliably known from Josef Selmayr's role in World War Two. 195.62.68.228 (talk) 05:55, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

This is all about communism. Selmayr was an expert on communism and communist states. It's only natural that he himself, as a key figure in counterintelligence during the Cold War, would himself be attacked by communists. His "role in World War Two" as a rather unknown career army officer who held the comparatively low ranks of captain and major most of the time is quite miniscule compared to his role in the Cold War. --Tataral (talk) 08:05, 20 February 2019 (UTC)