Talk:Polttoainehankinta/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Fritzmann2002 (talk · contribs) 01:13, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

This looks like a very interesting article! I'll be tackling this over the next couple days. Hopefully I can finish by this Thursday, but if not expect the review to be done by next week at the latest (I am doing some travel soon that will take me away from my computer). Very Respectfully, Fritzmann (message me) 01:13, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Prose

• "From Finland's independence to the start of World War II..." two questions here, when was Finland's independence (not common knowledge), and did that focus stop at World War II? It would seem that during the Winter War the Finns would have still been organized around repulsing the Soviet Union.

• Added year of independence. W/r/t the second question, I don't think any planning of this type would have been going on during the wars, and the interwar period was probably too short for any meaningful planning either. I've made the language a bit more open re: the exact end date.

• Are there any articles about the Aland dispute that could be linked to for more context?

•  Done Wikilinked Åland Islands dispute

• "Finland sought to exit the war in 1944, following the Soviet Vyborg–Petrozavodsk offensive." Was this because of an unfavorable outcome during the offensive, or was the end of the offensive just incidental to Finland wanting to leave the war?

• It's a bit complicated. The offensive was stopped, so attributing the exit to it solely would not be quite correct. On the other hand, it did show how precarious the Finnish situation truly was. IIRC, the Finnish leadership essentially thought "if we sue for peace now, the Soviet Union will have their hands full with Germany and we might retain independence. If we wait until Germans exit the war, there's no reason for the Soviet Union to not fully occupy/annex Finland." This feels like a case of either leaving the level of detail as-is, or writing quite a bit more.

• "but German operations in northern Finland continued" perhaps mention before this that Germany had stationed troops in Finland

•  Done

• "but no official treaty stating thus was ever signed" doesn't sound quite right, maybe this or such

•  Done

• "Finland was entered by the Allied Control Commission" is passive and could be restructured. Also, a mention of what the ACC is would be helpful.

• Fixed the language (I think), I'll see about finding a good source for a bit more info.

•  Done, with a small snippet describing ACC's role.

• The sentence starting "The subsequent Paris Peace Treaty..." is run-on and should be split

•  Done

• "According to Tynkkynen and Jouko," who? A mention of their profession (I assume Finnish historians) would fit here

•  Done, both are professors of (military) history.

• The last two sentences about the armaments requirement are quite clunky. I feel that they could be condensed and the idea about not having to de-arm could be conveyed more simply without as much background. Also, did that mean that Finland could keep its torpedo boats, subs, etc. or just the armaments for its forces to be mobilized?

• The distinction here is that torpedo boats and subs are banned completely with subs are scrapped or sold and torpedo boats turned into gunboats (just don't look in that warehouse full of "training torpedoes"). The bigger deal was that Finns couldn't even keep small arms, artillery and other such technically "allowed" equipment other than those needed by the 42k men. Can't mobilize to 200k men if you only have 40k rifles. I rephrased this a bit; hopefully clearer now?

• "...would then bring the army to its full strength." Of how many men/regiments?

• I don't think the sources say, but I'll check. My hunch is not even the Finns are quite sure so quickly after the war.

•  Done - Best I could find is that the post-winter war mobilization plans were to be reused, and that the army was 15 divisions at the end of continuation war.

• "Planning activities were, however, ordered to be stopped" by whom? Finnish officials, Soviets, or perhaps someone else? What allowed them to resume?

• Clarified a bit, but I'll check a few more sources if they have more info.

•  Done

• "Finnish forces would also enter the demilitarized Åland, and the Finnish Navy would lay naval mines." This is a little confusing. Did the Finnish forces do these things at that time, or did the plans just call for these actions once a conflict broke out?

• Just planning; rephrased a bit. I don't think the sources explicitly state this, but my feeling is that this configuration was meant for a situation where tensions are rising, but the conflict has not yet broken out. There wouldn't be much point sticking to the treaty limitations if someone crossed the border.

• "The planning proceeded based on a division of Finland into five – quickly reduced to four by joining the Uusimaa Area of Responsibility to the Southwestern Area of Responsibility – areas of responsibility" is rather difficult to parse

•  Done

• "and that neither the Finnish Ministry of Defence nor even the president of the republic were automatically notified about them", referring to the operational plan as a whole? Clarification would be beneficial

• Better now? The source says The plans were known only to the minimum number of people necessary for their elaboration and were not automatically communicated even to the Ministry of Defence and the President, although the latter was probably informed of them from time to time

• "Southern Area of Responsibility" I don't think it was mentioned that the union of Uusima and the Southwestern areas was renamed the Southern area

•  Done

• For the table, perhaps using a note to discuss the number configuration and then shortening the title would make it more easy to read

• I'd prefer to avoid notes for the benefit of those reading on mobile, but I'll see if I can figure out something a bit nicer looking.

• The last two sentences of the Air Force section both start "According to Tynkkynen and Jouko." Perhaps there is a more engaging way to construct these claims

•  Done

• Same input for the naval table

• See above.

• Is there any other modern commentary on Polttoainehankinta? I notice that this article seems to rely extremely heavily on Tynkkynen and Jouko, and I worry that there might be other historical perspectives on the plan that are not represented here.

• There are works that discuss individual aspects of the plans (such as Åland, or the capital of Helsinki), but I'm not aware of anyone else having written about the plans as a whole. I can look for more, but I doubt I'll find much useful for this overview.

• Do we know any of the substance of the Soviet-facing planning? Or is all of it lost because they didn't write much of it down?

• There's a rather excellent 2017 thesis by Ilkka Tuomisto about the planning efforts undertaken by the 3rd Division, which was on the Soviet border. Tuomisto claims that Polttoainehankinta (and the followup Valpuri) were both "political cover stories", and that whatever 3rd Division was doing was the actually important planning in even greater secrecy. The problem is that the thesis (from National Defence University) is only a masters-thesis equivalent, which then runs head-first into WP:SCHOLARSHIP :( A few newspapers picked up on the thesis when it was published, but citing the newspapers doesn't quite feel right either. I'll look for more, but that's all I've found so far.

• What are the lasting legacies of the plan? How did it affect later planning and Finnish military thinking? I feel that if there is any information on the after-effects that would warrant its own section

• This is a bit tricky. For one, more recent plans (beyond Valpuri) are still secret so we don't know how similar they are. Based on what I've read, my hunch is that following Polttoainehankinta and Valpuri, the plans were again much more openly Soviet-facing. If Tuomisto was right (see above), and I think he is, then the lasting legacy is probably more along the lines of "well, that was an useful politics-driven exercise. Good thing we can get to real planning now." But that's not exactly something I can cite to anyone.

• Is there any meaning behind the name Polttoainehankinta or was it an entirely random codename?

• No source gives any meaning, and the follow-up Valpuri seems completely unrelated name-wise. I'd imagine it was chosen as to not raise suspicion if seen or heard somewhere ("we need to have a meeting about fuel procurement" sounds rather more benign than "we need to have a meeting about Operation Thunder Run" or something like that), but nothing to that effect is said explicitly by the sources.

References

• Earwig gives maximum similarity of 11% with no issues.
• Most references are either Finnish language sources, offline, or paywalled. I assume good faith on these sources and have spotchecked those I can:
  •  Done Palokangas 2015
  •  Done Tynkkynen & Jouko 2007, most heavily used source, a check of the citations of pp 7, 9, 42, 45, 48 shows it is used accurately.
  •  Done Ziemke 1959 is an older source but I see no issues with it.

Summary

I think that after some editing the article will be ready for GA. Broadness is my major concern at the moment; it seems like there may be some unaddressed perspectives from other modern historians on the plan, and there are a few parts of the content that I think could stand to be expanded. I will leave some time for the prose and content critiques to be addressed, and will then wrap up with the references and verifiability spot-checks. If you wouldn't mind, please respond to each bullet point with changes made or questions, and strike them through once they are addressed. Fritzmann (message me) 13:40, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

@Fritzmann2002: Thanks for the review! I'll look these over in the next few days and reply to each point separately above. Ljleppan (talk) 22:08, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

@Fritzmann2002: I've made a bunch of modification to the article. See responses above. I'm moving to a new apartment this coming weekend, so this might run over to early next week, but I hope to do a bit more tomorrow. Ljleppan (talk) 10:27, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Looks great so far. I will also be travelling this weekend, so I will go over the changes more thoroughly and hopefully finish the review this upcoming Monday. Thank you for your in-depth and thought out responses! Fritzmann (message me) 13:28, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I can't spotcheck most of the references, but I have done those I can and I will assume good faith on all the others. I'm very happy with the changes that have been made so far; when there was a question I asked that you couldn't incorporate you gave very valid reasoning on why. I think that all of the things I have pointed out have been addressed; unless you have any other questions for me I feel pretty good about passing this one today. Fritzmann (message me) 12:38, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

@Fritzmann2002 no objection from me. Thanks for the nice review so far, let me know if you notice anything last-minute you'd want me to address. Ljleppan (talk) 16:57, 28 August 2023 (UTC)