Talk:World War II casualties/Archives/2009/June

This is not an article about casualties. This is an article about deaths.

This is not an article about casualties. This is an article about deaths. It should either be retitled or expanded to include all casualties. -Oreo Priest ^talk 19:46, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Read the article, there is information provided in the Notes and Footnotes on wounded if it is avaliable.--Woogie10w (talk) 19:56, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

True, but it should be given more prominence. Most of the article pretends that casualties and deaths are equivalent. For example, the section "Casualties by alliance" only includes figures about deaths. And again, the main table in the article contains only deaths, going so far as to say Military casualties include battle deaths (KIA) and personnel missing in action (MIA), as well as fatalities due to accidents, disease and deaths of prisoners of war in captivity. Civilian casualties include deaths caused by strategic bombing, Nazi persecution, Japanese war crimes, population transfers in the Soviet Union, Allied war crimes and deaths due to war related famine and disease. , even though casualties clearly include the wounded. Thoughts? -Oreo Priest ^talk 15:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

The data for the number of wounded is not available for many countries, what we do have is listed in the footnotes/notes. The fine tuning of the data that you want to see is just not available.--Woogie10w (talk) 16:07, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

That may be, and that's a very understandable limitation. What we can do, is stop using the terms interchangeably and say dead or dead + missing when that's what's being shown, instead of referring to casualties. -Oreo Priest ^talk 16:26, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

The main table refers to Human Losses which covers both dead & missing and presumed dead--Woogie10w (talk) 16:47, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

"The following chart gives data on the casualties suffered by each country, along with population information to show the relative impact of losses." It then proceeds to list data on deaths. All I'm saying is that we should reword it. -Oreo Priest ^talk 17:13, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

No, most of the deaths are actually missing, a demographic computation of the population losses. Dead and missing mean the same thing in this case.--Woogie10w (talk) 18:21, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, but they are still distinct from the larger category of casualties. -Oreo Priest ^talk 19:11, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Our sources refer to war deaths which include confirmed dead and the missing and presumed dead. In the case of Germany, the USSR, Poland and China there are no central registries with the names of the dead. There are 3 million confirmed Holocaust dead and over 2 million others who have not been named. In Germany the number of missing is about 1/2 the total deaths, in Germany there were no records kept of the dead in 1945. Historians treat the confirmed dead and missing and presumed dead as the same category.--Woogie10w (talk) 19:18, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

That's fine. But the point is that casualties is not the same thing as dead or dead + missing. It includes at the very least the injured as well. That's why I'm saying it should be reworded. -Oreo Priest ^talk 20:09, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

It should stay as is, information on wounded is in fact included when it is available--Woogie10w (talk) 20:14, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, we should still reword the sections where it simply doesn't include information on the wounded. We can still say the article is about casualties, but in sections where all that is presented is dead and missing, we shouldn't say "these are the casualties". -Oreo Priest ^talk 16:33, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

That would be OR. We present what the sources actually say. The sources for Yugoslavia do not list or mention wounded. We report per our sources, not per our POV. You are looking for information that does not exist.--Woogie10w (talk) 16:52, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Also the definition of wounded is tricky. Each country reported casualties differently, some would have included only those evacuated from the battlefield, also men could have been wounded more than once and returned to units. The statistic for wounded does not include injured civilians. We can only report per our sources, nitpicking and hairsplitting should not be our goal when editing this article. The statistics for wounded in secondary sources are incomplete and not directly comparable for the various nations, to post such incomplete data on the table would be highly misleading for readers--Woogie10w (talk) 17:03, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

For example we know how many people die of the swine flu, how many people have had it? Millions are not in the statistics but have had it.--Woogie10w (talk) 17:14, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Once again we appear to be talking past one another. You say that there aren't reliable statistics on the wounded, that national definitions on wounded, etc. vary, and that where there is information, it is included. You are correct, and I understand that. What I'm saying is that in certain sections, it says "what follows is a list of casualties" and then proceeds to list only dead or only dead + missing. I'm saying we should just reword those sections to say "what follows is a list of deaths." Fine by you? -Oreo Priest ^talk 22:42, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

No, that is not necessary. That would make the article look rather odd, the readers will see that wounded are not given. It would be so unprofessional to say the least!!--Woogie10w (talk) 22:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

That's exactly the point. We absolutely should not be sweeping under the carpet the fact that what we say are casualties are just deaths. If good stats for the wounded don't exist, which I trust you about, then we should say so directly in the prose. -Oreo Priest ^talk 05:53, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The readers should see what the sources are saying, not our commentary. Our POVs ( ie two cents) don't count on Wikipedia.--Woogie10w (talk) 22:59, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not a POV that casualties is more than just dead + missing. It's a fact. The sources present deaths as deaths, so we should do the same. -Oreo Priest ^talk 05:53, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I went to my bookshelf to check the standard sources for wounded
Per Clodfelter
France- 390,000
Poland- 766,606
Japan-326,000
Italy-225,000
Belgium-55,513
Per Ellis
France- 335,000
Poland- 146,700
Japan-94,000
Italy??
Belgium-15,900
This is just a sample of how divergent the data is regarding the wounded. Look at Italy the dead were 306,000. The wounded should always be a larger number. The data is obviously incomplete and not worth posting--Woogie10w (talk) 23:28, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

At this point, I'm just going to be bold and change the wording in certain places. If you find certain sections objectionable, then say why here, but if the stalemate continues, we may have to seek a third party. -Oreo Priest ^talk 05:53, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've done it, so take a look, tell me what you think. -Oreo Priest ^talk 06:04, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I see you've reworded some of my rewording but left other parts intact. I'm happy with the current version if you are. -Oreo Priest ^talk 18:27, 15 June 2009 (UTC)