Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Wehrmacht forces for the Ardennes Offensive

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Wehrmacht forces for the Ardennes Offensive

Promoted by The ed17 [1]

Nominator(s): Catalan (talk)

After a very long hiatus from Wikipedia (and one I intend to continue to one degree or another), I want to re-submit this article to an A-class review. My intention is to take this article all the way through to Featured Article candidacy. The prior review can be found here. The major issue, as brought up by Nick-D, was with guideline A4. I took the liberty to break some of the paragraphs up, and I did some minor copyedit work. Also, I have yet to incorporate Belhalla's suggestions, although this will be done in the coming minutes.

Thank you for your time. JonCatalán^(Talk) 20:05, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Comments

• I'm going to unbold "Wehrmacht forces for the Ardennes Offensive" per WP:LEAD's recommendations on descriptive titles, and because that's my best guess for what they'll want at FAC, but feel free to revert, some people would bold it. - Dank (push to talk) 03:06, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
• I did some editing to the lead, but I'm not really comfortable copyediting the rest of the article because I don't know much about the subject. Best of luck. - Dank (push to talk) 03:35, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

• Support My comments from the previous ACR are now addressed, and I think that this meets the criteria - great work. I'd suggest working in a (prominent) link to Battle of the Bulge order of battle though. You could also add either or both of the two relevant maps from the US Army official history (which is public domain) - they're here and here and show German unit boundaries and the relevant major terrain features (both maps are also used in the Battle of the Bulge article so they don't need to be uploaded). Nick-D (talk) 11:09, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. One of the maps (the larger one) was added, replacing the photographs of the Tiger II and Van der Heydte, and I added a link to the order of battle as a 'see also'. JonCatalán^(Talk) 15:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Comments

• This isn't quite what I expected, what's your intent for this article?
• Forty is unreliable regarding a lot of German, especially Waffen-SS, unit names. Cross reference them with the OB list which is accurate on first viewing. Dupuy is also good for that sort of thing. I'm also leery of Cross; I'd want to validate his figures for German AFV totals. Check Dupuy for those numbers as well. The best book for that is Nevenkin's Fire Brigades that I'm aware of, but I understand it might be a bit hard to get for you at this point.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:35, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I wrote this article in the beginning of last year (2009), and my intention was to write a similar one for the Western Allies, and then work on the order of battle page (as a general overview of both sides' forces, with each of the detailed articles being main articles for the respective sides). It was all part of a big plan to work on all the Battle of the Bulge related articles. I'm no longer interested in carrying it that far, and just want to see how far this article can go (the original intention was to see if I could get back interested in Wikipedia).

Comparing my article with the order of battle, all the names seem fine (which is not shocking, knowing that Forty's book is largely a consolidation of research conducted by other authors—Forty does little scholarship of his own in this book). It is not as detailed, but I'm sure that's expected (in large part, this is why I wanted to tie it in with the order of battle and why I link to the order of battle).

Well, I can tell you that there was never a 3rd SS Panzer Grenadier Battalion, nor a 560th SS Heavy Panzer Battalion. It's also worth noting that Pz-Lehr, 1st and 12th SS-Pz Divisions were missing a full battalion from their panzer regiments which is why some of the independent units were attached in their place.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:18, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Regarding Cross, the claim in question I'm guessing is, "Some lacked winter clothing, and standard panzer divisions could count on only 100 tanks apiece." Just to clarify, Cross is not talking about Waffen-SS Panzer divisions. As far as I know, Dupuy doesn't provide this figure. He writes, however, "Several of the units committed to the offensive went into action without their full complement, and parts of other divisions (including both the 2nd SS and 9th SS Panzer) had only been in position for a matter of hours when the offensive began." He later writes, "Even with their b est efforts, the Germans were unable to commit to the offensive the force levels called for in the original plan... Even if those forces had been available, adding perhaps another 400 tanks and assault guns...".JonCatalán^(Talk) 17:38, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

• Comments:
  • there are no dab links (no action required);
  • there are no ext links for the ext link checker tool to check (no action required);
  • the ref checker tool found no errors (no action required);
  • images seem appropriately licenced to me (no action required);
  • alt text could be added to the images per WP:ALT, although it is not a requirement (suggestion);
  • the image in the lead looks a little big to me as it is dominating the text, I think it would work better if it were 250px (suggestion);
  • the article seems generally fine to me, but I don't have specific knowledge of the subject. In this regard, can I ask what has been done to address Sturmvogel's comments? AustralianRupert (talk) 07:29, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
  • There's a clarification needed tag in the Mobilization section. Can this be dealt with please? AustralianRupert (talk) 13:11, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
• Support: as I don't think my one comment is a war stopper at this late date and the article is generally fine, IMO, although I don't have expert knowledge. AustralianRupert (talk) 13:19, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Yea, I'm not sure how I can clarify that sentence more. Nevermind, I see the explanation. JonCatalán^(Talk) 15:29, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I deleted the sentence altogether, because I can't find a number from a reliable source on the ideal strength of a panzer division in late-1944. JonCatalán^(Talk) 15:40, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

• Support It checks out fine even if the images might be a bit large. I wouldn't bother fixing that though because there really isn't aanything detrimental about having large images that depict what they do. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:10, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.