Talk:Helmuth Groscurth

Imprecisions

This article suffers from a couple of imprecise statements and references.

• Take the chapter Chief of the Abteilung Heerwesen zbV as an example. Riebling does not support the claim that Groscurth "acted as the handler for Josef Müller's covert mission to the Vatican" (emphasis added). Riebling speaks of handlers (plural) and Hoffmann names Oster, Canaris and Dohnanyi as the ones who comissioned Müller's trip to Rome (p. 159). I do not think that Riebling's brief summary of Groscurth's career, which has been used for the article, is very instructive. Groscurth's involvement in planned assassinations of Hitler, e.g., is dealt with at length by Hoffmann (and notably by Klaus-Jürgen Müller, but his works apparently are not available in English). Why is the more detailed account not being used? It is also claimed that "Groscurth was active in maintaining communications between the anti-Hitler elements in Germany and the Chamberlain government. These communications attempted to create a deal with the British to ensure the Allies would not attack Germany if Hitler could be deposed." I do not find this information at History of the German Resistance, 1933-1945 by Peter Hoffmann, p. 151 On p. 154, however, Hoffmann discusses the contact between the German opposition and the British government established through Theo Kordt and Philip Conwell Evans, whereas on p. 151 he not only speaks about Himmler's decree of 28 October 1939, but Hoffmann also ties these complaints to the news about mass shootings in Poland.
• "Some reports assert that Groscurth was subsequently beaten." Noone asserts such a thing. Besides, notes like Heer, Hans; Naumann, Klaus (1995). War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II. Hamburg: Hamburger. ISBN 3-930908-04-2. are useless and misleading. Hannes (!) Heer and Naumann merely edited this volume entitled Vernichtungskrieg and published by the "Hamburger Edition". It's a collection of essays. War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II. is the title of the English version published by Berghahn books in 2000. The page numbers refer to whole chapters from the German edition. It should be either way, English or German edition, but consistent.
• Some claims are extraordinary. See the paragraph dealing with Heydrich and Henlein, for example. Only the information concerning Hippel is found with Höhne. I found something close to that in Callum MacDonald's The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich (1989), who argues: "Henlein had played too great a role in Nazi propaganda to be physically eliminated...", (p. 58) "murdering or imprisoning many of his friends and allies" But who was killed? Until early 1939 Henlein even acted from a position and strength and managed to prevent Rudolf Jung and Hans Krebs from becoming members of the Reichstag. The purge of those SdP-politicians who were associated with the Kameradschaftsbund is not to be confused with the terror exerted by the SS against Socialists and other "enemies" after the occupation. A case study is Volker Zimmernann: Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat (1999). You may want to take a look at The Sudeten problem, 1933-1938: Volkstumspolitik and the formulation of Nazi foreign policy (1975), by Ronald Smelser.
• Another extraordinary claim is Groscurth's and Strecker's final communication from Stalingrad. It is alledged that "the signal was changed before reaching Hitler himself". Literature has it that the last message indeed ended with "Long live the Führer! Long live Germany! Strecker" See also the external link. Thus an imprecise reference like Beevor 1999 without page number is not enough. It would also be interesting to learn of Beevor's source: I would suspect it to be Karl Strecker's post-war memoir. Such a claim should be attributed to its source.--Assayer (talk) 01:32, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Awesome! Thanks for combing through all of that. I'll sit down and see what can be clarified or rectified when I'm home. LargelyRecyclable (talk) 01:35, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Assayer, I'm back; sorry for the delay, life has been demanding of my time. I'll going over these now, some of the books are not available online and I no longer physically have and may have to reacquire them. You mentioned "some" extraordinary claims but only listed two. Is there anything else that jumped out at you I can look at? I'd like to get it all in one sweep. Thanks again. LargelyRecyclable (talk) 00:06, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

General staff of one

...he became the General Staff Officer for the 295th Infantry Division.

So the division only had a single general staff officer?2A02:AA1:1617:D7B3:F428:45F:F6B:1B72 (talk) 00:53, 6 January 2022 (UTC)