Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Hitler's prophecy

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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Article promoted by Zawed (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 08:20, 15 October 2020 (UTC) « Return to A-Class review list

Hitler's prophecy

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Nominator(s): Buidhe (talk)

Hitler's prophecy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

• Featured article candidates/Hitler's prophecy/archive1

This article is about the most notorious phrase from Hitler's speeches: "If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." This threat/prophecy was repeated in speeches, printed on posters and in newspapers, and cited as a reason why Germans ought to have known what was going on. I'd like to thank Ian Rose for the GA review and Tenryuu for the copyedit. (t · c) buidhe 19:24, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Support by Nick-D

I'm surprised that there have been no takers for this review so far. I'll kick things off with the following comments:

• Please provide an English translation of the lead image
  • Moved out of note
• "leading to the systematic mass murder of Jews" - this began with the invasion of Poland
  • Changed to "accelerating"
• The background section should discuss the intensification of the anti-Jewish agenda from the Nazi seizure of power - regardless of what Hitler did or didn't say, Jews were all but marginalised from most of German public life by 1939 with many having been murdered, injured or bankrupted due to the regime.
  • Added some background info
• The 'Timing of the war' section seems out of place
  • Moved the material elsewhere
• "Hitler was willing to authorize harsher measures against Jews in Germany because he knew of the mass shootings of Jews in the occupied Soviet Union" - this reads oddly given that he'd ordered them.
  • The source states, "In the course of the discussion Hitler also told Goebbels that his prophecy of 30 January 1939 that a new world war would end in the ‘annihilation’ of the European Jews was now becoming true during these weeks and months with a certainty that was almost uncanny. For ‘the Jews in the East must pay the bill; in Germany they have already paid part of it and in the future they will have to pay more.’ This statement makes it clear that, under the impression of the mass murder in the occupied eastern territories, Hitler was now prepared to take a tougher line with the Jews in Germany itself. His ‘global war against the Jews’ was not simply a propaganda fantasy; it was increasingly becoming reality." I added some info from an earlier page number where it says that Hitler issued orders relating to shooting Jews.
• I'd suggest making it clearer in the 'Hitler's role in the Holocaust' section that there's consensus among historians that Hitler ordered the Holocaust and monitored its implementation, but did not issue written directives on the topic.
  • Added
• "After the war, Germans claimed ignorance of the Nazi regime's crime" - surely this should be "many Germans" or similar given that there were different views?
  • Done
• Did the 'prophecy' have any impact on the domestic opposition and resistance to Hitler? Evans (for instance) stresses through his trilogy on Nazi Germany that the regime was not genuinely popular with the public for most of its existence, and presumably anti-Nazi Germans were horrified by it. Nick-D (talk) 07:11, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
  • An interesting question, unfortunately I was unable to find any answer in reliable sources. Thanks very much for your review. (t · c) buidhe 11:53, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Support My comments are now all addressed. It's good to see such a comprehensive and broad-ranging article on this important topic. Nick-D (talk) 05:20, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Comments from Harrias (abstain)

Okay, this is a bit of an epic, so I'll probably end up reviewing in sections, or suchlike.

• Thanks so much for your feedback! (t · c) buidhe 22:55, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Background

• "According to historian Ian Kershaw, upon Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler seizure of power.." Need an 's after Hitler here.
  • Done
• "..rather than religious confession.." Is there a suitable article to link "religious confession" to?
  • I could not find such a suitable article, so I changed it to "..rather than religion".
• Wikilink pogrom, though this does create a slight WP:SEAOFBLUE. Not sure. You could include it in the link: Kristallnacht pogrom, though that also has problems. Either way, having no link is possibly the most problematic I think.
  • Changed to Kristallnacht pogrom and linked pogrom in the next sentence.
• I'm unsure if "Kristallnacht" should be in a {{lang}} template per MOS:LANG: it might count as an exemption per MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, but on the other hand it is italicised at the parent article.
  • I didn't italicize because most English-language RS do not.[1][2][3]
• "A propaganda campaign conducted from November 1938 to January 1939 aimed at justifying the pogrom to the German people and blaming it on the Jews." This jarred a little to me, it felt like it was missing something more at the end. I would recommend adding "was" before "conducted", which fixes it in my head.
  • Rephrased

Speech of 30 January 1939

• "In February, another German.." I assume we don't know who?
  • All we know is that it was published in Sopade's newspaper (presumably anonymously) by "a horrified German bystander", in Koonz' words.

Allusions

• I'm not convinced that "allusions" is the right title for this section. Per wikt:allusion: "an indirect reference; a hint; a reference to something supposed to be known, but not explicitly mentioned". Some of the references listed here are clearly direct references, not indirect ones. I appreciate that "References" can't be used as a title, but nor do I think we can use "Allusions". I wish I had an alternative suggestion though...
  • I actually changed it to "References", since it can't be confused with an actual references section
• "..Warsaw Ghetto diarist Chaim Kaplan writing.." Avoid this noun plus -ing contruction.
  • Fixed
• "..displayed promiently.." Typo.
  • Fixed
• "In mid-September, Hitler made the decision to deport German Jews into the occupied Soviet Union, which historians view as related to the posters." To be clear, do those historians suggest that Hitler made the decision at least partly because of the posters?
  • Not exactly, it's more that they emphasize the temporal proximity which is not a coincidence. I've altered the text to be more clear.

Reviewed to the end of the Invasion of the Soviet Union sub-section. Good stuff, but heavy reading. Will come back to this later. Harrias ^talk 14:02, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Just a quick note: I came back intending to continue this review this evening, but I'm not going to be able to do much detail stuff. However, just starting to read through "The Jews are Guilty" section affirmed something I'd already been thinking: the article is far too quote heavy, both from the source material and from third-party commentary. To get an idea of scale, as an arbitrary number, I would suggest that perhaps a quarter of it needs cutting back and para-phrasing more into a summary analysis. Harrias ^talk 20:54, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

• I agree with this, but the question is exactly which quotes can go and which are necessary. I'll go through the article again with a view to reducing where possible. (t · c) buidhe 22:55, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Now done... I was able to remove three blockquotes and a bunch of other quotes. (t · c) buidhe 14:40, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

More

• The blockquote at the start of the War against the United States section, is that quoting Hitler (referring to himself in the third-person?) or someone else?
  • Yes, it is a quote from Hitler. Edited to be more explicit.
• I believe that we adopt our own MOS, even over the formatting used in article titles, so "The Coming End — the Führer's Prophecy" should take an endash, rather than an emdash.
  • Done
• "..is dispelled by dehumanizing Jews by describing them as a "bacillus"." What does "bacillus" mean? Without knowing that, this quote is pretty meaningless. Either explain it, or get rid of it, and simply say that he dehumanized them.
  • Linked bacillus, a type of bacteria. None of the sources explain what is a bacillus.

Reviewed to the end of the section. Sorry, I'm finding this hard going. I find the article excessively detailed, but that be because it isn't a particular area of interest of mine, rather than a problem with the actual article. Will look to continue into the Analysis section ASAP. Harrias ^talk 10:14, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I have worked my through the rest of the article, and there is nothing major remaining. As I mentioned above, I found the article hard work, partly due to the subject matter. In places I found some of the information presented quite tangential to the prophecy and speech itself, but not since university have I read much on political theory and philosophy, which this article slips into at times, so it might just be that at play. Honestly, I do wonder if the whole article could bear to be trimmed to help make it more accessible to the layperson such as myself, but I am aware that it is important not to omit any of the varying views, of which there are clearly many. Overall, this is good work in a difficult area, so well done. I note that this already has two supports, and Hog Farm will likely provide a third. With that in mind, I will not be explicitly supporting the promotion, but I certainly do not oppose it: my main analysis after reading this is that I don't feel I know or understand the topic and genre well enough to do so. I hope that you don't take this amiss. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 12:42, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks so much for your comments. I will try to go through again and get rid of anything that isn't closely related. (t · c) buidhe 13:49, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Comments Support from Hog Farm

Will get to this soon. Hog Farm _Bacon 02:05, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

• "looting of Jewish-owned stores and residences, and assaults on Jews which (according to official figures) caused 91 deaths." - I'm not sure that I trust official Nazi figures on stuff like this. What do mainstream historians estimate for deaths?
  • I don't think there's any other accepted estimate for those killed during the event. Longerich says, "It is not known how many died from this violence; the official number of dead was given as 91." Many historians use the official estimate without comment.[4][5][6][7]
• " "how important the expansion of our people’s living space (Lebensraum) was in order permanently to secure their food supplies"" - Is Lebensraum in the original quote? I thought the tendency for doing quotes was to put additions in square brackets.
  • It's not in the source, so I ended up linking it as [[Lebensraum|living space]]
• "Although Hitler rarely repeated himself," - Maybe this is just me, but I almost feel like we need a second source in addition to Mommsen
  • Removed, other sources actually say that he did repeat himself sometimes.
• "and displayed prominently in Berlin[89] and "in every town and village"" - Not sure what the direct quotation of "in every town and village" adds here. I think the subject of the article means that more direct quotations than usual is okay, but there's still a little overkill in a few places with these
  • Removed
• "According to the Security Service (SD), the article "found a strong echo" among Germans, although some churchgoers were critical of it" - This could use the opinion of a mainstream historian, as anything the SD said is probably open to question.
  • These SD reports are the main source that historians use to evaluate German public opinion (eg this Yale UP book which focuses on them[8]); there's not much else to go on. In this case, Kershaw saw fit to mention it and he doesn't offer a separate opinion of his own.
• "Goebbels, who had a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg, presented the narrative to German elites in a speech at Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin on 1 December" - Goebbels doctorate almost feels like an excess detail, unless it can be proved to be relevant.
  • Removed
• "Hitler implied that even if the war was lost, his prophecy would be fulfilled" - Unclear if this is part of the statement, or if this is part of the instructions to Wagner
  • Clarified that it is part of the statement
• "Koonz writes that in his 1939 speech, "Hitler posed as the sole moral arbiter of his Volk at war on two fronts: racial and geopolitical"" - What's Volk?
  • Linked and glossed
• " The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has ruled that predicting genocide can, under certain circumstances, be considered incitement to genocide" - This postdates the Holocaust by 50 years. Convince me this can be strongly tied to the prior events. ACW scholars don't define Andersonville Prison by the Geneva Conventions.
  • That's true. However, the criminalization of incitement to genocide in international law dates to Streicher and the next prosecutions didn't occur until Rwanda. I think it is worth mentioning in light of the comparisons made with other statements.

Address these, and I'm ready to support for A-Class. For a future FAC, I'd recommend trimming down a few more of the direct quotes. Hog Farm _Bacon 19:03, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks for your comments. I believe I've addressed everything. (t · c) buidhe 11:43, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Supporting, although I will second what Harrias said. This is probably the densest non-technical article I've ever read here. I would likely abstain at a FAC. Hog Farm _Bacon 13:55, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Source review - Pass

Doing shortly Aza24 (talk) 03:59, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

• Spot checks not done
• Peter Longerich has a link
  • All the authors are linked on their first work but not subsequent ones to avoid sea of blue.
• I don't think this is required but you may want to consider adding page number ranges for all the book chapters. At the moment only half have them, the ones that don't are: Bartrop, Bergen, Bytwerk and Musolff
  • I added page numbers for the chapters wherever I could find them. But in some cases I couldn't.
• What is the chapter for Bartrop? Perhaps this just belongs in the normal books section?
  • Moved
• You're missing the editors for Bergen, they're listed here
  • Added
• Israel Charny has a link, as does Jeffrey Herf
• Ralf Blank is the editor for the Jersak ref, listed here
  • Added
• If you're linking journals then The Historical Journal, Quarterly Journal of Speech and History & Memory have links
  • Linked
• Besides these things formatting looks great, consistent linking and use of ISBNS/indentifiers
• All sources are scholarly ones, published by historians. The only ref that stands out is 192 but it is an interview with a historian so no issues there
  • Thanks for your review! (t · c) buidhe 04:52, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Everything looks good now, pass for source review. Aza24 (talk) 20:18, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Support from Ian

Hi, I reviewed and copyedited at GAN, treating it in much the same way I would an ACR, understanding it would go through here too. So having reviewed changes since then, and tweaked the copy here and there, I'm happy to support. N.B. I note Hog Farm's concerns with the level of quotation, and I did in fact highlight at GAN that this might come up at subsequent reviews, but OTOH I think this subject matter perhaps benefits from a higher level of direct quotation from sources than might be necessary in other articles -- in any case there's certainly less in the way of quotation than when I first read it during the GAN.

Image review -- I was satisfied with image licensing at GAN and can't see any new pictures added since then.

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:31, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

P.S. I spotchecked several references at GAN as was satisfied with the result. Ian Rose (talk) 08:34, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate all your help with the article! (t · c) buidhe 09:05, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above 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.