soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Andrew Clark wrote:
> "Louis C" wrote
>
> > And now as to the question which is of rather more interest to you,
> > why should "someone like myself", whatever that's supposed to mean, be
> > current about the debates on German archives?
>
> Because you (and Rich, by his own admission equally clueless in this field)
> are happy to repeatedly state your opinions about such matters and to
> vigorously attack my statements as incorrect before you have even read any
> of the literature on the matter.

No.

Rich and I were discussing the battle of Kursk, specifically comparing
the information from German records quoted in "The Battle of Kursk" by
Glantz & House with the specific research done by people Rich was
acquainted with (Niklas Zetterling and Chris Lawrence each wrote a
book about that battle, there may be others). I was finding this to be
very interesting information.

At which time you stepped in and asked the following (my capitals):
"It has fairly recently come to light that the SS employed a bunch of
statisticians from 1942 specifically to REVISE AND EDIT THE SS
STATISTICAL RETURNS FROM THE FIELD, which I think also includes Waffen
SS returns. ... Do you know whether this applies to the sort of
documents you are quoting here?"

My answer was that no, I don't know if any of this had been done to
the documents being discussed, though it looked like a huge task for
reasons that I outlined. Destruction of records is fairly simple, so
is rewriting a "politically correct" historical narrative - which was
something else that you mentioned in a later post - but altering the
administrative paper trail requires tracking down all the various sub-
administrations to which the returns had been sent, as well as those
that would have used the original figures. A lot of work, to be
repeated for each daily strength return. That's an absolutely huge
volume of paper, and then the "editors" would have to find a way to
plug the holes between what the new strength returns would indicate
and things like replacements sent etc.

As far as I can tell, Rich answered pretty much the same thing i.e.
that he didn't know about any editing of the Waffen SS strength
returns, that it seemed really unlikely that such an editing would
have taken place, and could we please have a source for the
statisticians editing Waffen SS returns?

I note that the last repeat of this request for an actual citation,
like something more precise than "Bartov" was deleted from my post.

My opinion was provided on this point because you asked for it. I
didn't attack your statements as incorrect because you didn't make
any. When I do attack your statements as incorrect, I usually explain
why by either providing hard data or a source.

> I note that, in the recent discussion about
> the extent of Hitler's late war authority, you also admitted you hadn't read
> any of the recent scholarship on the subject but nevertheless refused to
> admit that you might be wrong.

Do note it indeed: I admitted that I wasn't aware of the episode you
mentioned, thanked you for providing a reference and no longer made
the original claim before checking it.

I did reserve judgement until I had checked the source you had
provided because I had repeatedly disagreed with how references you
had mentioned in the past actually read and wanted to see things for
myself, yes.

> I have mentioned several books and articles

Translation: you mentioned 3 authors whom you claimed had written
extensively on the topic. You provided exactly zero reference.

> which anyone with even a
> background knowledge of German wartime archives ought to have read or be
> aware of.

Well, that's quite all right, then, because I don't claim to have a
background knowledge of German wartimes archives, whatever that means.
I've never held a German archival document myself, I know what is and
what isn't available from German archives on a couple of specific
topics but that's about the extant of what little I know about them.

> You now require exact citations merely to identify them - Rich
> couldn't even find them when I stated name, subject and journal.

Rich and I are not married. I do require more than the author's name
to track down a reference, particularly when the author is a noted
academic like Bartov with a lot of articles behind him.

> You and
> Rich would be the first to ridicule someone who repeatedly stated opinions
> on any other issue of WW2 without even being aware of the standard texts on
> the subject, like someone expounding on the German war economy without
> having heard of Milward, Overy or the USSBS/BBS, for example.

Actually, when you did spout nonsense on the German war economy in the
past, I provided a detailed reference of the book I was using (and
which you eventually came around to quoting yourself) as well as
posting the actual quote that was of relevance to the discussion.

Which I did consider somewhat more helpful than something like
"Milward has written extensively on the topic, I'm amazed that someone
claiming even background knowledge in wartime economics wouldn't be
aware of it".

> I'm perfectly happy to engage in constructive, positive debate and
> information-sharing in the hope of expanding my and other people's knowledge
> about WW2, but not when those with whom I am supposed to be debating resort
> to attack dog tactics of ad hominem criticisms, wilful disputatiousness and
> a dogged refusal to admit they may have anything to learn.

I have admitted, repeatedly, that I don't know the first thing about
editing of Waffen SS strength records and that I would love to learn
more about these. What I do know is that, for such an undertaking to
be successful, it must have required a tremendous investment in man
hours. As far as information-sharing goes, how about the reference for
the Bartov article that you have been mentioning since the beginning?


LC