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This is a copy of the discussion from Talk:World War II that led to the creation of this page. The info is presented here for archival purposes.-- Oshah 22:23, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
To get to that actually you must go to the archives of #19-- LtWinters 20:08, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
The "Commanders" section of the infobox was attempted to be discussed above, but the discussion got sidetracked into Japanese monarchy and use of flags. :-) Can we return to the issue please? Clearly the list of "commanders" at the moment is inconsistent, does not show the real high-ups in some cases and muddles military and political command. Why for example mention Rommel in the German list when he was relatively low down the pecking order of generals and Himmler who was really the police state leader rather than a "military commander" apart from very briefly. There are many other similar inconsistencies in the table. I move we treat the phrase "commanders" as being military commanders and the list should therefore now be something like:
UK Alan Brooke (CIGS in case you haven't heard of him), Bernard Montgomery, Charles Portal
USA George Marshall, Dwight D Eisenhower, Chester Nimitz, George Patton, Carl Spaatz, Ira Eaker
USSR Joseph Stalin (was actually in command of military most of the time), Georgy Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Nikita Kruschev (ultimate commander at Stalingrad)
Germany Adolf Hitler (was actually in command of military most of the time), Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Walter Model, Hermann Goering, Karl Dönitz
Italy Benito Mussolini (was actually in command of military most of the time)
Japan Hideki Tojo, Osami Nagano, Chuichi Nagumo, Hajime Sugiyama
MarkThomas 15:05, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
The infobox is supposed to be a summary, not a detailed list of commanders. We've got by with one commander per country in the infobox for a long time. We can always add more detail in the article itelf. DJ Clayworth 22:01, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Even so, then the summary is wrong. How about taking the top two of the lists I've just made then? MarkThomas 23:44, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Not sure what you mean by 'top two'. Anyway, Churchill was clearly the leader of the war for the British; Rooseveldt the legal CinC of the US forces and Stalin the leader of USSR forces. When top level conferences were held, those were the three that went, not Brooke or Marshall. DJ Clayworth 00:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually you're wrong about that - Brooke went to most of the conferences and Marshall was sometimes too busy running the military to attend but went to some. If you read Churchill, whilst the political leaders discussed strategy, the military commanders got together to figure out how to win. The confusion here is between political leaders and military commanders. To a casual reader, "Commanders" means military commanders. The current list is a mix of political leaders and military commanders. MarkThomas 07:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree: the distinction between military commanders and political leaders - while sometimes a little blurred - is important. For the purposes of this article, perhaps the infobox should have a sub-section for each category. The current format (at the time of writing) is at least clear and concise, with only the political figureheads. It can be difficult to list all the CinCs and perhaps even other significant commanders - where would you draw the line? Adrian M. H. 15:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I see a new user has just rather summarily shortened it, but we may need to change it again. :-) Thanks for your comments folks - I agree with Adrian M.H. and suggest we have two panel sub-sections, one entitled Political Leaders and the other Military Commanders. Under Military Commanders I propose we list 4 for the big participants (US, USSR, Germany, UK, Japan) and 1, 2 or 3 as appropriate for Italy, China (so far not mentioned but it should be - also in the political list) and perhaps the Free French and Free Polish. Latter two I am not overly troubled about as the infobox is obviously the quick big-picture overview. MarkThomas 17:00, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, after thinking this over some more, here's the list of Military Commanders I am now proposing (more for "bigger" powers than for others):
Military Commanders
UK Alan Brooke, Bernard Montgomery, Charles Portal, Harold Alexander
USA George Marshall, Dwight D Eisenhower, Chester Nimitz, George Patton, Carl Spaatz
USSR Georgy Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Nikita Kruschev, Nikolai Vatutin, Ivan Konev
Poland Władysław Sikorski, Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski
France Charles de Gaulle, Maurice Gamelin
Germany Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Walter Model, Hermann Goering, Karl Dönitz
Italy Pietro Badoglio, Ugo Cavallero
Japan Osami Nagano, Chuichi Nagumo, Hajime Sugiyama, Iwane Matsui, Jiro Minami
China Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, Yan Xishan
MarkThomas 17:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Not sure where to put it - I guess my concern is that the current chronological structure of the page tends to militate against having this type of background generic information. Could it be in the big information panel at the bottom of the page? Or in a separate page called "Commanders of World War Two"? Not sure which is best but I do feel kind of impelled that we need this info. :-) MarkThomas 22:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for all your comments and help on this. I have began a more detailed workup of the page on Commanders of World War II and very much liked your ideas on it Haber, which I will try to develop, please feel free others to contribute if you get a minute. I will also think more about how a short version of it can be added to this page. Thanks a lot. MarkThomas 17:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
In re: the U.S. commanders... I understand the need to keep the list short.... but.... inclusion of Patton on the U.S. list without including his immediate superior (after Normandy) Bradley is a common mistake. Patton gains a great deal of fame because of his movie and extraordinary "bigger than life" personality DURING the war. However, Bradley was not only his boss at the important juncture of the war, but also widely regarded as the second smartest soldier in the Army at that time. (Marshall being perhaps the smartest soldier ever produced by the U.S. Army.) Bradley also suffered from not having a great biographer. -- Thesurveyor 04:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Good to get this article started. I have a few ideas about formatting, be interested to hear what others think...
Order
Could be alphabetical, but I think probably best would be "Allies", "Axis Powers" and "Others", also showing their country flags, to keep it in line with the format of the infobox on the main World War Two page.
Descriptions
I envisage eventually brief descriptions of each commander and their role, background and battles.
Political Commanders
Political commanders of military forces are briefly mentioned in the lead, I would like to have a section on this.
Eventual fate
Many Axis commanders and some others were eventually killed or imprisoned. This might make an interesting comment.
Infobox
Should we have an infobox on this page - if so, which one?
Just some introductory ideas. Thanks. MarkThomas 13:19, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, my original focus was "important" commanders, eg, principal commanders or commanders of key battles. Do you concur? MarkThomas 13:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Not sure if I like your first suggestion or not Haber, still thinking about it! I like the idea personally of some sort of grouping also by theatre and by alliances. Maybe we could do different tables of groupings? Would be useful and interesting. Kind of depends on what purpose we envisage this page having. A sort of "commander portal" or something more detailed? This goes to casualty figures as well - sort of a table of Commander Comparisons? Fantasy Commander League? MarkThomas 22:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
The fantasy leagure remark was of course a joke Haber. I take this page seriously and value your comments. MarkThomas 08:36, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Is Kruschev really enough importnant to be included in article. Im afraid that if we start adding generals who had similar importance then article will become huge.-- Staberinde 12:58, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
I added him because of his role in overall political (and therefore as representative of Stalin) control at Stalingrad, I guess I was partly influenced in doing so because of the political "Commanders" originally listed in the infobox on the main page. I do agree though that he is not as significant as USSR generals like Zhukov or Konev. I've taken him off for the time being, we will see how this evolves. Maybe there should be yet more pages like "Military Commanders of the USSR during World War 2"? MarkThomas 13:10, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Since this page is not called "Military Commanders of World War II", I would imagine it should include non-military commanders too. However, the tables are biased towards military commanders (examples: highest rank, highest award/medal, battles). They make the political commanders rather bland by comparison. If someone can think of decent table columns for politically-oriented commanders, perhaps we might be able salvage Kruschev, etc. - Oshah 18:49, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Kruschev poses an interesting problem. He wasn't a terrifically high-ranking figure DURING the war, but certainly became one of the pivotal Soviet characters AFTER the war. It's somewhat analogous to Churchill's role in WW-I. Clearly, if one were writing a history which included the top 2 or 3 British leaders during WW-I, Churchill wouldn't make the cut. While his role as First Lord was important, other than the Galipoli disaster it's hard to find a major campaign with his name on it. (In fairness, Churchill's administrative role at the Admiralty was important, but WW-I simply wan't a SEA war. Britain basically WON the sea war on day 1.) Ergo, we would have to list 10 or 20 major British leaders to get to the point where Churchill was important. The same is true with Kruschev. Vitally important AFTER the war, but relatively minor DURING the war. -- Thesurveyor 14:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Apart from being rather POV wording, I wonder how we can really interpret this as a header. Battle casualties can be added in but are we really just interested in the losses "inflicted" on the enemy? Isn't the mark of a good commander how few troops he loses achieving victory? Perhaps something more factual like "maximum no of troops under command" or something like that might be better? MarkThomas 15:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Been scratching my head trying to think of the best and most informative thing. One aspect could be "reported to" as in who they were below in the chain of command - that might be interesting. Should be something terse. Otherwise we just take the column out for now. It's a huge job to try to find those figures for each of the many commanders and realistically, unless someone has the time... and even then, I would sooner know about losses versus gains... MarkThomas 10:42, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
That would be interesting, but is it too close in concept to major battles in the next column? MarkThomas 08:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
One key question - which of us is going to be brave enough to take on Germany? :-) MarkThomas 08:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I will try to make a start next couple of days unless someone else dives in. You just sit back, relax and survey Haber. :-) BTW, does anyone know the protocol regarding unreferenced tags for list pages like this - do we really need to do this? Seems repetitive as obviously the actual page for each commander is supposed to have references? MarkThomas 21:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Often this becomes very formulaic on Wikipedia - note for example the sister page List of World War II conferences which gets round the tagmania by citing a few well-trodden references. Ho hum. Suppose we'd better. MarkThomas 20:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering if this article should include the political heads (Hitler, Churchill, Truman etc.) of the war as part of the article (after all, this article is not limited to the military). We could introduce each country by briefly describing their leaders (keeping the leaders separate from the tables, so we don't have to worry about e.g what their highest award was, what battles they were involved in). -- Oshah 23:01, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking maybe we should add Tojo as commander. He wasn't civilian commandeing armies like Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini but a officer who also had got civilian power, similar to Chiang Kai-shek in China. Any thoughts?-- Staberinde 18:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Agreed, Tojo was essentially military. BTW, are we all in favor of laying out an extra section for Commanders who were basically political, as discussed in the intro? I kind of intended that to be part of this page originally, although this is now so big and beautiful I'm not sure. Any thoughts? MarkThomas 20:04, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Though this list can obviously never be truly complete (what constitutes a "commander", and how many people from how many countries are we going to include?), but what you've got here already looks very nice. It's a good concept for a list/article, and useful. Plus, I really like the color-coding, the flag icons, and the pictures. These kinds of things, while not a substitute for content, are always a great addition. LordAmeth 01:43, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
That what makes commander "notable" is problematical to say. For example Polish generals: Edward Rydz-Śmigły(invasion of poland) who wasn't in your book commanded a lot bigger armed forces in bigger scale campaing then Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski(warsaw uprising) who probably was there(as he isn't tagged). Also probably many chinese and japanese land commanders are not well known in west but that doesn't mean that they didn't fought large scale battles or campaings. But that's quite small part of problem, other part is sourceing all those n+1 awards, fates and other information. We agreed to discuss it here but now I thought that maybe it would be better to copy-paste that discussion to article's talk and also ask opinions of other users that have shown some interest to article(MarkThomas and Haber) as I am not sure what's best solution. Do you agree?-- Staberinde 23:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Previous discussion was copyed here from User talk:Oshah.------ Staberinde 11:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi. My two cents - I can't really think of exactly where to draw the line on "notable", but what we have right now seems very comprehensive and yet still manageable. Looking to reference books seems reasonable to me. Tagging should be used sparingly when possible. Haber 23:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
This is a beautifully presented piece, but at the end of the day it is still surely a list - so shouldn't its title be "List of Commanders of World War II"? HeartofaDog 18:41, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
The "verification needed" tags spray-painted have basically ruined the page. Given that these micro-snippets of text all point to major articles on each commander, each heavily referenced, do we really need them? MarkThomas 22:31, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
99% sure Erich Raeder didn't committed suicide.
On a related note it claims Hermann Göring "Sentenced and later freed from prison due to a lot of public pressure. Became an author and promoted welfare of ex-servicemen." when I am pretty sure he commited suicide before he could be exicuted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.33.73.207 ( talk) 18:13, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
I tried to add some men to the italian list specifically ( Junio Valerio Borghese, Emilio De Bono, and Rodolfo Graziani) but for the life of me can't figure out how the tables work. Oh well. Also - what's with the 22px next to some names? Is that a part of a failed attempt to add flag thumbnails? -- NEMT 04:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
By what crieria do we include and exclude commanders? If we allow any officer who was in charge of a command then it's going to be a very long list. I suggest that we limit the list to at least 4 star officers. We could make it 5 star officers only? Greenshed 22:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Shouldn't we list the commanders in order of rank? For instance, Patton, a 4 star, is listed before MacArthur, a 5 star. Should we change that? -- LtWinters 20:10, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
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Mao Zedong should be replaced by Zhu De as Mao Zedong was only the political leader of the Communist Party of China but Zhu De was the Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army at that time or even don't need to put the Communist into the list.-- 67.168.185.5 01:51, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I can't see any logic in how the allied countries are distributed. It's definately not alphabetical - but if it were based on military contribution, than surely having United States and United Kingdom above USSR is not reasonable at any rate. Does anybody know, why the order is as it is? With respect, Ko Soi IX ( talk) 18:00, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I think Australia was important enough as a player in World War II to warrant a section under Allied leaders, especially as minor european nations are on the list. We were probably the 4th most important player in the Pacific Theatre after US, China and the UK. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.239.198.171 ( talk) 02:06, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
The image Image:Brauchitsch.JPG is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check
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What does it signify, and why is not obvious or explained in the article? 174.6.46.8 ( talk) 23:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Why isn't Admiral Leahy on this list? 99.106.222.8 ( talk) 05:15, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
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Hi the page says Isakov was C in C of the navy but if you read the actual entries for Isakov and Kuznetsov it sounds more like Kuznetsov was the head and Isakov was like a Chief of Staff or some equivalent and then made an area commander. Perhaps someone can check/verify this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.200.91.60 ( talk) 03:35, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
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I propose to remove the RAF officers who were born in New Zealand from the New Zealand section. During the war, they were fighting for the United Kingdom as regular RAF officers. Otherwise, we should be listing non-combatant countries whose sons fought in the armed forces of other nations (e.g. the Republic of Ireland). As a RNZAF officer, Air Vice-Marshal Leonard Monk Isitt might usefully be added to the New Zealand section though. Greenshed ( talk) 20:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
China Burma India theater General Wilson slim and General Joseph Stilwell are missing 69.124.243.2 ( talk) 23:34, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
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do come to Lindsay California 93247. At 1267 that's where I live to where you can help me prove to the nro of what's going on 174.251.164.93 ( talk) 02:11, 18 June 2024 (UTC)