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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Paul Siebert (talk | contribs) at 21:48, 17 July 2008 (→Suggestion: Use Objective Figures). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Misplaced Pages Mediation Cabal
Article	World War II
Status	open
Request date	00:27, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Requesting party	Unknown
Parties involved	Too many to name; see below
Mediator(s)	Seddon
Comment	Mediator doing research, on hold for now

]]

Request details

Protracted argument over 1939 as only start date for World War II.

I have some questions/comments at the bottom of the page

Who are the involved parties?

• Oberiko
• Parsecboy
• Mrg3105
• Caranorn
• DJ Clayworth
• Binksternet
• Flying tiger
• Jooler
• Emperor001
• Colin4C
• Buckshot06
• Arnoutf
• Vecrumba
• Kbthompson
• DMorpheus
• Joe Deagan
• Pmanderson
• Trekphiler
• Nick Dowling

What's going on?

Several editors believe that 1939 outbreak of hostilities in Europe should be marked explicitly as the start of World War II. Others believe that (at least) a significant minority of reliable sources exist using alternate start dates, and thus stating one version as "true" would be against WP:NPOV.

What would you like to change about that?

The discussion is no longer productive, and has become something of a shouting match. I would like to gain further input as to if the sources provided equate to significance or not.

Mediator notes

I agree to take this case. After being reassured on IRC, I'm pretty confident. As long as no one complains, I'll change the status to open.

Contact information: E-Mail me here. However, I check my talk page much more often then I do my e-mail. However, if you have any concerns that you do not want to make public, e-mail me. Thanks.  Mm40 (talk | contribs)  01:06, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

We have a problem. On the EST morning of of the 25th of this month, I will be leaving on vacation for 7-9 weeks. We must decide if we want to change mediators or have a really long tea break (meaning we stop the case until I get back). What we do is your decision. Please discuss below.  Mm40 (talk | contribs)  22:35, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Administrative notes

Discussion

Compromise?

Discussions between Arnoutf and myself have come up with a possible compromise, here. I do not claim it is beyond improvement, but I think it satisfies most stated objections. It will not satisfy those who want September 1939 out of the article, or those who want nothing else to appear, but these cannot both be satisfied. It will also disappoint those who insist on the extreme sceptical position that there is no true date for the beginning of WWII, but this last is very difficult to source; even Taylor, who comes close to that position at one point, actually holds that the World War began in 1941. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:44, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I hope the interested parties would find a more elegant solution to the introduction of this subject. The wording proposed above adds tremendous detail to a seemingly irrelevant data point dispute on an article of such an enormous subject. Jeff Carr (talk) 12:14, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I see the same comment has been made on the talk page. Since I agree with it, there is another draft here. Please feel free to edit it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:17, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I thank Arnoutf and Vecrumba for their helpful suggestions on these versions. There have been other objections to these versions on grounds which are either factually false (draft 4 is fully included in draft 5, draft 5 in draft 6; each contains an additional sentence or two) or are unsourced and unsupported claims that following the majority position is somehow Eurocentrism. I see no point in keeping an article in which a handful of nationalists have pushed their nationalist POV. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:47, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

You might want to tell us who the handful of nationalists (who) have pushed their nationalist POV are while you're at it.--Caranorn (talk) 17:07, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

That is a hypothetical statement. I am reasonably satisfied, as I said on the article talk, with the present lead. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:14, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Seriously, give us a break. Nobody here is remotely a nationalist of any particular nation (oberiko, parsecboy, and others). Accusation of "Eurocentrism" only pops up now because Jooler made the move to say that Chinese wiki also says the war began in 1939, after which I translated the second paragraph which specifically says that "Eutrocentric" historians put the date at 1939. Arguing about citations and their sources, fine. But throwing "nationalist" insinuations around comes close to ad hominem attacks. Blueshirts (talk) 21:47, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

No that's quite untrue. The Western bias argument has been a theme since the beginning of this debate (example ... if you can provide me a comprehensive work on WWII that wasn't written by a middle-aged, well-off white male (you know, the people who write the vast majority of Western histories, and are prone to Eurocentrism and Amerocentrism) that states WWII began in 1939, well, it still won't matter, because we don't get to rank sources based on someone's personal criteria. - Parsecboy (talk) 13:58, 9 June 2008 (UTC)) Also you are being selective about the Chinese article. It quite clearly begins by giving the dates 1939-1945, it then lays out the course of the war using these dates. It specifically mentions the Second Sino-Japanese War in a section titled "in the pre-war military conflicts" (at least according to Google Translator), it then re-introduces the Asian conflict into the body of the article with the attack of Pearl Harbor. It may say that using 1939-1945 is a European viewpoint but it is this viewpoint that it uses throughout the article. This format (which is entirely the norm for any history of WWII that I have ever seen) is pretty much what I have been suggesting above. Jooler (talk) 23:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The Chinese article on WW2 is a joke. It was an exact copy of an old English article that was promoted in 2004 (scroll to bottom). It has exactly two references (Churchill's memoir and A War to be Won) and the entire article carries no in-line citation. Funny thing is, in the 2004 nomination process the anon left a note "how come there isn't much info on the China Theatre" and in the entire process only six users replied, with only three supporting votes. So much for an FA article! I suggest you lay off on using the Chinese "FA" article for your argument. Blueshirts (talk) 02:12, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

And in four years and 1250 edits nothing has changed? How remarkable! Jooler (talk) 06:50, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

It's happening again. Please stop. Although it is no longer my case (that belongs to Seddon), I don't want of like to see these attacks.  Mm40 (talk | contribs)  17:49, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

To what are you referring? Jooler (talk) 19:22, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

1250 edits isn't that many; from my experience of history pages (although I admit it is quite little), almost all edits are small things such as grammar correcting, rewording, vandalism and fixing vandalism. 122.105.217.62 (talk) 00:19, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The English WWII article has taken seven months to accumulate the last 1250 edits. But then it is an exceptionally active article and the English Misplaced Pages is by far the biggest and most active. As a comparison I looked at the German article. German Misplaced Pages is the next biggest to English and Germany was of course a major participant in WWII so one would expect it to be an article that receives a fair amount of attention. On German Misplaced Pages 1250 edits takes us back to December 2005. Over 2.5 years ago. So I wouldn't say that 1250 edits was "not that many" for the Chinese article. In any case the point I was making was that in 4 years and however many edits no-one has bothered to fix any perceived Western bias, so the analysis of the type of edits made does not detract from that. If anything it support it. Jooler (talk) 09:30, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

You appear to have misunderstood me (but I could be wrong). I was saying that articles do not change a great deal with 1250 edits, but as my experience is limited I could be wrong. 122.105.217.62 (talk)

Where are we?

There has been some improvement in the article (co-incident with UseR:Oberiko disappearing off the radar). September 1939 is explicitly stated in the second (it should be first) para, but I cannot be happy with The info-box saying "Date: Late 1930s – September 2, 1945". It's a nonsense. Jooler (talk) 08:11, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

To be clear I'll re-iterate what I said earlier. Local start dates are largely irrelevant. It is what the overwhelming consensus of 'experts in the field' agree on that counts. It is easily demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of experts in the field use 1939 and more specifically Sept 1 1939 as the date upon which WWII erupted upon the world. All complete histories of WWII that can be found in any library and any bookshop use this date. It is 100% verifiable that a war, a "total war", was raging in Asia before Sept 1939, that is not in dispute, but it is the overwhelming view of most historians in the field that until 1941 the war in Asia was a regional conflict between Japan and China and not a World War. It merged into WWII when one of the combatants, Japan, launched an aggression against the United States the British Empire the Netherlands etc. But for the 1941 attacks the Second Sino-Japanese War would have remained a regional conflict. In Sept 1939, the invasion of Poland led directly to Britain and France and the forces of their global empires meeting their treaty obligations and declaring war on Germany within days. This was immediately followed by declaration of war by the Dominion territories of Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. The "European War" raged not only in Europe but in Africa and the Middle East and in every ocean on the planet. It had a profound effect on the economies of every nation on the planet long before the direct involvement of the United States in the last few days of 1941. The regionality of the Second Sino-Japanese War is not dissimilar to a number of other regional conflicts that involved belligerents of WWII, such as the Winter War, the Spanish Civil War, the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Second_Italo-Abyssinian_War and the Slovak-Hungarian War. These conflicts, although closely related and unquestionably hugely relevant, are not generally considered to be part of WWII. With specific reference to the build up to the attacks of December 1941 in Asia; some people claim a direct continuation from the War in China to the attacks on the Western powers, but it needs to be seen in context. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a consequence of the US oil embargo, which was a consequence of the Japanese invasion of French Indochina. But this invasion of French territory (and the subsequent invasion of Burma, Hong Kong, and the Dutch East Indies etc) could not and would not have happened if France and the Netherlands had not already been defeated by Germany in 1940 and Britain was heavily engaged in continuing the European War. A Misplaced Pages article on WWII cannot be taken seriously if it does not explicitly state that the conflict raged between 1939-1945. To use a crude analogy; the Great Fire of London started in Pudding Lane. The fact that Mr Smith down the road from Pudding Lane had lit the fire in his hearth earlier that morning is irrelevant. Jooler (talk) 08:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion: Use Objective Figures

I will disclose fully and say that I think the 1937/31 start date for the Second World War is highly inappropriate. Also, since this is such an important topic, basic and serious errors on this page(which these are) reflect very poorly on Misplaced Pages as a whole. I suspect these edits are motivated by something other than historical or NPOV concerns.

With that out of the way, I will make a suggestion which may help clarify matters and clear up the situation. The suggestion is that the decision on the start date should be based on numbers.

This can be done in several ways. The most basic being the number of countries officially or unofficially involved in the conflict. The Sino-Japanese conflict adds probably 2-4 countries. However the declarations of war in September 1939 add a significantly larger number of countries to the conflict, especially in light of colonial holdings.

A more balanced measure from a global point of view, particularly when considering colonies, would also be to count by populations of countries involved. One could also count by the size of armies involved, though this is subject to more fluctuation. If you want to get really specific and measure by the number of men in armies involved in actual fighting, then the start of the war will probably be pushed back to the start of Barbarossa.

I suggest that someone make up a time line of the entries of countries along with good estimates of their populations. These should also be graphed. There are going to be disputes here, especially about colonies, in particular India. Because of this, multiple graphs will need to be made.

With that, I'm done. I'll finish by suggesting that you resolve this issue, with objective numbers, as soon as possible. This issue is making Misplaced Pages look bad. Really bad. You will need numbers to get past this. ObsessiveMathsFreak (talk) 22:14, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I think, there are two ways to establish the start date for the WWII. Formally, this would be the date of the first conflict between countries that joined either the Axis or the Allies later.
From another point of view, this date should be the date after which the war had become really global and the situation could not be reverted.
Theoretically, even after invasion of Poland there was an opportunity for Western Allies and Hitler to stop the conflict (I don't think situation with Poland to differ considerably from that in Chechoslovakia), although the probability of that was almost zero. However, even after that moment there were two separate local conflicts, both of them were developing independently and both of them could be theoretically ceased. Undoubtedly, the turning point was a start of the battle of France. At this point there was no step back for any side. Britain had no other choice than to fight, the clash between Nazis and USSR became inevitable, and US entering into the war became the question of time. The second point is Nazis invasion of Soviet Union. After that moment, the war became a full scale continuous land force conflict that could not be ceased or even paused until one side surrenders unconditionally. And the third point was Perl Harbour that gave FDR a formal opportunity to enter the war. I don't think objective numbers are fully objective in this case.
So the most objective way is what is proposed in the most textbook as a hallmarks of WWII:
Invasion of Poland;
Invasion of France;
Invasion of USSR
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Unbiased, objective view doesn't mean 'formal'--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:48, 17 July 2008 (UTC)