Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Commissioner Government

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Article promoted by Ian Rose (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 02:31, 19 April 2018 (UTC) « Return to A-Class review list[reply]

Commissioner Government[edit]

Nominator(s): Peacemaker67 (talk)

Commissioner Government (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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The Commissioner Government was a short-lived Serbian puppet regime that was formed by the German authorities in the occupied territory of Serbia following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia during WWII. Its members were pro-Axis, anti-Semitic and anti-communist. It proved unable to cope with the communist-led insurgency that broke out after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and was quickly replaced. This article went through GA late last year, and is as comprehensive as I can make it. All comments gratefully received. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:01, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Support by Indy beetle[edit]

Excellent article. I was considering doing the GA myself but feared I lacked the relevant knowledge. Some preliminary comments:

  • Perhaps instead of the government agency infobox you could use this one?
  • I didn't want to create the impression that it was more than it was.
  • "Dr. Harald Turner". Not sure what MOS says about this, but I don't think we normally recognize that someone has received a PhD through a title.
  • His was a Doctorate of Law, and he is generally referred to as Dr. in the sources, but I believe you are right per MOS:DOCTOR. Deleted.
  • "At the end of August this resulted in the resignation of the Commissioner Government". ---> This resulted in the resignation of the Commissioner Government at the end of August...
  • Much better. Done.
  • There is some inconstant italicization, namely that most foreign organisations are ital'd but Luftwaffe is not. Per MOS:ITAL proper nouns in foreign language usually are not italicized.
  • I'm working off MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, which uses the rule of thumb of only using italics for foreign words is a term is not in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which Luftwaffe is.
  • Nikola Đurić in the reshuffle table links to a professional footballer.
  • Whoops. Created new redlink.
  • "killing 26 functionaries, wounding 11 and capturing ten". ten ---> 10
  • Done.

-Indy beetle (talk) 23:55, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking a look! I look forward to further comments. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:16, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

More comments:

  • In the Background section, a map showing the partition of Yugoslavia would be nice (like this one) or some other visual.
  • Done.
  • "and he was allocated personnel to form four area commands". Typo?
  • Not sure what you are getting at?
Oh I misread that, nm.
  • "the Germans still needed to establish a public administrative body that would implement their directives. It was decided to establish a puppet government for that purpose." Establish & establish. Mix it up.
  • Fixed.
  • "Förster was subsequently transferred". Was this related to his performance as overseer of the Serb state?
  • the sources don't say, but he was given command of I. Fliegerkorps for Barbarossa, so I think it was probably because he was more suited to operational air command than occupation duties.
  • The capitalization of the ministerial portfolios is inconsistent ("Interior" vs "construction" and "agriculture").
  • Fixed the one in the lead, but the rest seem to be proper names such as Minister of the Interior
  • "The first fighting occurred at the village of Bela Crkva on 7 July, when gendarmes tried to disperse a public meeting". What was the nature of this meeting, was it political, or were all forms of public assembly restricted?
  • Added in a bit early on explaining that unauthorised public meeting were prohibited under German military law.
  • Is this photo or others suitable for the Uprising section?
  • A lot of the WWII Yugoslav pics on WP and Commons like that one have problematic copyright. Added a pic of Bela Crkva.
  • Is there any record of the legacy of this administration or opinions from modern days scholars and politicians? Are they seen as Serb heroes or sellouts? -Indy beetle (talk) 23:33, 23 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd actually remove that, I find it unnecessary. Cohen pp. 61–62 contains an interest opinion from Gavrilo Dožić on the government, which is more what I was getting at. Also note that he calls it the "Commissars' Administration", as do other sources. Cohen also writes on page 53 that the Aćimović government had been "preoccupied" with the creation of "Greater Serbia" and had sent a memorandum to Schroeder expressing the need "to give the Serbian people its centuries-old ethnographic borders". This source mentions that the government made an appeal to civil servants to fill their posts, and addresses more of the details concerning the administration as a polity and its functional subservience to the Germans. All in all, it has many good details that should not be left out. As it has no page numbers, you could cite it using the "loc=" parameter in the shortened footnotes and fill in "Council of Commissars", as that is the relevant section. -Indy beetle (talk) 04:23, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for that, removed. I'm loath to use Dožić, as his observation is a pretty standard emigre apologia for collaboration in Yugoslavia during WWII, and I don't think it reflects fairly the role the administration had in actively supporting German policy, and in reprisals and the Judenmord in particular. Added the bit from Cohen, I thought I'd gleaned everything out of that book... Prusin is a find, thanks. I've added it and will start adding material from it tomorrow. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 10:02, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Very good additions, but I still have a few comments:
  • Prusin does specifically note that the government's local offices were established by recalling the former Yugoslav functionaries into service and notes the important roles they filled in the administration. This should be made explicit in the article.
  • OK. It now says "Aćimović maintained the existing Yugoslav government apparatus and staff, recalling personnel to their duties, and former Yugoslav officials played important roles in the administration."
  • Seeing as the party affiliation of some of the commissioners and their deputies are known (Prusin identifies a few), could this be incorporated into the article, perhaps in the table or via footnote?
  • Already added that from Prusin: "They represented a wide spectrum of pre-war Serbian political parties: Vasiljević and Ivanić both had close links to Zbor; Pantić, Kostić and Protić being members of the centre-right People's Radical Party; and Josifović was a member of the Democratic Party. No representatives of the outlawed Communist Party and the British-backed Serbian Agrarian Party were included."
  • "Förster also ordered the resumption of production". What kind of production, industrial, agricultural?
  • the wording in the original order reproduced in Lemkin is general, appears to mean all production.
  • "Among the new faces was Perić". Faces ---> members, faces is a little too colloquial.
  • done.
  • Lastly, I'd encourage you to reconsider Gavrilo's quote concerning the government. Regardless of its collaborationist-apologist tone, he was an important Serbian figure and his opinion is certainly not irrelevant.
  • I believe it would be giving it undue weight to include it.

-Indy beetle (talk) 06:53, 2 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:28, 2 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
G'day Indy beetle. After reading a couple of positive reviews, I decided to buy the Prusin book, so I've been able to add page numbers. I've also now added a conclusion drawn from Prusin. Let me know what you think? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:06, 3 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent work, Peacemaker. I'm supporting this now. My only suggestion would to be add some sort of subheading over the conclusion, like "Analyses", as it seems particular enough to warrant one. -Indy beetle (talk) 15:42, 3 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • File:Milan_Aćimović.jpg: any chance of a better-quality image, or could this one be sent through the lab? Nikkimaria (talk) 18:16, 27 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Nikkimaria, I've submitted it to the lab to see what they can do. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:37, 28 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that suggestion, Nikkimaria. They did a great job, have substituted the retouched image. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:11, 30 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Lingzhi[edit]

  • Haynes, Rebecca; Rady, Martyn (2011) Missing location Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:59, 1 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from AustralianRupert[edit]

Support: not a topic I know anything about, but it looks pretty good to me. I have a few minor comments/suggestions: AustralianRupert (talk) 10:49, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • "Equivalent to a U.S. Army General" (the caps for the rank here seems inconsistent with the other notes"
  • some isbns have hyphens and some don't, e.g. Lemkin's doesn't but Milazzo's does
  • the following terms are overlinked: Danube, prisoner of war, Milan Stojadinovic, Adolf Hitler, Sicherheitsdienst, Romani people,
  • in the Analysis section, I think it might be best to attribute in text early in the paragraph
  • "The Banat": is there a link that could be included for this area?

Comments Support from Factotem[edit]

Background

  • In order to achieve this the military commander's staff was divided into military and administrative branches, and he was allocated personnel to form four area commands and about ten district commands, which reported to the chief of the administrative staff, and the military staff allocated the troops of the four local defence battalions across the area commands. Quite long and quite a lot to convey in that sentence. Maybe break it into two after "branches"?

Establishment

  • ...the current Belgrade police chief, Dragomir Jovanović, Đorđe Perić, Steven Klujić and Tanasije Dinić... Up to this point you have a string of <name>, office, <name>, office statements, which led me into thinking that the list of names after Jovanović were also Belgrade police chiefs and you had simply forgoten to pluralise that office. Maybe "...the current Belgrade police chief, Dragomir Jovanović, along with Đorđe Perić, Steven Klujić and Tanasije Dinić..." would break that up and make it read better?

Operation : Initial tasks

  • The gendarmerie were also responsible...and were therefore unpopular... I think those instances of "were" should be "was". Certainly in a preceding sentence you write "...Serbian gendarmerie, which was...", and in the next "...reliability of the gendarmerie meant that it was...".
  • ... with representation of a number of different political parties... Are you missing a "the" before "representation" here, or maybe without the definite article you should use "representation from"?

Operation : The Banat

  • ...under the control of the local Volksdeutsche under the leadership of Sepp Janko You could avoid the "under...under" repetition here by writing "...led by Sepp Janko".

Operation : Uprising

  • ...the Communist International... Is that definite article right? It doesn't read so to me.

Replacement

  • ...whilst...? I thought it was only us Brits who persist in clinging to this archaism.

Source review

  • There's a mismatch between GBooks linked and ISBN given for Haynes's In the Shadow of Hitler. The link you provide is for a 2013 edition of 344 pages. The correct Gbook link for the edition which corresponds to the ISBN and publication year you cite is https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ILRJ2ChennYC&source=gbs_navlinks_s - which has 332 pages and also has a preview. This is an issue because the different pagination may affect your page referencing.
  • Not a huge issue (the pagination is the same in both cases), but the ISBN you provide for Pavlowitch's Hitler's New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia appears to relate to an edition published by Hurst & Company of London. The Columbia University Press edition appears to have been published in 2008 with ISBN 9780231700504
  • As a point of nerdy interest, the GBooks you link to for Shepherd's Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare has a different ISBN to the one you provide. The correct Gbook link for that ISBN, however, has no preview, but the pagination is the same, so it's not an issue. But I suspect that it would be more correct to give the location for the Harvard University Press as Cambridge, Massachusetts, and not England (though it does appear to have offices in London as well).

That first GBooks issue is, I think, a problem that needs to be sorted, as is the location for Shepherd's book, but the rest of my comments are for your consideration and not anything that would preclude my support once those source issues are addressed. Factotem (talk) 14:50, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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.
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