Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves recipients (1945)

List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves recipients (1945)

The 1945 list of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves is by far the most complicated of the bunch. I would like to ask the reviewers to focus on the Notes section of the article. Please let me know how to improve the article especially with respect to the English language. Thanks for the painstaking effort involved in reviewing this information. MisterBee1966 (talk) 11:47, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Dank

• I made a few tweaks. Looks good.
• "for reasons associated with the deteriorating situation of the Third Reich during the final days of World War II": Better would be to give the reasons, instead of saying there are reasons but not telling us what they are. For instance, "because record-keeping in the Third Reich during the final days of World War II was unreliable". - Dank (push to talk) 03:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

AustralianRupert

• Looks quite good to me, too. I have a couple of minor fix-it suggestions below. (I only looked at the Notes in detail, as I believe that Dan has mainly focused on the body prose).
  • Please check this in the Notes, it doesn't look right to me: "Scherzer does not confirm this entry but states that the WWaiting for announced statementW is noted instead.";
  • "Ernst-Günther Krätschmer however indicated that Kausch was wounded 25 April, therefore he couldn't have received the news on the 25 April." I suggest tweaking this slightly as follows: "Ernst-Günther Krätschmer, however, indicated that Kausch was wounded on 25 April and as such he therefore could not have received the news that day." (I think it would read more smoothly, but this is only a suggestion);
  • there is a slight inconsistency in spelling here: "Domaschk then revoked..." and then "...Major Domasch apparently";
  • I think there is a typo here: ". I appears that this information never arrived before the end of the war." (I think that "I" at the start should be "It" - I haven't made the edit, though);
  • please check this quotation: ""Deffered, because missing in action!" ("Deffered" is spelt incorrectly - there should only be one "f", but there should be two "r"s. If the quotation spells it incorrectly, then it is fine to keep it like that though, of course).
• Keep up the good work. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 13:24, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks! I addressed your comments! MisterBee1966 (talk) 14:23, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Nick-D

As a quick comment, is there any reason why the number of these medals awarded in 1945 was so high? - 194 in just over four months of fighting is a much higher rate than any of the previous years of the war (had the war lasted throughout 1945 and medals continued to be awarded at this rate there would have been about 582 recipients). I presume that this is related to some combination of a) Germany's dire situation leading to particularly intense fighting and b) awarding medals was a means of motivating continued resistance, but is there a reference which explains this? It's notable that the number of medals awarded in each year of the war steadily increased. Nick-D (talk) 01:37, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Interesting question! Both Fritjof Schaulen and Gordon Williamson also mention this in their respective books without going into much detail. The conclusion is somewhat similar in nature and they both attribute this to the increasing number of opportunities for individuals to distinguish themselves. A key milestone here is the Normandy Invasion. Historians discussing the question of ending the war in July 1944 (20 July Plot) often point to the fact that roughly half of the German losses during World War II were sustained after 20 July 1944. If this is indicative of the intensity of combat than number of medals presented and German casualties are in the same order of magnitude, roughly half before and half after 20 July 1944. MisterBee1966 (talk) 09:03, 3 July 2011 (UTC)