Talk:Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118

Spelling

May be we should decide which spelling to use for this article? At the moment the title is complete nonsense: "Batallion" does not exist neither in English nor in German.

German: Bataillon

English: Battalion

Best regards from Kiev

--C.G. (talk) 08:25, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

It is an English encyclopedia, so we should use English. However, the name is German so the title is correct. For example we do have an article called Luftwaffe. JunoBeach (talk) 21:30, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

The village of Valdahon (French postal code 25800) is wrongly spelt "Valderharn" in this artile. (Where "some members made contact with the French partisans from FFI, etc..."

Formation

The main source on the formation of the battalion is: Per A. Rudling, "Terror and Local Collaboration in Occupied Belorussia: The Case of Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118. Part One: Background" Historical Yearbook of the Nicolae Iorga History Institute (Bucharest) 8 (2011), p.202-203

This says: "All in all, the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118 came to include about 500 men, divided into three companies, each comprising three platoons." (page 202)

• 1st Coy: "The third company of Battalion 115, consisting of about 100 men, was transformed into the first company of Battalion 118" (page 202)
• 2nd & 3rd Coy: "while Soviet POWs, primarily from eastern Ukraine, constituted its second and third companies" (page 202)

"Among the people incorporated into the Schutzmannschaft Battalions 115 and 118 were Ukrainian participants in the September 29 Babyn Yar massacre." (page 202)

"It appears that the first company was the most active part of the battalion,and consisted mostly of nationalists from Western Ukraine." (page 203)

I do not see any word that justifies the article calling the first company of Battalion 118 "elite".-- Toddy1 (talk) 10:12, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

It seems that the first company's first platoon was considered the elite of the whole battalion:

"It appears that the first company was the most active part of the battalion, and consisted mostly of nationalists from Western Ukraine.⁵³ Within the first company, the first platoon, led by Volodymyr Katriuk, constituted the elite of the battalion.⁵⁴ Most of the accounts from the processes against Meleshko, Vasiura, and Katriuk emphasize the role of the first and third companies as active, whereas there is little mentioning of the second company, which appeared to have been assigned primarily logistical tasks.⁵⁵" (pages 203-204)

--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:12, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Ethnic composition

Rudling writes: At this point, its membership was not exclusively Ukrainian, as it contained many Russians and Belarusians (p. 203).

the following note says: «the majority was, however, Ukrainian».