Talk:Schutzstaffel/Archive 8

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Reversion without explanation

So, I made this, very small, revision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Schutzstaffel&diff=prev&oldid=977080556

(If there's a better way to cite a revision, please educate me.)

This was reverted by kierzek (talk · contribs) with the comment "rv not an improvement and not accurate as revised." I re-reverted this with the request that they explain what I got wrong. No response, but after a short delay, I was reverted again by Obenritter (talk · contribs) with "not an improvement".

I don't see either of the reversions as being made in good faith, but if I do another re-revert it's an edit war. So, one more time: please explain your reversions. What facts do I have wrong? Why is this change not an improvement? --Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 20:14, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Whenever something has been written with concision, and you add more verbiage (increase the character count), it is generally not considered an improvement. That is why both Kierzek and I reverted your edit. What have you changed that is so significant or can you explain "why" the edit you made is better than the previous version?--Obenritter (talk) 22:21, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

I explained in my edit comment: I added an important fact. Omission is not concision.Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 02:03, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Your edit ignores the first sentences of the next paragraph entirely (which already contain information on the "military" element) and so it does not improve anything. Read the entire opening again and you'll see that you added pointless verbiage. Here are the follow-up sentences that open the paragraph: "The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS (General SS) and Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of combat units within Nazi Germany's military."--Obenritter (talk) 02:07, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, TFT the SS was military is repeated further down. So is the fact that the SS was originally paramilitary. Do we leave that out of the introductory graph too? Here's my point: "The SS was a paramilitary organization" is not strictly true. It started out as a purely paramilitary organization, but it eventually fielded 38 divisions of not-paramilitary soldiers. So when you introduce it as a "paramilitary organization" without qualification, you're saying something untrue, even if you correct yourself later on. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 02:22, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

@GeneralizationsAreBad:@Kierzek:@K.e.coffman:@Diannaa:@Beyond My Ken:@Nick-D: So the editor above raises an interesting point. Do we need to tweak the introductory paragraph with this in mind? --Obenritter (talk) 15:12, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

I reverted because of the vague and ambiguous statement that “elements” of the SS were military; that is not a correct statement. It’s also redundant and not as well written as to what is stated in the second lead paragraph. I believe the second paragraph states clearly that one branch of the SS, that being the Waffen-SS (not the SS as a whole or the other two main branches or additional subbranches) was composed of “combat units” (although it cannot be forgotten that the Waffen-SS made up mobile killing squads and also rotated in and out of concentration camps and death camps); even the Waffen-SS predecessor, the SS-VT cannot strictly be said to be composed of military troops, by definition. Kierzek (talk) 17:37, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Their main function was not as military units. Their main duties were concentration camps, security, and genocide operations. The Waffen-SS were a separate military force outside of the regular army and under Himmler's control. — Diannaa (talk) 19:02, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree. the SS was primarily a paramilitary organization, not a military one. The existence of the Waffen-SS does not make the SS in its entirety a military organization, any more than the existence of the U.S. Postal Police makes the U.S. Postal Service a police agency. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:07, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Where did I say the SS was "primarily military"? My only point is that it was an important military entity. With 800,000 soldiers, the Waffen-SS was 40% of the personnel of the SS as a whole. (Incidentally, Postal Inspectors are 0.3% of the USPS.) They deployed 1200 tanks. If it still existed, the Waffen-SS would be the 6th-largest army on the planet. § Please look at my proposed change. I'm asking that the SS be categorized as both paramilitary (its original role, and the role of 60% of its people during the war) and as an important military entity during the war. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 23:30, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

The edit in question does not reflect contemporary historiography and appears to have been inspired by "watching an SS-centric episode of Combat!" (see edit summary: [1]). Combat! was a TV show that ran in the 1960s. It would be more helpful if Isaac Rabinovitch brought some contemporary academic sources for discussion vs basing his suggestions on personal opinions. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:35, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

"Scholarship"? I'm not introducing any new facts. I'm making an extremely small change presentation that makes the facts easier to follow. Two important notes:

• • • I used to write technical documentation for a living. In that job, I learned that how you present and organized facts is as important as including all the facts. An essential fact that's buried in dense prose gets missed. (If you look at my contribution history you'll see that most of them are informed by this concept.) Note that organization is what separates a GA-class article from an A-class article. Which is required if you want a Featured article. Aren't these worth aspiring to?
    • Where did I treat that TV show as source material? Using my reference to argue "bad scholarship" is not a good-faith argument. I mentioned it only to indicate the way I came to this subject. Consider that a lot of Wikipedia readers come here to satisfy curiosity about subjects they first heard of on a TV show, or a movie, or fiction. How many of you developed an interest in military history from reading military fiction?

The only subject we should be arguing about is whether my change makes the article easier to read. On that note, I've incorporated some of the feedback I've gotten on a revised revision. To avoid the edit-war thing, I've done so on my sandbox page. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 06:27, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

The edit in the sandbox proposes the addition of the material marked in bold:

...was a major paramilitary and military organization...Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany, with both paramilitary and military components. From the time of the Nazi Party’s rise to power until the regime’s collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe, as well as a formidable military force.

The Waffen-SS was a subsidiary organization. The information about the military units already is covered in the second paragraph of the lead. If we're going to mention it at all in the opening paragraph of the lead, it certainly doesn't need to be there thrice. Suggestion: include the middle one: "Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany, with both paramilitary and military components."— Diannaa (talk) 21:37, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Forgive me for neglecting this issue. Perhaps its just as well that every had time to get calmer. Anyway, I think I have a concise summary we can all live with on my sandbox page. To expedite further discussion, I'm giving everyone who reads this permission to edit the text on my sandbox page. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 04:46, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

The SS was not "within the government"; it was not part of the government. You've omitted the fact that it also existed during the Weimar Republic. And you've omitted mention of WWII, which might seem obvious to us but will not necessarily be obvious to young people studying the subject for the first time. We don't need to wikilink common words such as "police" and "military" - everybody knows what those words mean. Overall, the prose is not as good as I would expect to see in a Good Article, particularly the final sentence of your first paragraph. To sum up, I don't see the proposed edit as an improvement; it's the opposite of an improvement in my opinion, because the prose isn't as good, some key facts are omitted, and part of it is incorrect (the SS was not "within the government").— Diannaa (talk) 13:28, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Concur with @Diannaa:. The suggested editorial changes are not an improvement in any way. --Obenritter (talk) 19:32, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Sigh. Folks, you all know what I'm trying to do here: correct a statement that is simply not true: "The SS was a paramilitary organization." That's what it was at first, but at the height of its power, the SS fielded 900,000 soldiers (real soldiers, not paramilitaries) and 100,000 police/security officers. § How about instead of obstructing and objecting, some do some actual collaboration? Suggest wording that corrects this not-true state with something that is. Please. It's probably just a matter of reworking that not-true sentence, but I can't seem to find a way to do that doesn't provoke an edit war. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 04:41, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the consensus is against your changes here. Instead of trying to change/edit an article that is in good shape, maybe consider working on the many ones that need citations and bolstering. For some reason, you are convinced of something that none of us agree with in the end. We've collaborated and you just don't like the outcome. --Obenritter (talk) 14:31, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

In fact his point is legitime, we should avoid inaccueacies if it may be solved easily, per common sense.(KIENGIR (talk) 17:46, 23 October 2020 (UTC))

As has been clearly pointed out, there’s no inaccuracy to say the SS was a paramilitary organization. The overall organization was (primarily) paramilitary. The one subsidiary branch, the Waffen-SS was the military branch. It was under the organization and control of the mother organization, the SS, which again was paramilitary. Kierzek (talk) 18:00, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

So there were both paramiliitary and non-paramilitary sections. "(primarily) paramilitary" does not mean exclusivity of the latter, even such may differ per period, so sharing the concerns is valid.(KIENGIR (talk) 22:48, 23 October 2020 (UTC))

No, that is not what I wrote and that is not what I’m saying. Read what I wrote above on September 8, there’s no reason for me to repeat myself. Kierzek (talk) 23:35, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

I did not say you say it. I read, for me this comes through: "..cannot strictly be said to be composed.."(KIENGIR (talk) 00:30, 24 October 2020 (UTC))

Revert message: Staffel is not typically translated as "echelon"

Wrong. https://www.britannica.com/topic/SS

Not going to die on this hill. Obenritter's insistence on using "literally" here is illiterately non-concise and makes the article look dumb. "Literally" is used when the literal translation wouldn't make sense in English. See Idiom#Translating_idioms.

For an example of correct usage, see Leck mich im Arsch. (I did try to find a less spicy example, but couldn't find one. Please try not to be offended.)

But "literally" is not misleading, it's just dumb. (Unlike "Paramilitary".) So I'm not going to treat it as a life-or-death issue. But please consider how silly it would look to put "literally" in front of every direct translation in the article.

And in fact, I made this edit to make a point: Obenritter is not interested in collaboration. If he were, *he* would be the one creating this section. He wouldn't keep hiding behind the word "consensus," when there clearly is none. Same goes for Kierzek. Both of them have their opinions and aren't interested in discussing them. Which is why they both initially couldn't be bothered to explain their reverts.

Guys, I'm going to give you a choice: make more of an effort at good-faith collaboration, or defend yourselves when I escalate this. Because I will.Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 23:29, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Soviet-occupied territories

“ On 30 October 1942, due to severe labor shortages, Himmler ordered that large numbers of able-bodied people in the Soviet-occupied territories should be taken prisoner and sent to Germany as forced labor. ”

The reference to "Soviet-occupied territories" (territories under the occupation of Soviet troops) doesn't make sense in this context (since Germany wouldn't have any authority in territories not under their control). Did the writer mean to say German-occupied territories in the Soviet Union? DHN (talk) 00:00, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

•  Fixed Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:55, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Black Guard

Writers in the 1930’s often referred to the SS as the “Black Guards”. This was also the name of their official paper “Das Schwarze Korps” (the Black Guard). Is this an historical reference? It is not an obvious translation of “Schutzstaffel”.

The term was fairly well known in any case; see this Time Magazine extract from 1940. http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,883963,00.html Some explanation of this could improve the article. 2A00:23C7:E284:CF00:8C8B:AC7:1936:ACA5 (talk) 00:05, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

The name(s) of the organization are covered in the "Forerunner" section. With the final name being: Schutzstaffel (Protection Squad; SS). I am not sure what you want done. I don't see any reason the add the so-called nickname you mention. Kierzek (talk) 00:15, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

"Das Schwarze Korps" translates as "The Black Corps", not as "The Black Guard". Remember that TIME was noted in its early days for the breeziness of its language, so I don't think we can necessarily assume that "The Black Guards" was in general usage at the time - although it may have been. I certainly don't recall ever having seen the SS referred to in that manner in other sources. Shirer would be the most contemporary to the 1940 TIME article, and he sometimes uses "Blackshirts", but never "Black Guards" in The Rise and Fall.... The same goes for Toland in his 1976 bio of Hitler. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:59, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

"Black Guard" was a slang term that rarely appears in any academic RS but more frequently appears in fan-boy works or at least those who seem to idolize the Nazis, like that from Chris Ailsby, Robin Lumsden, or Gordon Williamson. There are periodic references from 20 years ago or more (not much in scholarly sources either way), but given the moniker is now rarely employed in describing them -- perhaps with the exception of documentaries that use such language sometimes for dramatic effect, there is no reason to include it. We should stick to the accepted academic reference for the SS in my opinion. --Obenritter (talk) 20:59, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional info. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:28, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Paramilitary organization issue AGAIN

To the attention of Diannaa, Beyond My Ken, Kierzek, K.e.coffman, and @Nick-D: The user Isaac Rabinovitch has placed an illegitimate tag on the word "paramilitary" in the lead and threatened my reversion as an "edit war" despite the fact that this has already been discussed by this group and it ignores the fact that an RS, namely, (Sax, Benjamin C., Kuntz, Dieter. Inside Hitler's Germany: A Documentary History of Life in the Third Reich. Heath, 1992) describes the organization as "paramilitary" on p. 329, among others. Any additional thoughts about this? This is repeat behavior. --Obenritter (talk) 11:44, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Currently the consensus is that the sources back up the statement that the SS was primarily a paramilitary organization. Their primary function was rounding up and killing Jews and operating/guarding the concentration camps. Only one branch, the Waffen-SS, was composed of military units. I have placed a note on Isaac Rabinovitch's talk page inviting him to visit this talk page to discuss.— Diannaa (talk) 12:02, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

That's a pretty ignorant statement. Even the paramilitary component had responsibilities beyond Jewish genocide. ¶ As I've already pointed out, the SS at its height consisted mostly of military assets (the Waffen SS) and police (they controlled every cop in Germany). I'm really getting tired of responding to people who don't read my arguments. ¶ Adding a tag is meant to make people aware of the argument, some of whom will hopefully pay attention to my arguments before responding to them. ¶ Finally, responding in this way to good-faith edits is itself the worst kind of edit warring. ¶ I lack any inclination to continue an argument against closed minds. But it's past time that you folks learned that bullying people into silence is not consensus. --Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 19:27, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, the consensus is per the RS sources that the SS was primarily a paramilitary organization. There is no reason for a change as to the use of the word "paramilitary" herein or for a "drive-by tag" to be placed on the article as to same. Kierzek (talk) 12:32, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Just to make my statement crystal clear, "rounding up and killing Jews and operating/guarding concentration camps" are NOT military activities. — Diannaa (talk) 12:38, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Consensus agrees with fact: the SS was primarily a paramilitary organization. Saying otherwise is profoundly ahistorical. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:57, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks folks, just wanted to be sure I was not missing something. --Obenritter (talk) 13:09, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Be advised, Diannaa, Beyond My Ken, and Kierzek, we've been identified below in a dispute. We should also note this editor's threats against Kierzek and I on this very Talk Page with the matter or "literally" concerning the translation of "Staffel" as if we deliberately misrepresented the word, atop his claim that we're both uncooperative editors; it's clear a pattern exists. Either he/she gets their way or else. Also consider the example this editor chose (Leck mich im Arsch) instead of something less offensive like "Drücken wir die Daumen" as part of that Discussion (prefaced by an assertion that we should not be offended). Let's ensure that gets addressed too. --Obenritter (talk) 21:52, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

I've taken this to the dispute resolution noticeboard. Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Schutzstaffel — Preceding unsigned comment added by Isaac Rabinovitch 21:20, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

@Obenritter:, my apologies for this edit, in which I inadvertently added an "unsigned" comment misattributing a post to you that wasn't yours. The original "unsig" content was generated by the "Unsigned helper script" in my common.js; I'll have to issue a bug report for that, or otherwise figure out what went wrong. Diannaa, thanks very much for this correction; I've also now corrected the timestamp as well. (Pinging Anomie while it's fresh.) Mathglot (talk) 01:09, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the consensus above that "paramilitary" is clearly supported by the sources.

This should not have been taken to DRN in the first place, and I consider that a form of WP:BLUDGEONing the process. Moderator Robert McClenon has described the DRN as a one-against-many dispute, and I concur. That DRN is doomed, and will likely be closed soon if not withdrawn.

In my opinion, User:Isaac Rabinovitch should now drop it and move on to something else. I would consider further advocacy on their part on this topic as WP:DISRUPTIVE to the goals of the project. Mathglot (talk) 19:24, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

You seem to be unable, or unwilling to see the landscape, here. In response to my neutrally worded comment at your Talk page that you (incorrectly) characterized as "patronizing", you claimed that I said that you were "wrong" (I didn't), and requested that I "Actually read and respond to my points." Okay, then; I hadn't planned to pile on since the consensus seems more than clear already; however, since you insist:

Per your request: a response to your points.

Reliable sources commonly and frequently refer to the SS as a "paramilitary" organization. "Himmler... head of the SS (Schutzstaffel, paramilitary elite corps from 1929...)" "SS Schutzstaffel (paramilitary organization within the German Nazi Party)" "Heartfield escaped the Schutzstaffel (SS, the Nazi's paramilitary organization)" "In 1943, the notorious Nazi paramilitary organization, the SS (Schutzstaffel), took greater control of the rocket program" "Weeks earlier, two members of the brutal Nazi paramilitary force called the Schutzstaffel, or SS, ..." "SS Schutzstaffel (Hitler's personal bodyguards that became an elite Nazi paramilitary organization)" "SS Schutzstaffel: paramilitary and security organization of the NSDAP" "SS Schutzstaffel (Nazi paramilitary force)" "...essentially the Intelligence Service of the paramilitary Schutzstaffel or SS" "SS Schutzstaffel (paramilitary elite formations of the NSDAP" "SS Schutzstaffel (paramilitary and security organization of Nazi Party)" "SS Schutzstaffel (paramilitary Nazi organization)" "The SS was the dreaded paramilitary organization that was later held responsible..." References

If you'd like another dozen or two in German as well, try this search. Hope this helps. Mathglot (talk) 22:28, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Mathglot No worries - thanks for letting me know and for weighing in nicely on this subject. Hope you are well.--Obenritter (talk) 10:10, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

The matter has now been closed at the dispute resolution noticeboard. See Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Schutzstaffel. Which was the correct result based on the WP:RS sources and consensus reached herein. Kierzek (talk) 13:42, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Child organisation

I think the child organisation on the table actually refers to subsidiary organisations/daughter organisations. At first I thought it was referring to Hitler-Jugend, Hitler youth and it's sister organisation but then I realized it might be referring to subsidiary organisations. Am I wrong or shall I change the name to daughter organisations? LostCitrationHunter (talk) 20:09, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

The description is coming from the infobox template Template:Infobox government agency. I think it's clear enough already, with "Parent agency" organization directly above. I am not sure why "daughter agency" would be clearer than "child agency". — Diannaa (talk) 20:17, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I believe it should remain as it is, it is clear in its description. Kierzek (talk) 01:49, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Well I didn't know it was a ready made standard template, but I believe if we are referring to subsidiaries of the SS, then the phrase "Child Organization" is not a common one/doesn't exist. It does not appear as a synonym on the Wikipedia page Subsidiary either. Also Diana, you would think that the opposite of a "parent organization" would be a "child organization" but unfortunately English is like that.LostCitrationHunter (talk) 06:41, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

"Subsidiary" would be a better descriptor but the template does not have a parameter by that name, and it does not give us the option to create our own fields. If you wish to make suggestions about the template, the place to go is Template talk:Infobox government agency.— Diannaa (talk)

Thanks Diannaa, will do!--LostCitrationHunter (talk) 16:13, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 12 November 2021

"The Schutzstaffel (SS; also stylized as ᛋᛋ with Armanen runes; German pronunciation: [ˈʃʊtsˌʃtafl̩] (About this soundlisten); "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany" This line is incorrect due to the fact that the SS did not operate under the Nazi Party but under Adolf Hitler alone. They were made an independent organization sometime around June 1934 and only being subordinate to Adolf Hitler himself. The Holocaust encyclopedia states this "As a reward for its role in murdering Ernst Röhm and the top leadership of the SA on June 30-July 2, 1934, Hitler announced that the SS was an independent organization. SS chief Himmler was now subordinate to Hitler in Hitler's new capacity as Führer (leader) of Germany." https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ss CrazzyCharger (talk) 04:50, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:13, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

ScottishFinnishRadish Change "The Schutzstaffel (SS; also stylized as ᛋᛋ with Armanen runes; German pronunciation: [ˈʃʊtsˌʃtafl̩] (About this soundlisten); "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany" to "The Schutzstaffel (SS; also stylized as ᛋᛋ with Armanen runes; German pronunciation: [ˈʃʊtsˌʃtafl̩] (About this soundlisten); "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany" is most probably what he wanted. The user CrazzyCharger argues that SS is an independant organisation that is not under the Nazi party, but under Hitlers command. He has also provided an evidence, although I won't judge on its credibility. The rest of the discussion, I am leaving it to the veteran editors--LostCitrationHunter (talk) 16:24, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll leave that to editors more experienced in this topic area. I will say that the article currently says Over time the SS became answerable only to Hitler, a development typical of the organizational structure of the entire Nazi regime, where legal norms were replaced by actions undertaken under the Führerprinzip (leader principle), where Hitler's will was considered to be above the law. The requested information is covered in the article. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 28 March 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) Sceptre (talk) 19:45, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

---

Schutzstaffel → SS – We currently have SS as a redirect to this page, though the WP:COMMONNAME among both academic and popular literature appears to be "SS". Searching Google Scholar, we see nearly 18x greater results for the search "SS Nazi" than we see for "Schutzstaffel". With respect to the WP:CRITERIA:

1. The proposed title is more recognizable than the current title for someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the topic. More English speakers familiar with Nazi Germany will recognize the term "SS" than the term "Schutzstaffel".
2. The proposed title is more natural than the current title; that is, the title is one that readers are more likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. It conveys what the group is usually called in English.
3. Both the proposed title and current title are precise, since they refers to this particular Nazi group.
4. The proposed title is more concise than the current title, though both are concise.
5. There is no topic-specific naming convention for Nazi paramilitary groups, as far as I can find, though subdivisions of the SS tend to use "SS" in their title rather than Schutzstaffel.

In light of this, the WP:COMMONNAME of the group (SS) appears to be a superior title to the current title. I therefore propose that this page be moved. — Mhawk10 (talk) 20:34, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Survey

• Oppose. The proposed title will WP:ASTONISH readers attempting to locate topics related to the use of "SS" for a prefix related to ships. The current title works better per WP:NATURAL. (In fact, I'd almost believe that SS (disambiguation) should move to SS, but in lieu of doing research to back up this claim [and the lack of desire for wanting to do so], I'll refrain from suggesting that for now.) Steel1943 (talk) 22:52, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

  Upon further review, in addition, move SS (disambiguation) to SS. Google in book returns a mix of results for this topic, the ship topic, and the Chevrolet SS. Also, apparently in the US, the first topic named "SS" that can show up in search engines is Social Security (United States). I'm no longer seeing evidence that the current setup is to the benefit of our readers. Steel1943 (talk) 16:43, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  Setting aside the likely low number of people looking for SS specifically in the context of ships, where does astonishment come in when SS already redirects to this page? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]}

  The astonishment is in the title itself. Let's say a reader who has never heard of the subject which SS points to (like me) looks up/clicks "SS" and arrives at the target article expecting to find something about ships. (The reader will arrive at this article regardless which name it has since "SS" is currently considered to primarily refer to this article.) If the article is titled "SS", it could take the reader a bit to realize that the article is not about ships, and may possibly even get confused and think the ship term either originated or is exclusive to the subject of this article due to the article title; the reader would then have to read the article a bit to figure out this is not the article they were intending to find. However, in the current setup, with SS redirecting to Schutzstaffel, it could immediately be clear to the reader they did not arrive at the subject which they were intending to find, and then they would go to SS (disambiguation) to locate an article about ships. Having the full, WP:NATURAL name of the subject as the article title prevents unnecessary time wasting and confusion by almost immediately making it clear what the subject is not, which provides service/utility to our readers. Steel1943 (talk) 15:17, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  You lost me at never hearing of the SS. Mind boggled. Have you not seen any films or TV shows set in Germany during WWII? Read any WWII books or watch any WWII documentaries? I thought knowledge of the SS was ubiquitous among educated English speakers. —В²C ☎ 16:58, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  I'd have to believe the reason for that is both only being taught the generalities of the concepts of Nazi, WWII, and the Holocaust when I was in school/college/university, and my interest in proactively learning about war history is next to nil. I'm probably not an outlier, but as seen here, in regards to the present participation in this discussion, I currently look like one. Steel1943 (talk) 17:07, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  Okay, not that it matters. The standard for assessing recognizability is anyone familiar with the topic, which SS definitely meets and Schutzstaffel doesn’t even come close. Avoiding ASTONISH is desirable but not at the cost of compromising CRITERIA, especially to the extent involved in this case. ASTONISH is not relevant enough to consider in title decision-making to even be mentioned at WP:AT. Again, opposers here seem to be looking for reasons to justify opposing, but coming up empty, especially in juxtaposition to one of the strongest nom arguments I’ve ever seen. It’s not even addressed by opposers, much less refuted. —В²C ☎ 17:49, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  "The standard for assessing recognizability is anyone familiar with the topic" ...That's not necessarily true, especially in this case where the proposed title is a two-letter acronym used for other topics entirely unrelated to this topic. In fact, the aforementioned quoted statement reads like a WP:NOTFANDOM violation since it seems to claim Wikipedia is geared towards one subject/field in the world, and doesn't take everything into consideration. SS (disambiguation) exists because there are other topics which could reasonably be called "SS", so from this perspective, in the absence of moving SS (disambiguation) to SS, any other title than "SS" (within reason [such as the current title], of course) would best serve this article so readers who are unfamiliar with this topic do not think they have arrived at the topic they were looking for when searching for something called "SS". So yes, WP:ASTONISH applies, regardless of where the disambiguation page is located and since those unfamiliar with this topic will clearly know if they arrived at their intended article after looking for "SS" by almost the current title alone rather than have to read through the article to figure it out. Steel1943 (talk) 18:16, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  So, not only are you unfamiliar with the SS, you also appear to be unfamiliar with WP:AT, particularly what WP:CRITERIA says about recognizability, and WP:D, particularly WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, which seem to violate your unorthodox interpretation of NOTFANDOM and belief it applies here. I’m at a loss in how to discuss appropriate titles on WP with someone who ignores or dismisses the applicable policies and guidelines. I encourage you to read WP:AT and WP:D, carefully, if you choose to weigh in on RM discussions. Good luck to you. —В²C ☎ 23:38, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  No reason for the mild personal attacks, but to the point, WP:AT and WP:D and all other alphabet soup shortcuts about article titles are my bread and butter here since I don't write articles. You are choosing to focus on different policies than I am, and since this is Wikipedia and a lot of policies on here contradict each other, everyone is free to choose what they believe makes more sense than others whenever necessary, just like we are both choosing to do. Good day. Steel1943 (talk) 23:46, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  Policies and guidelines like AT and D that govern particular areas of WP, like title-decision-making in this case, are supposed to be consistent with the pillars and broad policies like NOTFANDOM of WP:NOT. If you believe they’re in violation, then that’s an issue to take up at the respective talk page and see if there is any consensus about that. In the mean time we must presume compliance, not just ignore the applicable policies and guideline and make up creative arguments based on the more general. Ignoring or dismissing AT and D guidance in an RM discussion, as you’ve demonstrated and just now rationalized, is just epitomizing WP:LAWYERING. Please stop. —В²C ☎ 00:00, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

  I'd recommend reading WP:DROPTHESTICK and move on to something else. Steel1943 (talk) 00:51, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

• Note the three previous failed move discussions: Talk:Schutzstaffel/Archive 1#Page move Nov 2004; Talk:Schutzstaffel/Archive 2#Requested move (2005); Talk:Schutzstaffel/Archive 5#Requested move 5 June 2015. I have listed this discussion at WT:MILHIST. — Diannaa (talk) 23:56, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose The proposed title is not "precise", unlike the current one. SS can refer to a lot of things, which is why we have a disambiguation page. Concision in this case makes the title less precise. Also see arguments made against this move in the three previous RMs. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:10, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
  • The WP:PRECISION hurdle for SS is met here since the topic of the article has been deemed to be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of SS which is a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to this article. There is no requirement nor expectation for more precision than that. It seems like opposition is scraping for reasons to oppose, and coming up empty… —В²C ☎ 15:10, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support per WP:COMMONNAME, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and WP:RECOGNIZABILITY. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:17, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per Peacemaker67's argument. "SS (Nazi)" maybe more precise than only "SS", but it's not significantly better than current name. Ckfasdf (talk) 02:01, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Strong support: "Schutzstaffel" violates multiple provisions in our article titles policy (not a guideline). First, it's not a name people even familiar with the war will recognize. Out of everything I've read, I can't think of a single work of Second World War history that uses the full name over SS. Second, it's not a natural search term for readers. A vanishingly small percentage of people will actually type this name into a search box. Finally, it's not the most concise title. I'd also argue that SS is the most precise title, but I'm open to open to arguments on better titles of the "SS (to be determined)" variety. (Organization, perhaps?) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 03:05, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per others; there is legitimate grounds for confusion with plenty of other stuff. As for acronyms, SS redirects here, but in the same way that FBI redirects to Federal Bureau of Investigation (or give any of plenty other examples of organisations which are well known by an acronym, or any other subject of any kind which might be abbreviated), that is not preferred encyclopedic usage. The argument on concision is not really convincing here: the intent is avoiding stuff which is ridiculously verbose, which is not the case with the current variant. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:24, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
  • The intent of concision is “avoiding stuff which is ridiculously verbose”? Um, no. And this unknown and unrecognizable German name is ridiculously long relative to the much better known SS anyway. So even with your made up high concision hurdle, SS wins. −В²C ☎ 05:12, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Strong Support per COMMONNAME, recognizability, naturalness, precision and concision. These are all obvious. The only criteria challenged is precision but that’s silly. The proposed title is already a primary redirect to here; that means it meets precision, by definition. Also regarding the ship name prefix, that topic doesn’t even have its own article. The current title is virtually UNrecognizable (unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation cited above as if it’s comparable). Similarly SS is the natural name for this topic. In English it’s the only name used commonly to refer to this topic. Certainly the current title is not. And of course the proposed title is more concise. Not sure about consistency, but that’s the only one of the five criteria that might not necessarily favor the proposed title. But there’s no strong consistency-based argument favoring the current title either. So that’s moot. −В²C ☎ 05:12, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose, as the current title is far more encyclopedic. It is also consistent with Sturmabteilung. BilledMammal (talk) 05:23, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
  • ”More encyclopedic” is not one of the WP:CRITERIA. If you think it should be take it up at WT:AT. Good luck with that because there is no community consensus support for that. ——В²C ☎ 06:44, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose Based on a quick survey of other articles about organizations almost exclusively discussed using their acronyms, I'm not seeing a conclusive consensus on whether the acronym or the full title should be preferred in other similar cases. On one camp, we have Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), United States Department of Defense (DoD), Sturmabteilung (SA), Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW). On the other hand, there's NASA and DARPA. The argument that WP:CONCISE should be interpreted as meaning that acronyms/initialisms should be preferred over full titles, even when short, seems extreme and I'm not seeing evidence that it's a consensus view. Even if it was a consensus stance, this appears to be a most excellent case for the use of natural disambiguation. If something's to be done, I'd be inclined to move SS (disambiguation) to SS. -Ljleppan (talk) 07:38, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  Your quick survey of titles of articles about organizations with very well-known full names is inapplicable to this virtually unknown German full name of the topic of this article. Except for DARPA and NASA, but they support the CONSISTENCY argument that does apply here: use the more CONCISE acronym when it’s better-known than the relatively obscure full name. No one is arguing for this move due to CONCISE alone. Note that’s it’s only one of the five WP:CRITERIA addressed by the excellent argument presented in the nomination, something all the opposers are completely ignoring. В²C ☎ 14:10, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  "virtually unknown" is rather stretching it, as the term would be very much be familiar to anyone even casually interested in the military history of the time period. It's good that we are in agreement that the conciseness-argument is very flawed in this case: "Schutzstaffel" is already extremely concise and there is clearly no requirement for the term to be the most concise, given that plenty longer titles are used over initialisms. As for the other arguments (naturalness etc), they must be balanced against the need to disambiguate. "Schutzstaffel" provides us with a clear, unambiguous, natural and well established term that achieves the necessary disambiguation naturally. This is far from a clear-cut case in my view, in such cases I'm inclined to retain the status quo. - Ljleppan (talk) 15:19, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  Even as a person extremely interested in military history, what I'd expect to happen upon typing in "SS" into a search bar is to see a disambiguation page along the lines of "do you mean the shipping thing or the nazi thing?" That's why I'm a proponent of moving SS (disambiguation) to SS. Ljleppan (talk) 15:24, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  I am someone who is familiar with World War II. I've even written a biography article of a veteran of the war who was captured by the SS. Even being more familiar with the war than the average person, I could not tell you the full name of this group until about one day ago. My hunch would be that most anglophones who are familiar with the history at this time don't actually know the German-language name of the SS. — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:00, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

• Support per Common name, etc. Regarding the survey above, the difference is that the full name where is German and not helpful to the reader, unlike "Central Intelligence Agency", etc. While OKW vs Oberkommando der Wehrmacht doesn't matter as this is a niche group and full name could help with the context. SS, however, is vastly more common than Schutzstaffel. Everyone knows SS, nobody knows what Schutzstaffel is (was...). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:26, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Question/Comment — Why does it have to be either or? Do the policies allow for "Schutzstaffel (SS)" or "SS (Schutzstaffel)"? MisterBee1966 (talk) 11:48, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  No. Parentheses are for disambiguation and no disambiguation is required here. SS is already a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to this article, therefore it’s the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for “SS”, which means it requires no disambiguation. And of course the current title is unique, which also means no disambiguation. Adding either parenthetic qualification here would be “unnecessary disambiguation”, and contrary to guidance at WP:D as well as WP:CONCISE and WP:PRECISION. —В²C ☎ 13:59, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  Using those titles is like saying "SS (SS)" or "Schutzstaffel (Schutzstaffel)", which is confusing since the disambiguator serves no purpose since it refers to the same subject as the part of the title that is not the disambiguator. Steel1943 (talk) 16:45, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

• Support. Very clear common name and the first thing anyone would think of if they heard SS, hence the primary redirect that already exists. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:14, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose, we should stay WP:CONSISTENT with Sturmabteilung ~BappleBusiness^[talk] 18:07, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  I think there's a difference: SA is a disambiguation page, which implies that Sturmabteilung is not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for that. On the other hand SS is a redirect to Schutzstaffel, which implies that the Nazi group is the primary topic. I'm not convinced by consistency arguments that have been presented; the extent to which they support the current title is quite weak. — Mhawk10 (talk) 19:22, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. I disagree that the ambiguous "SS" (The ship prefix? The military group? etc.) is either more recognizable or more precise than the current unique and recognizable title "Schutzstaffel"; indeed the opposite seems more likely. I agree with Steel1943 that we should move the SS disambiguation page to SS. ╠╣uw [talk] 20:15, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose I'd also equally think of the ship prefix when hearing "SS". Renaming the article to it would be even more confusing. Move the disambiguation page to it instead. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 20:25, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Comment: I posted a notice of this discussion at Talk:SS (disambiguation) to give any potential watchers of SS (disambiguation) the opportunity and/or notice to participate in this discussion, considering SS (disambiguation) has been referenced multiple times during this discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 20:32, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support – the data seem to strongly support the conclusion that the Nazi regimental meaning of SS dwarfs all other meanings including ships and others. When it appears in the title of reliable sources such as books and articles in academic journals, the term SS occurs at levels between 50 and 250 times more frequently than Schutzstaffel does. See #Discussion. Mathglot (talk) 04:11, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

• Listed at: WikiProjects Organizations, Politics, and Germany. Mathglot (talk) 04:46, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support In the anglophone world it is known as SS. Venkat TL (talk) 07:09, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose, I'm not convinced that this is the primary topic for SS outside of war and history related discussions (where it clearly is), and going forward, likely going to become less prominent. Current title is unique and precise, and likely to stay that way. —Kusma (talk) 08:48, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

• Support, per COMMONNAME and recognisability. --K.e.coffman (talk) 11:37, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per Gretzky and Obama. Full names are better for article titles, especially since one of the first things you will need to learn when looking up the SS is what SS stands for. Srnec (talk) 02:25, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
  • And yet: Cher, Charo, Lorde and Madonna. What’s the distinction? Usage in reliable sources. If the topic is commonly introduced in RS with the short name, and rarely if ever with the long name, then we use the short name as the title. And that’s the case here. —В²C ☎ 00:15, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
• Support per Mathglot's analysis. The SA article is probably at the wrong title; in my experience most sources don't spell out the German name. (t · c) buidhe 06:04, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose, this is the organisation's official name and more precise. It is not unknown to all readers, and for ones where it is, the abbreviation for the organisation (SS) currently redirects here anyway. Wikipedia is to educate common readers. And with the organisation’s abbreviation redirecting to this article page, then the argument for changing the name of the article from the actual name, should be moot. Kierzek (talk) 16:15, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

  It is not unknown to all readers is exactly the wrong way to approach the WP:CRITERIA. Anybody from Germany/who speaks German is going to recognize that name. But people who have no understanding of the German language (i.e. the vast majority of anglophones) are not going to be familiar with it, even if they know of the crimes of the SS during the Holocaust. I've yet to see anybody credibly argue that the current name is one that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize. And, per WP:AT, article titles are written using the English language, which this word is not quite a part of. — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:45, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're basing your claims on, but they're not accurate: I, for instance, do not speak German and am not a WW2 history buff but I was familiar with the name. ╠╣uw [talk] 16:55, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

• Weak Support per common name MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:29, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose. The idea that "Schutzstaffel" is some obscure term is ridiculous. --Eldomtom2 (talk) 14:02, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:ASTONISH. The two letters "SS" refer to so many things that I'm not sure a 75-year-old historical topic is the primary topic. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 19:38, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Yup, because nobody remembers this obscure organisation today! Or, actually, pretty much everyone does! -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:48, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose "SS" should be a disambiguation page. Notably the ship prefix is very high usage. And there are many other uses.-- 65.92.246.142 (talk) 23:52, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Yes, the prefix is heavily used, but usually only before the name of a ship, not on its own. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:48, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose, for whatever my opinion is worth; I would be very surprised if typing in SS directed me to the Schutzstaffel. And I have only an average knowledge of history. --SilverTiger12 (talk) 00:14, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose - Per RandomCanadian, WP:CRITERIA#3 and WP:PRECISION. WikiLinuz {talk} 🍁 00:17, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. The current title is more precise, and anyone looking at "SS" is redirected here. (Anyone looking at "ss" [lower case] is redirected to the disambiguation page). "FBI" is the common name for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but the article resides at the full title. I think the same setup is appropriate for this article. — Diannaa (talk) 19:16, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per [my RM close 2015] Mike Cline (talk) 19:51, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
• Support. SS is far and away the common name for the group. Calidum 02:33, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
• Support per overwhelming WP:COMMONNAME. Also, per MOS:ACROTITLE, it is a clear case of readers somewhat familiar with the subject are likely to only recognise the name by its acronym if there ever was one. Vpab15 (talk) 13:58, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose - This is the actual name of the organization and the "SS" search directs Wikipedia readers here, even if via disambiguation. As a German speaker, I may be bias, but nearly anyone who has read anything academic on the Nazis or the Second World War should know this term.--Obenritter (talk) 19:27, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

  I don't know if in German the full name is widely known or used, but in English it definitely isn't. Vpab15 (talk) 08:29, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:ASTONISH and WP:PRECISION. I agree with others that SS (disambiguation) should be moved to SS. Natg 19 (talk) 17:36, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Really? You think it’s astonishing to have an article about the SS at SS? That is astonishing. —В²C ☎ 03:43, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
• Strong support. Schutzstaffel, never heard of that. See the English bibliography section on this article for reference. Read up any recent English articles, essays about Schutzstaffel. SS is the clear common name for this subject (in English) by a long mile. My name initials are SS, pretty sure no one's searching that when they type in SS at the search box. If I search for SS and get greeted with anything but this German SS, only then would I be actually WP:Surprised. Saying that SS dab be moved to SS is like arguing that NASA stop redirecting to the obvious common name because National Archives of South Africa also happen to be NASA (see NASA dab page). —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • C • L)} 17:57, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

A lot of opinions are made in the #Survey section about how common the terms are, without an attempt to show the evidence. I decided to try some Google searches four ways: on the web, in books, and in academic journals; and ended up with a head-to-head comparison using ngrams. In brief, the results show that the term SS (when it stands for the Schutzstaffel regment) is more common than Schutzstaffel by a couple of orders of magnitude. When looking at all possible meanings of SS, the regiment accounts for only 1/3 of them, but they comprise nearly all of the notable ones—that is, two thirds of "SS" web results are *not* about the regiment, but with the exception of a small sliver about ships, the rest of that large group are about non-notable topics such as model numbers of machine parts, tax form numbers, product serial numbers, and the like (e.g., "Form 941-SS", "40 CFR Subpart SS", etc.). Details follow.

Web search

To ensure that results were about either 'SS' (whatever that might refer to) or 'Schutzstaffel', I requested results where the search terms were included in the article title. Main results: 11-3 in favor of "SS" (regiment) out of the top 50, 2 ships, and 32 irrelevant results:

➢ top 50 web search: intitle:SS OR intitle:Schutzstaffel -wikipedia

• 11 SS
• 3 Schutzstaffel
• 2 Both
• 2 ship
• 32 false pos. and other: (machine parts, tax forms, model numbers, abbreviations, almost all non-notable, e.g. "Form 941-SS", "40 CFR Subpart SS")

Book search

I did a similar search in books. The results are much more heavily in favor of "SS" as the regiment, mostly because there aren't any books with "Form 941-SS" in the title, or the name of some machine part, so all of those dropped out of the results, and we're left with only reliable topics. The basic results were: 48–0 in favor of "SS" over Schutzstaffel, and 1 ship:

➢ top 50 book search: intitle:SS OR intitle:Schutzstaffel:

• 48 SS
• 0 Schutzstaffel
• 0 Both
• 1 ship
• 2 other

Scholar

Trying the same search in Scholar was a surprise: almost all results are false positives, mostly due to genes, antigens, or proteins with names like 'SS-A antigens'. So I added the term "Nazi" to throw out all the genes and proteins and so on. The results in the top 50 are 48 to 2 in favor of "SS":

➢ top 10 Scholar search: "Nazi" AND (intitle:SS OR intitle:Schutzstaffel:

In the top 10 results we have this:

• results 1-10:
  • 10 SS
  • 0 Schutzstaffel
  • 0 Other
• results 11-20: 10/0/0
• results 21-30: 9/1/0
• results 31-40: 10/0/0
• results 41-50: 9/1/0
• results top 50: 48/2/0

Ngrams

A simple ngrams search of SS to Schutzstaffel would be heavily biased in favor of SS due to the genes and so on, so I didn't even try it. Instead, I searched on the bigram SS officer vs. Schutzstaffel officer; the results were about 250 to 1 in favor of SS. (You can try other searches such as 'officer in the SS' vs. 'officer in the Schutzstaffel'; 'member of the SS' vs. 'member of the Schutzstaffel', 'SS members' vs. 'Schutzstaffel members' and so on and they show similar results.)

Note that this head-to-head comparison of the two expressions "SS officer" and "Schutzstaffel officer" in books, Ngrams shows that "SS officer" is more than 250 times mroe common:
➢ (Schutzstaffel officer * 250), SS officer

Note that this ngrams search doesn't say anything about how common the "ship" meaning of "SS" might be compared to the others; this is because it is difficult to devise an ngrams query that would compare the "ship" and the "Nazi officer" meanings of "SS" in one unbiased query, so those comparisons are best left to web search, books, and scholar searches.

Conclusion

My conclusions from these four searches, is that on the web, the Nazi regimental meaning is only about 1/3 of all web pages with SS in the title, but the other 2/3 are non-notable topics like tax forms and machine parts, unlikely ever to be the subject of a Wikipedia article. Among notable topics on the web, the Nazi regimental meaning appears to dwarf other notable meanings, such as ships, by 10 to 1 or more. Academic journals shows about 25 to 1 for SS. Among books (which will never be about machine part model numbers), a head-to-head comparison of SS and Schutzstaffel are 100-200 times more common in books. These data appear to support a conclusion that the Nazi regimental meaning of SS is the WP:COMMONNAME for this topic. Mathglot (talk) 04:07, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

For consistency, what results does this methodology provide when applied to the term "FBI" vs. "Federal Bureau of Investigation"? I suspect that a lot of texts tend to use "SS" in prose as an abbreviation, which makes this methodology suspect. Consider that e.g. our article on Federal Bureau of Investigation has 9 non-references instances of "Federal Bureau of Investigation" and 243 non-references instance of "FBI". If the procedure yields similar results, but there is consensus that "Federal Bureau of Investigation" is to be preferred over "FBI" even if it's both more verbose and has less need to disambiguate, then the method seems flawed. - Ljleppan (talk) 07:01, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment on methodology. The method I chose has to do with trying to discover the most common name for SS/Schutzstaffel in the titles of reliable books and articles about the topic. I believe that is a valid method, but if you can improve on it, please do. The fact that all four search methods lined up, gave me some level of confidence that it may not be mistaken; or at least, if it is, someone would have to come up with an explanation how that happened, or show different results from a better method of their own.

About your FBI example: because a large part (for me, the largest part) of the decision about this RM is about what the common name of the SS/Schutzstaffel is, appeals to how reliable sources refer to the FBI simply aren't relevant here; they are completely independent of each other. There's no particular reason in article title policy why both articles should use the shorter version, or both should use the longer one.

I didn't quite understand your last sentence; are you asking, what if a consensus prefers "Federal Bureau of Investigation" even though the most common use is "FBI"? If that's what you meant, then I think that's a question for Talk:RM, and how one should resolve a situation when the demonstrated COMMONNAME of a topic tends in one direction, and the consensus of !votes in an RM discussion tends in a different direction.

I do get the point that you feel the methodology I've used is suspect, but I don't quite understand why you think so. Maybe it depends on how much weight you ascribe to the principle of WP:COMMONNAME against the other factors in choosing a title; see WP:CRITERIA. Mathglot (talk) 10:29, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

In part I think the problem is pre-established context: Wikipedia covers all topics and has no such context, but that's not necessarily the case with individual sources. To take the Google Books search results, I see they tend to have titles like these:

• Soldiers of the Waffen-SS: Many Nations, One Motto
• The Waffen SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War, 1939-1945
• The SS: Alibi Of A Nation, 1922-1945
• The Field Men: The SS Officers who Led the Einsatzkommandos
• Waffen-SS Commanders: The Army, Corps and Division Leaders of a Legend

The titles make it clear that the context is military history, and within that context the meaning of the letters "SS" is therefor obvious, but since Wikipedia isn't just about military history we can't do the same. It's like the "Supreme Court" example given at WP:Disambiguation: the term is obviously ambiguous in the context of a world encyclopedia and so must be clarified, but a book title survey might suggest otherwise (since again an individual source can assume a narrower context). ╠╣uw [talk] 10:42, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Your claim that there is some sort of "pre-established context" is mysterious to me. As the rest of your argument depends on some sort of imaginary context for the queries, I reject your conclusion. There is no such imaginary context; the query results I reported are all linked and you can try them yourself. The reason that you are seeing those results in books that you quoted, is because they are typical of what the large majority of books that use those terms in the title are about. Furthermore, research articles and web search point to the same conclusion that book search does. Mathglot (talk) 19:56, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

You believe context is imaginary? I can assure you that it's not, but if you don't believe me we can easily test it with a question: what does "IP" mean?

You'll notice I didn't provide you with any context, so you can't reliably give a single answer since the letters could refer to different things. However, if I told you that we're talking about computer networks you'll answer that it means Internet Protocol; in the context of creative rights you'll assume intellectual property; and in other more specific contexts you could reasonably understand it to refer to a variety of other subjects. The same is true of "SS": if you were to ask me without context what those letters mean, I honestly wouldn't know for sure what you meant and might easily assume you're asking about the prefix used in famous ship names like SS Edmund Fitzgerald or SS Andrea Doria.

The links you shared do indeed show many books that use "SS" to refer to the Nazi military group, and that's fine. I can also share links that list many books that use just "IP" regardless of whether they're about networking or rights[2][3]. That works because books are about specific things, so within their own contexts they can assume people know what the abbreviations mean, even if they're technically ambiguous. Wikipedia, however, is not a book and is not about one specific thing. It's about everything, and so it must use titles that are more encyclopedic. Put simply: the fact that the letters are often used by themselves within pre-established contexts does not necessarily mean that Wikipedia can or should do the same... and there are many, many examples that demonstrate this. ╠╣uw [talk] 23:37, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Are you saying you'd search for the "Andrea Doria" (or any ship) using the search term "SS" all by itself? I don't believe you would, and I can't imagine anyone would. Everyone will search for it using "Andrea Doria", since nobody has ever heard of the Genoese politician. If they scan the top two results from that search and click the second one, they're at the shipwreck article they want; and if they blindly click the top result and end up on the politician's page, the hatnote right at the top will take them to the shipwreck article in one more click. But here we are, talking about some other search that isn't about this article title, again. When people search for "SS" by itself, they'll get the 'Schutzstaffel' article, because that is, by far, the most common meaning of that term. Talking about hypothetical searches for 'IP' or 'FBI' or other things seems like a distraction to me; this is the RM about "SS" and "Schutzstaffel"—searches for those terms are relevant here, and searches for other things are not, afaic. If you think that WP:COMMONNAME is not a valid criterion in deciding this move request, then what criteria would you use? Mathglot (talk) 04:30, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

No, I never said anyone would search for "Andrea Doria" using "SS". I said that people might search for "SS" using "SS". And when I say that, you have no idea if I'm referring to the ship prefix or the Nazi group (or some other meaning).

That's the problem.

Considering similar cases in this forum is not a distraction or irrelevant: it's necessary, because — per policy — a good article title is consistent with the way we handle others: "When titling articles in specific fields, or with respect to particular problems, there is often previous consensus that can be used as a precedent." If you're suggesting we should ignore this and avoid considering how we handle this kind of thing elsewhere (e.g., FBI, CIA, RAF. USAF, etc.), then I must respectfully point out that that's contrary to Wikipedia policy.

As for your question about what criteria I would use, my answer is that I would not use just one criterion — I would try to find the title that best balances all the relevant title-related criteria, because (again) that's what Wikipedia instructs us to do. COMMONNAME is one such criterion, certainly, but it's not the only one, which is why we don't title articles solely on the basis of search engine tests. In my opinion, and based on the evidence, relevant policies, criteria, and practical encyclopedic considerations, I think the current title (while not perfect) better meets that balance than the proposed alternative, for the reasons that I and others have already explained. ╠╣uw [talk] 09:57, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a reliable source, and titles at Wikipedia may be decided by whatever editors happen to be around at the time, or how a closer happens to read a discussion. For all the FBI/CIA/RAF/USAF you can cite, someone else can cite MI5/MI6/GRU/KGB/DRSD/SAVAK. We're better off sticking with how the sources do it, not how Wikipedia editors do it. Mathglot (talk) 00:19, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

No, you're completely misunderstanding policy. Pursuing this further seems pointless, so probably best for us to just step back and wait for closure. ╠╣uw [talk] 01:14, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I'll try to rephrase my last point. I understand your argument as "we should use the abbreviation because procedure X applied to this case produces more results for the abbreviation form than for the spelled out form". My hypothesis is that if the same procedure X was applied to a "worse" case (FBI), it would produce the equivalent result, which by your logic would indicate that the abbreviation FBI should be used instead of the spelled out name. To the best of my knowledge, the consensus for this test case, however, is completely the opposite. If the hypothesis re: FBI was true, this would indicate to me that the way you are interpreting the results of the procedure would not be aligned with any general consensus. In other words, I suspect your procedure would result in non-consensus results when applied to a test case, which would mean the procedure is not that useful. - Ljleppan (talk) 11:45, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't know how to respond to your comment better than I did before; you seem to be trying to establish some linkage between this article's title and some other article's title, and I just don't see that as a major factor in this RM. I'm still having a tough time following you, but it sounds to me like you might be saying something like this: "Since 'Federal Bureau of Investigation' is the correct consensus title, and 'Schutzstaffel' is the correct title in the same way, your methodology must have an error somewhere although I'm not quite sure where it goes wrong." Is that it? Imho, the way to attack the results above is to show that the queries are biased, or the results are incorrect, or there's some other problem with them that I don't see and prove that the COMMONNAME is actually Schutzstaffel. I don't know what the phrase "your procedure would result in non-consensus results" even means; in this Requested Move, we are trying to come up with a consensus of what the title should be, and this #Discussion section is part of that. It sounds to me like you're attacking the methodology based on a presupposition of what the outcome of the RM ought to be in your opinion, rather than on where the methodology goes wrong. Mathglot (talk) 19:34, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

you might be saying something like this: "Since 'Federal Bureau of Investigation' is the correct consensus title, and 'Schutzstaffel' is the correct title in the same way, your methodology must have an error somewhere although I'm not quit sure where it goes wrong." No, this is incorrect. I claim that any results based on simply counting occurences -- especially in the prose of the text -- are biased because natural language will prefer the shortest form that is sufficiently recognizable in a context. This is why we use pronoun such as "you", "him" "her" etc. rather than referring to people by their full name all the time. This is why the Wikipedia article on Federal Bureau of Investigation only says the full name 3 times, while using the abbreviation "FBI" hundreds of times. The same bias will occur in titles wherein additional context in the title itself provides the missing information. Consider a book title "The war crimes of the SS" (almost completely unambiguous) vs. an encyclopedia article entitled "SS" (extremely ambiguous). I believe your results are significantly biased by this, and have asked you to demonstrate that they are not by using a test case. I've proposed FBI vs. Federal Bureau of Investigation, but I'd be happy for you to choose any organization which has a well-established acronym but where community consensus still puts the article at the full title. - Ljleppan (talk) 06:53, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

We should use reliable sources (like books, scholarly articles, etc.) to support our analysis, not Wikipedia, which is not a reliable source. You seem to consider the FBI example an important one, so I'll share my thoughts about it, although I think it's not relevant and I don't think any of the following should sway any votes either way.

You want to compare: (A) "Federal Bureau of Investigation", which is: 1) the full name of an organization, 2) a well-known title, 3) in English, that is 4) four words and 31 letters long on the one hand; with: (B) "Schutzstaffel", which is: 1) the full name of an organization, 2) an obscure title [for an English speaker], 3) in German, 4) that is one word, and 13 letters long. Other than point 1), they are not remotely similar. A foreign organization with a short, one-word, obscure title and a well-known short form would be better if you wanted to try to come up with something comparable, but I couldn't find one like that. The closest I could come, are English organizations where the full name is less well known, and the short form is common: are you familiar with the Secret Intelligence Service? The article isn't called that, and everybody knows it by another name; that article is titled as it should be, imho. Similarly for UNICEF, UNESCO, NAACP and countless other organizations with commonly known short forms. I don't believe these examples should count for much at this RM, but since you asked for them, I wanted to oblige. I hope it helps. Mathglot (talk) 20:12, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I do not understand how this response addresses in the least my concern regarding potential bias I described above, and at this point I'm at a loss how to make my point more clear. Especially the WP:RS comment is a complete non-sequitur. Ljleppan (talk) 20:49, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Since this seems to hinge on a demonstration using a proper test case of the type you have described, and which apparently I just don't get, maybe the best thing is for you just to prepare and run the test case you have in mind, and share the results here. I'm sorry I wasn't able to respond better. Mathglot (talk) 00:58, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I feel like the onus to demonstrate that your methodology is sound should lie with you, but, here's a Google n-grams showing "FBI" is vastly more common than the full title (and I've explained why we would expect this to happen in natural language using the prose of the Wikipedia article as an example): [4]. Searching Google Scholar for "FBI or Federal Bureau of Investigation" yields, among the first 50 results, a single occurrence of the full title, with approx. 90% of the other top-50 results referring to the organization using the abbreviation and rest being false positives. Similarly, searching DDG News using "FBI or "Federal Bureau of Investigation"" has a single occurrence of the full title in the first page, with the rest referring to the organization using the acronym FBI. Based on these results, your methodology predicts there should be a clear consensus that "FBI" is the WP:COMMONNAME for the organization and should be the title of the article. Yet this doesn't seem to be the case. Because it produces results that do not align with the test cases where we know what the result would be, I don't see why it should be given significant weight in non-test cases.

All that said, I don't think continuing this conversation is fruitful, given what appears to be a rather fundamental communication problem. I'll just agree to disagree on my part. Ljleppan (talk) 06:06, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Maybe looking at this from a English versus German language angle could give a slightly different perspective on the discussion? In the previous examples provided, "Federal Bureau of Investigation" or "Central Intelligence Agency" carries meaning to the English-speaking readers in both full textual representation and its abbreviated version FBI and CIA, I find making Wikipedia policies easier to apply. In this instance, Schutzstaffel is a German word which literally translates to "Protection Squadron". I could not find the word Schutzstaffel in Merriam Webster (unlike Luftwaffe or kindergarten) which is a good indication that Schutzstaffel is probably not a loanword (see WP:LNW). To a German speaking reader the association of Schutzstaffel to SS comes naturally while I would doubt that an English only speaker reader would easily make that same association. Note: I have not yet made up my mind what my preference would be. I also looked at Volkswagen and VW as an example. Volkswagen = Peoples Car. Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:32, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Good thought. While Merriam doesn't include it, I see that various others do: Dictionary.com, The Free Dictionary, Collins, etc. I'd be very surprised if the venerable OED didn't have a similar entry, but I see it's subscription-only. (If anyone has access and would like to check, please do!) ╠╣uw [talk] 11:12, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

It does, and is listed in band 3 for usage, while the related "SS" entry does not give usage information. - Ljleppan (talk) 17:14, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

MisterBee1966, I appreciate your trying to approach this from another angle. While your results are interesting, I don't think they apply here. Any very large dictionary will contain words that are uncommon. They may even include non-words, such as prefixes or suffixes; Webster's 2nd Intl. unabridged has -ness and -un, for example (actually, two -un's, and three un's; (1951; v.II, p. 2757)) So what does that tell us? Not much, I think. Your "Volkswagen" is maybe a good example, because it is only three letters shorter than Schutzstaffel, also has three syllables, and contrasts with Schutzstaffel in that it is known in English (the English translation is unknown; not a factor here), and so is the "VW" abbreviation; in fact, they are about equally known. The same cannot be said about the terms under consideration in this RM, where one term overpowers the other by orders of magnitude. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:40, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I find it very difficult to take a decisive position and have therefore attempted to look at this question from a different point of view. I am a big fan of keeping things similar. This is a confusing situation, and to me not an obvious choice to make. However, the two-letter abbreviation SS is clearly the most common term when referring to the Nazi organization, it overpowers Schutzstaffel as you have correctly pointed out. Even in the German language this is the case. I found this NASA example helpful (see Talk:NASA/Archive 2#Requested move 5 March 2015) to me. Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:27, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Notes

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.

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:SS (disambiguation) which affects the redirect SS. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. Steel1943 (talk) 19:35, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Name of Page and proper translation of name

If the you translate the word Schutzstaffel into other languages such as Chinese or Japanese the word means Guard so i think maybe changing the name to Guard (Nazi Germany) may be more linguistically appropriate if you don't believe me just load the Chinese version of the Article for the Allgemeine-SS In comes out as the General Guard. And also the a Newspaper for the 30s cited this group as the Hitlerian Bodyguard, a Book cited them as the Elite Guard, and the acutal US Armed Services Hand Book hand book cited them as the Elite Guard. Also the Japanese word for the SS is Shin'eitai which is also the Japanese word for the Manchukuo Imperial Guard and also on this website no less the SS cited both under the Page Bodyguard and the Page Royal Guard. And also the German word it's self Schutz (Meaning: Protection, Security, Guard) and Staffel (Meaning: Unit, Squadron, Echelon) as such it could also be translated as the Guard Unit, or just simply the Guard Veragan 34 (talk) 15:03, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

@Veragan 34:, welcome to Wikipedia, and thanks for raising this issue here. While other translations are perhaps interesting as a linguistic discussion, they are off-topic for this page and this article, because Wikipedia has a policy on article titles, and what people call it in other languages plays no part. Really the only thing that counts here, is what the preponderance of independent, realiable, secondary sources call it in English language sources. So, if you wish to argue for a change of name for the English article, then you should base it on WP:Article title policy, and on your research showing that it is called something else in English sources. Appealing to how other languages do it may be interesting, but is a sideshow and not appropriate for discussion here (but feel free to raise it at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language, where you may get feedback from interested editors).

If you would like more information about requesting a change in the title of an article, please see Wikipedia:Moving a page. In order to muster support for your proposal, you would have to gather solid evidence that your proposed title was the one most frequently used in reliable sources in English. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:47, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 27 November 2022

The caption for the photograph of Hitler's personal guards reads:

Troop inspection of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler in Berin, 1938

The word, "Berin" should be replaced with "Berlin". Crd477 (talk) 22:21, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

@Crd477 Thanks - GizzyCatBella🍁 22:30, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing. I'm watching the second part of Shoah right now and looking things up as I go. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crd477 (talk • contribs) 22:38, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

👍 - GizzyCatBella🍁 22:43, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 10 January 2023

Please remove this phrase:

After the Battle of Stalingrad in February 1943

and replace it with this:

After the Battle of Stalingrad ended in February 1943

"in February 1943" sounds like it was one-day or few-days battle, but Battle of Stalingrad says that it lasted for more than five months, ending on 2 February 1943. 120.21.78.12 (talk) 06:55, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

 Done. Colonestarrice (talk) 09:44, 10 January 2023 (UTC)