Talk:Western Front (World War II)/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Second Front?

Wasn't Italy the second front in the European war, thus making the Normandy Landings the start of the third front? best, Sunil060902 (talk) 11:34, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Insufficiently large and important, I think. At least, neither Roosevelt nor Churchill considered it to be a reasonable equivalent of a Second Frond. I think, we should respect their opinion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:07, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh I didn't mean altering this article in any way, just a comment on the historical use of the term (as in "Second Front now!" and all that). Italy was quite a large country, and knocking her out of the War tied up hundreds of thousands of German troops that could have faced the Soviets during 1943-44. best, Sunil060902 (talk) 17:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that Italy and North Africa belonged to the same theatre, i.e. the Mediterranean theatre of war. It chronologically preceded the "First" (i.e. Eastern) front, therefore, it couldn't be considered the Second Front. The Second front was something that appeared in addition to those two theatres. That is my understanding of the origin of the "Second Front" name.
As regards to the number of German troops, this number in Italy was smaller than that in Yugoslavia. --Paul Siebert (talk) 00:56, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Reference to the Second Front was surely in relation the the Western Allies? I believe the term arose because the Russians wanted them to open a "second front" in the west in order to relieve pressure on the Eastern Front. Their First front was North Africa and then sequentially Italy, second was France. Stephen Kirrage ^{talk - contribs} 07:34, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

You probably are right. I never heard of the use of the "First Front" name for the Eastern Front. --Paul Siebert (talk) 11:58, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Don't think this reasoning is correct. As it does not explain, the argument that the RAF Bomber command offensive was a second front which would help relive the pressure on the Soviet Union, and argument that Stalin seems to have found ineffectual, but that had an effect on Albert Speer (see RAF Bomber Command#The "balance sheet"). Stalin was asking for a Second Front before the invasion of Italy so that was not the Second Front. It seems to me that Second Front was used as a short hand for Second Major Front in Europe, ie the Western Front. -- Philip Baird Shearer 13:17, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Counties

There is a tendency for a me to attitude to the list of countries listed in battle boxes. We do no favours to our readers by including every country in the battle box that supplied a single driver to the Western Front. We need a list of countries that make a substantial contribution to the Western Front not to the European War in general.

There is no doubting the major contributors to the campaign but we need to establish what is needed for a country to appear in the box. I would suggest that it is done on unit size. For example I know that the Kiwis had major units in Italy but did they have any major units on the Western Front? The Poles clearly made a notable contribution to the Western Front, (particularly in the Battle of France) but what contribution did the Luxembourg and Czechoslovakia make? --PBS (talk) 18:53, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

The 1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade served in Normandy don't know of any Luxembourg units --Jim Sweeney (talk) 19:43, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Do you think a brigade enough to be in countries list battle box when some of the others are contributing 10 of thousands of men? -- PBS (talk) 20:42, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the first post, it almost looks ridiculous to list countries such as Norway (as Norway is included, I ask myself, where is Denmark?), Luxembourg and Czech Republic alongside USA, United Kingdom and France (with respect to those brave men who was willing to make resitance). Maybe a solution would be to list the countries ranked by the size of their contribution? USA, United Kingdom, Free French, Poland, etc. EriFr (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:42, 5 November 2009 (UTC).

What do you think if we'd split the allied nations in two groups, 1939-1940 - 1944-1945, and list them according to size inside each group?EriFr (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 08:47, 6 November 2009 (UTC).

"...thus the last fighting germans surrendered on june 9 1945 eaxctly a year after the D-Day landings finally ending the defence of german held areas in 1945....".

I reverted the last change ("thus the last fighting germans surrendered on june 9 1945 eaxctly a year after the D-Day landings finally ending the defence of german held areas in 1945.") that seems incorrect.
Firstly, I don't undedstand where the date June 9 came from.
Secondly, the Normandy Landings started on June 6, 1944, not June 9.
Thirdly, the attempt to overemphasize the connection between the D-Day landing and and German surrender is incorrect.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:42, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Casualty section

I suggest that the casualty section is removed. The figures do not provide much valuable information as they are today, mainly because they can not be compared, and obviously (with regard to the previous discussion) there are very few reliable sources for their replacement. Maybe the figures could be better included in the text, what do you think? /Erik EriFr (talk) 14:39, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Ok, once again, to be clear. The figures are not accurate, the Axis figure is far from complete and it is very uncertain if the figures cited cover all those campaigns and battles linked to the "Western front" as the term used in the article. I simply do not think that the figures provide the kind of useful information that one can require from an infobox and as long as no reliable replacements can be found, I suggest that the casualty section is deleted. /Erik EriFr (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:40, 9 March 2010 (UTC).

Listing of armies

The listing of armies in the data box is not an especially good idea -- too many units to list, for one thing. The field armies of 1940 are not listed, and the German listing for 1944-45 is incomplete. If any units are to be listed there, suggest it should only be the army groups as that will hold the list to a reasonable number of entries. W. B. Wilson (talk) 15:25, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

New Casualty section in Info-box

I suggest that we once again remove the casualty figures from the Info-box. The reason is that I believe it is simply not possible for us to find figures accurate enough to give a balanced view. Let me give you examples:

The Allied casualties during 1939-1940 is quoted as 2,121,560 — 2,260,000 casualties:

- The first figures is a summarize of the casualties suffered by all Allied forces, except the total casualties suffered by Denmark, those of the Norwegian forces that were wounded or captured and those of the Dutch forced that were captured.

- The second figure contains only the casualties suffered by the French forces during the Battle of France (360,000 killed, wounded and missing and 1,900,000 captured). The casualties of the other Allied forces are not counted.

- The figure of Axis casualties during 1944-1945 represent only the casualties suffered by the Army (Heer). Those suffered by the Armed SS (Waffen SS) are not counted. Neither does the figure contain the number of men captured.

Furhter. Overmans suggest that Germany suffered 339,000 killed at the Western front until the end of 1944, this number is far from the numbers quoted in the article, what is the reason?

If we want to make things easy for us, we could let articles about battles and operations provide the reader with informaiton about the casualties on the Western front, but maybe we should start a section in this article where casualty numbers can be quoted and explained?

EriFr (talk) 19:35, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Percentage of German losses on the Western Front

I modified the second paragraph to simply note the bulk of German losses took place on the Eastern Front. The entire second paragraph needs review, but the specification of 20% of German deaths being on the Western Front is a statement that should be cited. For the interested, I consulted Overmans' work and looked at the table on page 265 of the German-language edition. Removing the deaths of prisoners of war and assigning a 33% portion (probably a bit high) of the "Final Battle" (Endkämpfe) deaths to the Western Front (Overmans estimates 2/3 of the deaths of this period took place on the Eastern Front), an estimate can be made that some 15% of German military deaths occurred on the Western Front. Not particularly suited to citation, though. W. B. Wilson (talk) 17:25, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Why is this article so short?

Why is this article so short compared to the Eastern Front article? There is so much more to talk about, the bombing raids are hardly even mentioned. There are brief summaries of major events. Is this article another deliberate example of Western masochism and self hate? The Western Front was very important and this article is very inadequate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.192.108.42 (talk) 15:33, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

The importance of Western Front isn't much compared to the Eastern Front, so it would be expected. It's nothing to do with 'Western masochism and self hate.' Just compare it to the Western Front in the First World War. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.50.104 (talk) 00:24, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

It is a summary style article, most sections act as an introduction to more detailed campaign or battle articles. -- PBS (talk) 04:04, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

It appears that specificity is even inconsistent within the article. I understand that in terms of length and tactics, the first phase is considerably shorter than the second, but still - the entirety of the Battles of France and the Low Countries is half a paragraph, shorter than the article's treatment of Operation Market Garden, and considerably shorter even than the introductory bit on Battle of France. That appears a bit too much (or rather, too little), even if it is a summary. Chuborno (talk) 01:37, 10 May 2013 (UTC)