Talk:German war crimes during the Battle of Moscow

Unreliable source: need to verify source or find other sources that put forth the same data.

The single source this article was written from does not seem the least bit credible, or neutral. I'm not an expert on the subject, but the sources for this article are clearly shaky. They need to be looked into and verified. The article could be combined with a larger article about war crimes in Russia, but probably removed entirely if these sources are as unreliable as they seem.

I have read 4 books touching on the Battle of Moscow(3 from the German perspective and 1 from soviet perspective); each is very consistent with the others in describing the German experience as constant movement, trudging through snow, fighting, and trying anything possible to keep from freezing to death. Operation typhoon was a race against time for the Germans to reach Moscow. Every minute of the day was spent marching forward, freeing vehicles from the snow, or fighting off Russian counter-attacks. Villages were often destroyed in the fire fight between the two forces, but to think that the German units somehow had time to leisurely explore villages and light hundreds of townsfolk on fire for fun, during the intense and constant drive towards Moscow - is preposterous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mhorak (talk • contribs) 17:56, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Seconded - the source material is Soviet/Russian, doesn't quote its own sources and the article is a simple regurgitation of links to the source with no context or discussion. I think it should be rmeoved an unsafe. Mungo Shuntbox (talk) 14:31, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

You're not an expert on the subject? No sh#t. The sources aren't great, I'll concede, and could benefit from support from other sources but the idea that this means nothing at all untoward happened is pro-Nazi apologist nonsense. You've read 4 books on this and you're an authority, and can thus conclude no war crimes occurred at all? Seriously? Operation Typhoon (if we're going with what the Wehrmacht called it) involved only a limited number of men who were constantly at the front and did nothing but march and shovel snow? That is class A bullcrap. "Villages were often destroyed in the fire fight", so all entirely accidental then. It's not as if the German Army consisted of thousands of men not all of whom were front line soldiers. The preposterous idea is that every German unit was so involved at all times in just staying alive, including the rear echelons, that they did nothing at all untoward.

Also what is with this racist belief that because a source is Russian it must be wrong? Are Russians incapable of telling the truth? Why would German sources (which naturally would want to minimise the extent of any wrongdoing on the part of German forces) be treated as authoritative and every Russian source treated as suspect? Again I admit that the article needs more references, but the two contributors above want to use that as an excuse to put forward a racist, pro-Nazi narrative which absolves German forces of any guilt at all on the spurious basis they were 'too busy' to conduct any human rights abuses.

The only source I can find on the alleged destruction of the church in Ershovo with civilians and soldiers inside it is a speech by Molotov on German atrocities, made during the war, and written to the ambassadors of countries with whom the USSR maintained diplomatic relations. The obvious propoganda value of this already makes this dubious, but the note also denies that the Katyn Massacre was carried out by the Russians, so wer'e on highly dubious ground here...

Elsewhere, I can find confirmation that the church in question was blown up in 1941, but no mention is made of civilians having been inside it...

The Molotov speech also contains reference to an atrocity at Kolodeznaja (in that article Anglicized as Kolodeznaia), but only claims 32 civilian deaths; as well as Prudnaja (Prudnoye), where it claims they took away the clothing of invalids but makes no claim of anyone being burnt alive.

Indeed, Molotov makes no claim whatsoever of anyone being burnt alive, which makes me highly suspicious that it ever happened; one would think that such a gruesome and shocking crime would be exactly the kind of thing the Russians would have wanted to publicise to encourage the Western allies to do more against the Axis powers.

Molotov does make specific claims that named women were raped and killed – but they don't have the same names as the ones cited in this article.

I can't actually find any of the citations on the 9may.ru site, but aside from that I'm not sure that it meets Wikipedia's reliability criteria. According to its whois information, it is owned by Rossiya Segodnya, a Russian state-owned news org, and the Russian government's opinion on WWII is... not exactly known for being in agreement with mainstream historians. 9may.ru's position as a reliable source for these figures has previously been questioned on wikipedia [[1]], and consensus seems to have been that it's up to those citing those figures to demonstrate that the source is reliable...

Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 12:33, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

There are Russian language sources available for at least some of these atrocities even if the only source in English is the Molotov speech. I don't think that the whole article can be dismissed just because of a paucity of English language references. I have added some additional Russian sources but I don't have time at present to fully revise this and add a full complement. Also German atrocities would be good for Soviet propaganda, but that can hardly be used to infer the Germans didn't actually do anything wrong. When I have more time I will attempt to rewrite the article to make it somewhat clearer and add in additional references. I do not think that the fact that the Russian government (or Russians in general) have a particular view of the war is all that relevant. My actual concern is that isolating Nazi atrocities committed only during the Battle of Moscow (and defining the exact scope of that engagement) may be difficult and the full list might become too long for one article.

It's good that you've added some more sources, but I'm not convinced that they meet Wikipedia's reliability standards, I'm afraid. The livejournal source, especially, simply does not meet WP:RELIABLE, which has to say of largely WP:USER-generated sources such as LJ, "self-published media[...] are largely not acceptable". None of the other sources seem to be written by experts in the field, as far as I can tell.

Considering that Nazi war crimes, especially on the Eastern front, are widely acknowledged by historians of WWII, it should be relatively easy to find high-quality sources discussing German war crimes in Russia.

"Also German atrocities would be good for Soviet propaganda, but that can hardly be used to infer the Germans didn't actually do anything wrong." I never said that the Germans never did anything wrong. I said that the specific claims in this article are not adequately sourced, and are sufficiently sensational that it would be likely that they were widely talked about if it was possible to prove that they had actually happened.

"I do not think that the fact that the Russian government (or Russians in general) have a particular view of the war is all that relevant." it is obviously relevant in assessing the merits of a claim which is sourced solely to a Russian government-controlled news organisation. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:00, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

References

Needs to delete article because the sources don't confirm article information

These links move to either error 404 or unscientific articles which themselves need to be verified. I think, it needs to either delete the article or indicate references to the scientific literature in english verifying facts said in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.88.208.155 (talk) 23:09, 15 August 2016 (UTC)