Talk:Battle of Smolensk (1941)

message: The map is probably incorrect. On September 8, 1941 Germans had captured Schlisselburg on the Ladoga lake, thus completing the encirclement of Leningrad. This date is widely known as the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad that lasted almost 3 years. On the map, however, the September 9 front line is very far from Ladoga, and Leningrad is not yet encircled. This makes the map highly suspect, at least in its Northern part.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yatur (talk • contribs) 00:49, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: The battle map

message: This article seems to draw conclusions about the battle that follow the line of Soviet propaganda. The claim that the Soviet attacks, particularily the Yelnya offensive, had a significant material impact on the German offensive, as opposed to purely a moral boost to the Soviet side, is debatable. A good case can be made that the Soviet losses due to the unrelenting attacks made subsequent German offensives, i.e. operation Typhoon, easier than would have been the case if the Soviets had conserved their forces and built stronger defensive positions.
Madmax
It seems pretty clear that the stub describes the Smolensk offensive almost exclusively in Soviet terms.  The most glaring example being the description of the battle as a part of the "Great Patriotic War".  While that topic surely deserves an article, and perhaps even a reference in this one, it should not be presented, as it is, as historical fact.  Great Patriotic War should clearly be changed to World War II and more information on the German end of things should be included.
:Well, almost every Eastern Front article here seems to exclusively take the German viewpoint and mostly rely on German sources, so... It is a rare case of "history written by the losers" The andf (talk) 00:20, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: soviet POV

message: I wrote the original remark above and note that the article has been significantly rewritten since then and I for one no longer concider it to have a slanted POV. I would therefor request the "Neutrality Disputed" box be removed. MadMax 3/30/09  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.172.179.222 (talk) 03:52, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment

message: This could be clarified, the second part here also contradicts the lead. 
"The failure....made Hitler give up on the concept of encirclement operations.....This meant a speedy encirclement of Leningrad in the north" .  Sceptic1954 (talk) 14:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Final paragraph

message: Referring to other sources such as Heinz Guderian, 'Panzer Leader' among others, there were not any Panzer Armies at the time.  Panzer Group 2 Was not renamed until October 5.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Werhner (talk • contribs) 00:18, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Panzer Armies 

message: Glantz made a mistake in the tables of his 1995 book for thre Soviet casualties, so i inserted the number directly from Krivosheev. StoneProphet (talk) 19:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: So then add that in, just cite the source.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.196.147.23 (talk) 10:43, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

text: It is this in English "The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Campaigns, strategic operations and battles -- a statistical analysis. Book 1: The summer-autumn campaign in 1941 Moscow, 2004. - P.92."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.196.147.194 (talk) 02:08, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casualties 

message: I've been reading Alan Clark's book "Barbarossa" (which I was shocked to find had not been cited in this article before now), and came across his description of the July 27 meeting at Novy Borisov, which was attended by the Commander-in-Chief of the Supreme High Command of the Wehrmacht Field Marshall Walther von Brauchitsch, who had flown into Novy Borisov the previous night direct from Berlin. Hitler was very concerned about his front-line generals taking too much initiative on their own, and creating what he considered a very dangerous situation by pushing too fast too far into Russia, creating a "bulge" that would inevitably be encircled by Soviet forces and cut off. To prevent this, he'd issued his Directive 33 on July 14, but he still believed that his orders needed strengthening, and thus sent Brauchitsch personally to deliver a lecture to the front line generals of Army Group Center. This meeting was incredibly important, I believe, because it was a point to which historians have pointed (among them Clark) as being very influential in inspiring the Wehrmacht leadership to actively work contrary to Hitler's orders, which though they'd had disagreements up to then, had always maintained discipline and followed the Fuhrer's orders. This is why I expanded the article to include a paragraph about this meeting. Comments are welcome. --Saukkomies talk  17:42, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  July 27 meeting at Bock's headquarters 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion