Talk:Military history of the United Kingdom during World War II

message: :This article is way too long and unlikely to be brought to an acceptable length merely by deleting unnecessary words.  Does anyone have any suggestions on how to cut it down? Deleting Unnecessary Words 00:00, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough.  But I thought that is what I was doing.  You've just reverted a whole lot of edits.  Did you disagree with all of them?  Deleting Unnecessary Words 19:32, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I flip-flopped :-) and restored your edits.  Most of the wording changes are good; some of the missing "very"s were emphasizing important points, I didn't like their removal. The bit about the Battle of Taranto should at least mention its significance in the overall strategic picture, after all this is the place to stitch all the individual events into a connected whole. Also, if you want to get serious about pruning, look at the "Norwegian campaign" section and compare to Allied campaign in Norway, which isn't even linked from here - you could clone this section over to the Allied campaign article, and replace with a good summary 1/4 the size. If you just make links for all the obvious linkable terms in this article, you'll find even more duplicated content. Stan 20:41, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope we can agree that this article is way, way too long.  It is more than twice the length of the article on World War II.  Surely it shouldn't take twice as long to tell the story of Britain's role in the war than it does to tell the story of the entire war.  I don't want to delete important information, but the article has to be kept to an appropriate length so that people are able to read and edit it easily.  Anyone wanting further details (on Taranto, for example), can use one of the links.  This is one of the basic Wikipedia principles and is discussed in the "Length" section of "Wikipedia:Summary Style" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Summary_style).  Deleting Unnecessary Words 02:48, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Relative length isn't very meaningful as a metric; we have long articles on unimportant subjects, and vice versa. But as I said, I think you can find duplicated content, plus some of the articles linked to are thin, and could benefit from some of the info here. One way to analyze is to decide on an ideal length, then "budget" for sections and subsections, so you can see how many words are available for any given subject, and don't giving too much to one area at the expense of another just as worthy. Stan 05:16, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: Yes, but I'm not going to do all the edits in one go. (One of the reasons this thing should not be so long: it is impossible to take a holistic approach to it.)  This means that while I'm editing there will be times when one section gets relatively more attention than one of equal importance.  Deleting Unnecessary Words 16:39, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: I copied the information in the section on the Arctic Convoys into an article of the same name on 19th because an article of that name was needed and as a experiment to see what would happen. Since that has been done the article has been expanded and some of the initial information has been amended. I would suggest that it would be useful to remove the paragraphs which start "Three particular convoys are notable:" as the initial summary is sufficient to know that the British escorted the Arctic convoys and the  "Main article see Arctic Convoys of World War II" now covers those specific convoys. Does anyone object to the removal of those three paragraphs from this article?
Using this technique other sections this article can be shorted without loss of any information. For example I have copied the Burma campaign information into the Burma campaign. This should allow for a "Main article see Bufma Campaign" and the Burma campaign section in this article to be reduced to 4 summary paragraphs instead of 4 sub sections. Philip Baird Shearer 17:41, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for this common-sense solution. Deleting Unnecessary Words 02:18, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: see also articles

message: The way this article is currently organized is rather confusing.  I would suggest putting it into a more chronological order then the current grouping, as it, IMO, would flow better.
For example: The Norwegian Campaign was cut short by the invasion of France.  The fall of France, making all French colonies neutral, is what gave Italy the incentive to launch its offensives in North Africa.
Also, as has been pointed out, there's to much detail on this page.  Alot of it could be transferred to other articles and summerized. Oberiko 13:38, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Structure

message: My sources say that Rome fell on 5th June. DJ Clayworth 18:09, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rome

message: The page state that the British army was smaller than the German army at the start of the conflict which strictly speaking is true, but the Imperial army (especially the Indian Army which was the biggest in the world) when added to those numbers changed the equation. The same could be said of the French colonial army (specifically the Senialese). Should the there not be some reference to this fact?
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.83.30.7 (talk) 15:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps, but this article is about the United Kingdom. Much British manpower was deployed abroad and unavailable, unlike the German army. I'm not even sure whether the Canadians, Australians and other "old" Dominions had many men under arms in September 1939. The Indian Army had its own responsibilities and in fact was not used in northern Europe in WWII. (PS please sign your comments) Folks at 137 10:37, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Size of the British Army 

message: The sentence "The British ironically benefited from the attacks on American coastal shipping as a large decrease in attacks on Atlantic convoy ships occurred." is dubious. Given that Britain was almost entirely dependent upon seaborne cargo for survival, how could the massive sinkings off the US coast be anything but disastrous? The reason the U-boats went there was because they could be more successful than in the north Atlantic. I'll await a response to this before amending the article. (I don't think it was irony, either!) Folks at 137 10:37, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Second happy time

message: I am 13 and i really dont find it confuseing i am doing a piece on if hitler wanted a war aginst britain and france can any1 help
(=
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.25.198.200 (talk) 21:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  21st november 2006 

message: the united kingdom is a she? kingdom is a male word in french (royaume) and in english "king" is not "queendom" so WTF? are you really sure it is her not his or its? Shame On You 00:18, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In English we normally call countries "she" and "her". England, Britain and the Empire are all feminine. We're a Kingdom whether or not we have a Queen or a King as head of state - Kingdom just means a country reigned over by a monarch. David 10:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The United Kingdom and her Empire 

message: The reason I gave it a "Start" assessment is that it is lacking references, is a a bit long and could use a few more pictures.--Looper5920 18:46, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assessment

message: Some summary statistics would be good, such as the overall number of combatants and casualties, with a breakdown of the main services. --Epipelagic (talk) 06:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary statistics

message: This article is surprisingly biased in favour of Britain against India.
What needs to be added those are-
British declared war on Germany on behalf of India without consulting with Indian leaders, resulted in their resignation.
Quit India movement
Bengal Famine of 1942.
Only Japanese did not fight in Kohima, Manipur? Indian national army also fought, and it's most men were prisoners of Battle of Singapore. A recent debate in Britain said Battle of Kohima-Imphal was toughest battle British ever fought.
Of course these events happened in India, but India was a colony of Great Britain in WW2, directly ruled by British, India was not a dominion like Canada or Australia or New Zealand, so these should be added. 
And what about IRA border campaigns during WW2?Ovsek (talk) 18:27, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I would suggest that's because this is about the United Kingdom during WW2, not India. It's why there's not much about Australia, Canada, etc as well. Alooulla (talk) 18:13, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biased 

message: This article is excessively long due to the amount of sub-sections. One example is the Battle of France and Fall of France sections. These are exactly the same topic so I am going to join them up. Would anyone else support merging more sub-sections to give the article a better layout? P.S Look at the Military history of the United States during World War II article to see how this article would be ideally wrote.Tomh903 (talk) 12:00, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Too many sections

message: Looking for some statistics to summarise in the lead, borrowing from Military history of the United States during World War II. Any sources or suggestions gratefully received: 
:During the war some X million Britons served in the British Armed Forces, with Y killed and Z wounded. There were also XX British prisoners of war, of whom YY returned home after the war. The military effort was strongly supported by civilians on the home front, who provided the military personnel, the munitions, the money, and the morale to fight the war to victory. World War II cost the United Kingdom an estimated £XXX billion in 1945 dollars – equivalent to YY% of the UK's GDP. In 2020 pounds, the war cost over ZZ trillion.Whizz40 (talk) 08:53, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead