Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Walter Gerth

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Mackensen (talk) 00:47, 11 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Walter Gerth

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Here solely for being one of literally thousands of recipients of a military award during WWII, with no other information that would meet WP:BIO, and as a matter of fact, there's nothing given to show what the award ws given for in the first place. WP:SOLDIER indicates that notability is presumed if the person has received the highest award, but in this case, it is functionally the highest, as only Hitler received the actual highest award, and it seems to have been given out much more frequently than one would expect of a nation's highest military award. I think some debate overall needs to be had on whether the Knight's Cross is sufficient in general for an article, but this particular article is way too shoddy. MSJapan (talk) 03:07, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, as significant coverage in RS cannot be found. The article was created in 2008 showing one non-RS citation to a dubious site "frontjkemper", and the intervening years have not produced an improvement. As editor MSJapan notes, there are many more articles of this nature, for example:
Hans Weiss, 2008,
Herman Lang, 2008 and
Georg Schoenberger, 2008, just to cite a few

K.e.coffman (talk) 06:23, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:01, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:01, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:01, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. What a can of worms I opened up. It looks like this article was created by Jim sweeney @Jim Sweeney: a now semi-retired editor whose first articles were mainly about British units but then created at least 300 articles related to individuals and units of the Waffen-SS. These articles rely very heavily on German language sources and often follow a pattern of stating what is in a German language record of those of received the knights cross (info like their their birthday, place of birth, in which battle they fought when they received the award, what they did after the war and when and where they died). One author who is mentioned frequently was Walther-Peer Fellgiebel and he started a veterans club after the war and I'm not sure that his record keeping is something that editors should use as the basis for articles because he himself wasn't too happy with its accuracy. Some of the 300 or so articles that were created some are valid and notable but many others are far less so and I believe these would have trouble meeting the notability criteria (e.g. Alfred Roge, Léon Gillis (soldier), Friedrich Blond). I have not looked through all 300 articles but I guess that's really the only way to do this. As I said, it seems almost all of these are relying on the same sources (in German) and using the same template and providing the same details. I'm also not sure if, as pointed out by K.e.coffman @K.e.coffman: these meet the "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" criteria.Monopoly31121993 (talk) 10:57, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, I would like to add to any discussion of criteria for Nazi era German soldiers that it seems especially strange to have wikipedia pages for people who were members of units who were often involved in war crimes (e.g. Waffen SS members) and only mention that they showed "extreme battlefield bravery" or "successful military leadership" but never that they participated in mass killings or anything else during their time with these notorious units.Monopoly31121993 (talk) 17:29, 5 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's a different problem - the extent of the content here is entirely based on the extent of the content that was provided. MSJapan (talk) 23:40, 5 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect: I reckon a redirect to List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (G) is probably the most appropriate course of action with these and similar articles where the award is verified, but significant coverage hasn't been established. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 06:47, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.