Talk:Western Allied invasion of Germany

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[edit] Pondering

After much pondering, I decided to go ahead and add this relatively unchanged from the original source. My reasons are 1) It is too important a topic to not have had an article for this long 2) the original is an excellent source 3) the military history project members I feel will do a much better job together dissecting this and getting it up to standard than I can do myself. While fairly complete, it does need work, in my opinion, in the following areas:

  • POV - very America-centric (as it is from a US military source)
  • reduction in size - perhaps too detailed

--Nobunaga24 04:33, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name

Hello. The problem is name "Central Europe Campaign" that this is the name of the U.S. campaign, not the Allied one on the whole. In regards to Western Europe, we've decided to break it down by different standards then the U.S.:
  • Normandy (D-Day to the Liberation of Paris)
  • Battle of the Siegfried Line (Liberation of Paris to the start of the Battle of the Bulge)
  • Battle of the Bulge
  • Central Europe (End of the Battle of the Bulge to the German surrender)
Oberiko 11:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


I have changed the name of the article to "Western Allied invasion of Germany" because the Eastern Allies also campaigned in Central Europe and Hamburg is not usually described as Central Europe also we already have an article Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 18:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Philip. It seems to me that calling the campaign an 'invasion' is not correct since it was not an invasion in the same way Poland and France were invaded at the start of the war. This is also an issue in the Second World War section heading where Soviet Union 'invades' Germany in 1945. In both cases these were continued offensives into Germany.
In what way was it not an invasion? If France and the low countries were liberated then Germany was invaded and it ended with the Debellation of the Third Reich. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 00:06, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Then there is the existing Western European Campaign (1944-1945) category that includes a sub-category of Category:Battle of Central Europe and another article called Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine and North West Europe Campaign and the Category:Drive to the Siegfried Line as well as European Theater of Operations. It seems a bit overly productive and duplicating, not to mention messily confusing.
Can there not be just the Category:World War II Western European Theatre with
  • Italian Campaign
    • subset operations
  • Allied Northern France Campaign
    • subset operations
  • Southern France Campaign
    • subset operations
  • Allied Low Countries Campaign
    • subset operations
  • Allied Campaign in Germany
    • subset operations

Cheers--mrg3105mrg3105 22:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Have you read the Western European Campaign (1944-1945) it is a redirect. The North West Europe Campaign the name given to the Commonwealth campaigns they did not divide up the campaigns like you suggest. The European Theater of Operations is an American specific administration article (I should know I wrote most of it). There are five major articles covering Western Europe 44-45 European Theatre of World War II->Western Front (World War II), and three campaign articles: Normandy Campaign, Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine and this article Western Allied invasion of Germany It does not seem confusing to me and as the US and Commonwealth forces use different campaign designations it is better to give the articles descriptive names. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 00:06, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm only just coming to grips with Northwest Europe so I'm feeling my way a bit. PBS above points out that there are three main campaign articles covering the period from D-Day to Germany's surrender. However, at present the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine article states that it goes up to the start of the Battle of the Bulge while this present article starts with the main Rhine crossings in February 45. So there is a gap in the "umbrella" articles. This is reflected to some extent in the confusion and overlap of the campaign boxes associated with the period. Whilst there is always overlap as each article scene sets the background and covers the Aftermath, I think that the core of each of these articles should be contiguous and subsidiary articles be allocated to be part of only one of them. I'm reluctant however to re-jig the articles to reflect this because of my lack of knowledge of the period and will stick for the present to copyedit and researching and writing narrative. Any thoughts how this might be neatly tidied and consolidated? Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 00:43, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Philip. I appreciate the points you make, but the Theatre was an Allied undertaking and not American or Commonwealth, to say nothing of the French, or even the Poles who were neither. It seems to me that the "Western Front" wa only used by Wehrmacht, and not by the Allied forces during the Second World War. The inconsistency comes from the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine and Western Allied invasion of Germany which are actually somewhat like Strategic Directions rather then named campaigns like the Normandy Campaign, Lorraine Campaign, etc. The European Theatre of Operations was an administrative and not a combat part of the Allied Command structure or course. I'm just suggesting that the articles need to be consistently titles, using either the named campaign titles, or the strategic regional Areas of Operations, or directions of strategic offensives, but not all three intermixed. If intermixed, invariably there will be either discontinuities or overlaps in the content of the articles. I always find it useful to take a map and draw operational boundaries between formations (or units) to get an idea of who was doing what where. BTW, the content is very good--mrg3105mrg3105 01:11, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Unless I'm mistaken, we have the same basic structure as the top post in this section:
  • Overlord
  • Paris to Rhine (all actions between Overlord & Bulge)
  • Bulge
  • Invasion of Germany (all actions following the Bulge)
I'm not keen on the name though, as there were Allied actions during this time outside of Germany. Could I suggest Western Allied invasion of Central Europe instead? Oberiko (talk) 01:37, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Kirrages the term Western Front was used at the time.[1] and it is still in use.[2] mrg3105 I think there is no reason why we should not have articles like Lorraine Campaign and the North West European Campaign, but they should roughly be in the format they are in probably with "main articles" to what you describe as "Strategic Directions" for the name of articles. After all they are important if nothing else as a place to discuss Battle honours/Campaign honors and as pointers to articles describing the fighting.

The British and Canadians were not fighting in what is usually called "Central Europe" they were fighting in North West Europe. We have had this conversation several times and the major problem is that different military histories use different terms because they tend to follow national naming conventions. I think calling this the Central Europe Campaign is American centric. Germany was invaded, Holland was liberated. For me the Rhine seems like the obvious place to draw a line between articles and like from Paris to the Rhine it should be descriptive. Also to describe an attack over 3 Army groups that largely operated independently of each other a campaign seems to me to be pushing the envelope (Monty's behaviour during his campaign reminds me of when a new Labour MP arrived in the House of Commons back in the 80s who said "It is good to be face to face with the enemy at last" to which an experienced MP and his mentor said "my friend, they are the opposition, the enemy is all around you"). --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 12:57, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

As an aside As we have a group of editors discussing names and article layout something needs to be done about Battle of Normandy and Normandy Campaign see Talk:Normandy Campaign#Article overlap --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 13:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Order of Battle?

May I suggest that the first section is retitled "Disposition of forces", and the "Order of Battle" becomes a redirect to a separate article in the appropriate category.--mrg3105mrg3105 01:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)


"Command structures" is used in several other articles. We can then have Allied and German as subsections. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 14:15, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Sure. I was just reflecting on the content which seems to be more descriptive of the disposition of the forces.--mrg3105mrg3105 23:06, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citation

This article incorporates text from http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/brochures/centeur/centeur.htm Who would like to take on the task of incorporating citations for each paragraph in this article as has been done for XX Bomber Command and First English Civil War? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 13:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that Kirrages --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 09:21, 21 February 2008 (UTC)