Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/News/August 2020/Op-ed

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Tks Nick -- sage points as ever. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:23, 9 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I regard this as the Military History version of the Matthew effect, in which popular historians return again and again to battles, campaigns and generals that already been have gone over thoroughly and done to death, while neglecting so many others. The campaigns of 1945 have been neglected. Indeed, in the Pacific War, even 1943 and 1944 have received little attention; all the focus has been on the second half of 1942: Midway, Kokoda and Guadalcanal. Even in the Green Books series, there is a volume on strategy and command in the first two years, but the companion volume on strategy and logistics in the final two years was never written. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:41, 9 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's really quite strange. From an Australian perspective, there seem to be one or two full-sized books on Kokoda and other 1942 campaigns each year which typically add at best only small amounts to our knowledge of the campaign, but almost nothing has appeared on the fighting from 1943 onwards. This leads to a perception that the Australian Army was a marginally competent and hard-luck outfit in the Pacific War, when it was actually well equipped, well led and very effective for most of the conflict. Nick-D (talk) 22:52, 9 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good points. To my surprise, I have noticed more articles on important subjects than I would have thought would be found here that are obviously incomplete or need editing. I think your reasons for the state of many 1945 articles are accurate. There probably are some general reasons why users shy away from improving existing articles. I had written a paragraph about that but did not post it since I realized that it was mostly my boring and probably obvious observations. So I will just add that I hope your comments will energize me, since I have books on the topics at hand, and prompt some others to help with the needed additions and improvements in the coming months. Donner60 (talk) 06:50, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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