Talk:Stab-in-the-back myth

There is still much POV going on here. I believe that this article requires major revision. 71.227.166.196 22:45, 14 May 2006 (UTC) -- This is very fascinating stuff, but would work better if it was under an English title, and the german used for a redirect. Is there a standard translation for this? "Legend of the stab in the back" looks like a home-made translation, and if my rusty german is correct, misses the "dagger" element.

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Thank you! Glad it piqued your interest. In the literature I've read, it's usually just called the Dolchstosslegende as a matter of course and presented in translation only once. It's a pretty important term in Holocaust and Weimar studies, but the German term is the norm in my experience. What's the standard on here?

If there's a more exacting translation, though, I'd love to see it!

Thanks -- Dr.scientist

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A rule -- to the extent that one can have rules in a wiki -- that's been crystallizing of late is "This is the English wikipedia". My take on it is to use an English term if it well-known in comparison to the word in the original language. For example, "Frederick the Great" instead of "Friedrich II", or "Bavaria" instead of "Bayern". But "Kristallnacht" is OK, because that's what an English speaker would generally call it too. Plus there are other issues that arise (for example, when to use Danzig or Gdansk).

If there's no reasonably common English translation of "Dolchstosslegende", then don't sweat it. I can't think of one, but then this is not a period I know well. -- Paul Drye

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I did some digging and found that "Dolchstosslegende" is used more frequently in the literature, but the latest work that I had (Ian Kershaw's Hitler biography) used "stab-in-the-back legend" without introducing the German term. It is worth noting that, in doing so, he also didn't explain the term or put it in context, which implies that he assumed his readers would already know what he was on about. What say you all? Maybe add a redirect from Stab-in-the-Back Legend?

Dr.scientist

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Sounds good to me

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"Stab-in-the-back legend" is the standard English translation. It's somewhat clumsy, but one can't change it just like that, let alone in an article of this kind. I've removed "dagger-thrust legend", as this reads like an inept attempt by a pupil to persuade a teacher that one understands the literal meaning, competent translation should also endeavour to be helpful and considerate to the reader. To me, as a native-speaker of English, "dagger-thrust legend" conveys nothing. I suspect the misplaced preoccupation with daggers may have more to do with the vivid illustration than anything else.

Norvo 03:07, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

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Why do you blame the army for the "stab in the back" and why do you blame the army for Hitler's anti-semitism, this should use a NPOV dispute warning at the start of the article as it is totally biased and tries to get your own ideas accross rather then the truth

I totally agree. This article is about as biased as you can get. What is most funny is it claims the Treaty of Paris was mild compared to what the German's had in mind. What DID the Germans have in mind? The only comparison we have is the end of the Franco-Prussian war where the Germans were rather fair and the war debt was paid off very quickly. German soldiers were also not pervasively stationed in France. This was also after literally centuries of France constantly expanding its borders into German territory.

Usually Versailles is compared to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which looks a lot harsher than Versailles just from a glance at the map. However, Tsarist Russia, unlike Germany, was a multi-ethnic empire, and almost none of the territories lost by Russia at Brest-Litovsk were populated chiefly by ethnic Russians. On the basis, it would be fairer to compare Brest-Litovsk with the Treaty of Saint-Germain, the Treaty of Trianon or the Treaty of Sèvres, all of which are even harsher than Brest-Litovsk. GCarty 10:35, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Actually, we have the compromise terms of 1916, which were substantially uti possidetis leaving the Germans in control of the Low Countries and a strip of France. Presumably they would have awarded themselves more in victory. Septentrionalis 15:39, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

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update

The quote, as given by William Manchester on p. 432 of "The Arms of Krupp," is "The Generalstab [general staff] was stabbed in the back!"

update

Hello. I came across this article and felt inspired to add a little commentary. It would be a mistake and major simplification to say that the scapegoating that came out of the post-war era was just an inability to face the facts and a refusal to accept the blame. Quite the contrary. The dolchstosslegende must have seemed like a very real possibility at the time - given the circumstances. And no, I don't mean just because of its exploitation through propaganda. I mean, if Germany really had understood why it lost the war, nobody in their right mind would have allowed Hitler to declare war on the United States without something like uboats to provoke the conflict.

In my addition, I tried to do the [1] <-- cite thing but I didn't know how.

Also, I added a link off of the main World War I page so people will actually find this article of use.

--24.72.227.2 11:21, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

BTW, Hilter never declared war on the U.S. But the Jewish resistance to WWI is grossly absent from this article.--67.160.239.65 (talk) 20:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Wiki-policy: Use English.

"ß" is not an English letter, and should not be used in the title of an article in the English Wikipedia. Most who come across it won't know how to pronounce it, and it makes the article much harder to search for as well. I believe Wikipedia policy dictates that article titles should always use the standard 26-letter English alphabet (plus numbers, where appropriate), as opposed to any accents, graves, or other diacritical marks. (See Wikipedia:Naming conventions.) Personally, I know next to nothing of German spellings or romanizations; I write primarily Japan-related entries. Still, see Kyoto rather than Kyōto, and Tokyo as opposed to Tōkyō. LordAmeth 22:45, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Might the name Dolchstoss myth be preferable for the English Wikipedia?

Sure. My suggestion would be Dolchstosslegende, as that is probably how most would recognize the term. I have no problem with titling it according to the German name, just with using German letters that don't exist in English. I don't mean to sound heavy-handed or anything; I thank you for considering my comment. LordAmeth 23:19, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

So is it ok if someone goes ahead and makes the change? Wiki-policy is pretty clear on this one. The example they give is the perestroika article.Haber 23:02, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this change would be a good idea. "ss" is generally only used instead of ß when the latter is typographically impossible, and since there's very little to be gained in readability by using "ss", I see no point in making the change. In the case of city names such as Tokyo, those are well-established Anglicised forms (and this kind of orthographic change is very common for names anyway). In contrast, "Dolchstosslegende" is not an Anglicised form of "Dolchstoßlegende" -- it's just a rendition of the German form in an artifically restricted alphabet.

Regarding searching, the article would be no harder to search for if we had "Dolchstosslegende" as a redirect. Cadr 01:48, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The minimum requirement of use english is that titles use the modern 26-letter english alphabet. Obsolete English letters such as aesc, thorn and eth should be avoided, let alone letters unknown to English orthography, such as scharfes-s. There is nothing wrong with a [[transliterated] title, and I note that the pamphlet used as illustration avoids ß. As it stands, this is the appropriate title for the German-language Wikipedia, not the English. Robert A.West (Talk) 12:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Lüge für einigen, Glauben für anderen

Und wo ist die Mitte? Ein Mythos ist weder wahr noch falsch. Und warum ist die Text noch gesichert? Und man kann das nicht "erwiesen", weil das Wesen eines Mythos die unfalschbarkeit, wieso die unbeweisbarkeit ist. Ksenon 14:28, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Translation — "Lies for some, belief for others — And where is the middle? A myth is neither true nor false. And why is the text still secured? And one cannot prove that, because the essence of a myth is its inability to be proven to be false, as it is unable to be proven at all."Lestrade 13:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Lestrade

Home fries

This was in the lede:

However, the primary focus was on the alleged debilitation of the war effort that began on the home front.

1) "However?" - do you instead mean "The..."? 2)"Primary focus?" - do you instead mean "initial rationale?" 3)"Debilitation?" - do you really mean "treasonous sedition and sabotage?" [sic] 4) "Home front?" - do you mean "In central Europe?" - where the war actually was, (coincidentally enough). Whoever wrote that should have become a quantum mechanic: particle spin and so forth. -Ste|vertigo 14:56, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Effect on World War II

I removed the following text. It looks like original research to me, and much of it is alternate-historical speculation. The request for a source went unmet for some time.

Some believe that the Allied policy of unconditional surrender in World War II was, in part, a response to the Dolchstosslegende. {{fact}} However, this ignores other dynamics of the policy, namely that the United States and the United Kingdom were concerned what would happen if they did not show solidarity with the Soviets and Stalin were to make a separate peace with Germany. Additionally, the decision for unconditional surrender was also an important step for the Allies to rally the public and commit them to the cause.

Still, in light of the situation that had developed in Germany after the World War I armistice, the concept of unconditional surrender was rather popular during World War II, especially amidst anti-German sentiment and the interpretation that the Germans needed to be "taught a lesson" in order to end perceptions of the German Army's invincibility.

In 1944, if Count Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators had succeeded in killing Hitler and ousting the Nazi government, there may have been a great deal of public pressure for the Allies to reverse such terms. Nevertheless, unconditional surrender and the Dolchstosslegende can be used to, at least partially, explain why the plot and others like it received no coordinated help from the Allies.

Loss of territory

The article states that Germany lost one third of its territory as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. The correct figure is about 11%. Norvo 03:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

From 1871 to 1945, Germany did lose almost one third of its territory. As for the 1919 treatment, I think the figure should be slightly larger.--User:Fitzwilliam 12:19, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Related concepts outside of Germany

I added the weasel to this section. Without its use of "some" and "others", there is nothing much here. Neither is a source mentioned for "it has been demonstrated how this happened to the United States during the Vietnam War". Infact, this section as a whole seems fairly badly done. Ultraviolent 04:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

The "demonstrated" part should be removed, but providing sources in this article is out of place. We should instead mention simply and indeed generically that "some" have pointed that out, and link to the appropriate articles (Vietnam War and Stalin Note) for details on who and when. That's pretty standard treatment for "see also" and "related concepts" type sections. --Delirium 06:07, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Other examples of the "Stab-in-the-back" story (sic)

This whole section is a bit of a mess. I don't believe the article is intended to be a general discussion of the history of accusations against "disloyal" people, "fifth-columnists" or "defeatists" in nations at war. The part of the entry that describes the "Cult of the Clitoris" in Britain is mildly interesting though probably not germane to the topic, as Great Britain was not a defeated power.

The section which purports to discuss public disillusionment with World War I in the U.S. is inaccurate and unsourced and again, not relevant to a discussion of the German Dolchstosslegende, which was a specific cultural-political phenomenon that ocurred in a country that was traumatized by defeat in a near-total war.

The article's treatment of a supposed Dolchstosslegende in recent U.S. history (Vietnam and Iraq) is even worse; using a citation from a leftist magazine such as Harper's as the sole source of information for ongoing events or controversial topics is unwise and does not meet Wikipedia standards. It wouldn't hurt the article editors to read or re-read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial. I'm not going to edit the article now, but I will clean it up if no one else does. Arcas2000 17:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the following sections as being a novel synthesis (therefore violating NOR) and arguing a political point (therefore violating NPOV). There may be an appropriate place for this discussion, but I do not believe it is this article. Robert A.West (Talk) 20:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

If these were written about elsewhere, a list of see also's or a category (Category:Betrayal theories?) would be reasonable, though. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:41, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not the one to re-write it, but I just wanted to throw my support to the idea that there exist similarities today in the U.S. The point is acutely driven home by [this http://ibdeditorials.com/IMAGES/CARTOONS/toon022007.gif] recent editorial cartoon. 209.137.225.29 07:04, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Other examples of the "Stab-in-the-back" myth

Britain in World War One

In other countries similar myths of internal betrayal were emerging towards the end of World War One, though in the eventually victorious Entente nations these soon faded. In Britain during Ludendorff's 1918 Spring Offensive the right-wing newspaper The Imperialist claimed that 47,000 members of the British establishment were secretly working for the Germans. The 47,000 were homosexuals and other "deviants" who were betraying the nation because the Germans had obtained a "black book" containing their names. These people were sexually corrupting members of the military and were passing information to the Germans. In some articles Jews were implicated along with homosexuals and people of German descent. As part of this campaign Noel Pemberton Billing, a right-wing member of Parliament, published an article in the newspaper entitled "The Cult of the Clitoris", in which he claimed that followers of Oscar Wilde in the circle of Wilde's ex-lover Robert Ross were part of the cult. The article led to a sensation and to a libel trial.

The USA after World War I

The dispute over the money the US had loaned the Allies, primarily the UK and France and their seeming inability or unwillingness to pay helped fuel the feeling that the country was drawn into the war by bankers on both sides of the Atlantic in order to safeguard their financial investments. This was underscored when the British and French repudiated their obligations in the mid 1930s.

Vietnam

Other wars have been viewed as winnable but lost due to some sort of homefront betrayal. For example, similar ideas emerged in the United States in the latter stages the Vietnam War, when counter cultural movements were similarly interpreted as peopled by "degenerates" or as being secretly manipulated by international Communist forces. These claims evolved into the idea of the so-called "Vietnam Syndrome", according to which US foreign policy was crippled by the withdrawal from Vietnam. However, others believe that this "syndrome" is a myth.

The War in Iraq

The July 14, 2006 issue of Harper's magazine has a article by Kevin Baker arguing that the myth should not be applied to the current war in Iraq:

Who could possibly believe in a plot to lose this war? No one cares that much about it. We have, instead, reached a crossroads where the overwhelming right-wing desire to dissolve much of the old social compact that held together the modern nation-state is irreconcilably at odds with any attempt to conduct such a grand, heroic experiment as implanting democracy in the Middle East. Without mass participation, Iraq cannot be passed off as an heroic endeavor, no matter how much Mr. Bush's rhetoric tries to make it one, and without a hero there can be no great betrayer, no skulking villain.

In opposition to this viewpoint, some Republicans have applied a 'stab-in-the-back' theory to opponents of the Iraq War. For example, Baker notes that talk radio host Rush Limbaugh accused Illinois Senator Dick Durbin of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy," i.e., treason. Also according to Baker, President Bush's deputy chief of staff Karl Rove said: "Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals." According to Baker, Bush said: "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will...As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them.".

This is a poor poor document

I loath that i must come even close to appearing like a member of the irritating grammar police-but what i say is a proper complaint-and not about grammer-the langue and writing here is unacceptably familliar-it is not standard academic langauge and as such is hard to take seriously-i couldnt when i read it. Futhermore its poorly referenced

"many felt their country was being `ganged up on`

Is the word Italic textvictimisedItalic text for some reason unallowed

"The charges that the left wing (or whoever else you wished) had be complicit in Germanys defeat"

Or whoever else you wished? This is supposed to be a proper source of information-not a place for vagueries-include examples of `whoever else they may wish`.

Futhermore, it is suggested that the Dolchstoss was " a certral image in propoganda produced by the many right wing and traditionally conservative political parties that sprung up in the early days of the Weimar republic, including Hitlers NSDAP(NEITHER LEFT NOT RIGHT WING PARTY IN THE AMERICAN SENSE OF LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE)

Thats an unacceptable comment-not everyone reading is American, so the analogie may well be meaningless-for example,British liberals and conservatives dont resemble anything close to the American style-and what american tradition of conservatism-modern or early 20th century?Gashmak 20:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with some of your proposed changes, and I have added them to the text. Otherwise, I think this is a rather concise article, IMHO.--172.145.151.148 04:47, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

German belief on the course of the war

This article says that "as the war dragged on" the Germans lost faith in the progress that was being made. I happen to be reading Donald Kagan's "The Origins of War" and he says that the Germans were being told they were within months of victory up to the very day of surrender. Seems like a disconnect, but feel free to delete this if wrong.

Most common terms

I did a frequency search on Google Books:

• 424 on "the stab-in-the-back legend"
• 143 on "the stab-in-the-back myth"
• 118 on "the stab-in-the-back theory"
• 37 on "the stab-in-the-back thesis"
• 43 on "the Dolchstosslegende"
• 11 on "the Dolchstoßlegende" (probably underestimated since ß is often mis-OCRed)

Based on this (and, I suppose, my personal tastes) I'm moving the page to stab-in-the-back legend. Feel free to revert if you disagree. Haukur 10:00, 31 August 2007 (UTC)