Talk:Alfred von Waldersee

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Isn't "Graf" a title... If so - shouldn't the article be named Alfred von Waldersee? --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 13:26, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No, it shouldn`t. The title is part of the name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.168.255.177 (talk) 19:54, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

"Chinese barbarism"

There some neutrality issues here about the section dealing the Boxer Rebellion. The article denounces "Chinese barbarism" in reference to the murder of Baron Clemens von Ketteler, the German minister to China. The article does not mention Ketteler had murdered a 14-year old Chinese boy in public, which most people might consider a barbaric act. I am not saying that the Chinese were right to murder Ketteler. But let's it this way. Even today, if the Chinese ambassador to Germany would murder in public view a 14-year old German boy, and he could not be charged with murder because of diplomatic immunity, the German people would be outraged at this abuse of diplomatic immunity. That is exactly what happened in China. The Chinese were enraged that Ketteler could not be prosecuted for murder because of his diplomatic immunity, and so a Captain En Hai decided to get even by murdering Ketteler. I am not saying En Hai was justified, but one can understand why he acted the way he did. The article tells one that Ketteler's murder was an act of "Chinese barbarism", but says nothing about Ketteler murdering the 14-year old Chinese boy. This really seems to smack of racism here. When Chinese kill Germans, it is an act of "barbarism", but when Germans kill Chinese it is not. Are the lives of Germans worth more than the lives of Chinese? Furthermore, the article presents the German reaction to Ketterler's murder as a justified response to "Chinese barbarism". The bloodthirsty Hunnenrede (Hun speech) which Wilhelm II gave on 27 July 1900 to the expedition departing for China, ordering German troops to behave like Huns in China was considered so offensive even in Germany that the Auswärtige Amt released a censored version of the speech to the foreign press with more inflammatory parts cut out, only to be overruled by the Kaiser, who less mindful of his image, insisted on releasing the full text of the Hunnenrede with bloodthirsty parts calling on German troops to commit atrocities against the Chinese included to the foreign press. Kipling used parts of the Hunnenrede in his 1902 poem The Rowers, which is the origin of the term Hun as an anti-German insult. The great irony of this was the Huns were not a Germanic people, but came from Asia. Getting back to the subject at hand, all this bloodthirsty talk on the part of the Kaiser about behaving like Huns to teach the Chinese to fear Germans was not just rhetoric. Waldersee did indeed commit war crimes in China, massacring thousands of innocent people, mostly women and children, in villages around Beijing, in revenge for Ketteler's murder. The article says nothing about "German barbarism", but I think most people might consider shooting children in revenge for a murder of a diplomat that they had nothing to do with to be an act of barbarism. Of course, that might be a violation of the neutrality rules, but quoting from a book published in 1964 when racial attitudes were somewhat less enlightened about "Chinese barbarism" seems to be saying that Wilhelm II's response to the Boxer Rebellion was justified. The American commander in China, General Adna Chaffee denounced Walderee's policy of massacring people living the villages around Beijing as "inhuman", so enough of this morally relativist argument that violence by whites against Asians was considered "normal" in those days. At present, this article really seems to be saying the lives of whites matter more than Asians, and it needs to be rewritten for more neutral and less morally objectionable viewpoint.--A.S. Brown (talk) 19:13, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Harvard refs

I've drafted a version of the article that replaces the verbose (and a little inconsistent) footnotes with Harvard-style short references, and the books in the reference template with {{Cite book}} entries. I find this helps make the footnotes more consistent, and the editing much easier to read. WP:CITE warns against doing this without consensus, so I'll leave it a few days to see if anyone wants to keep them the way they are. I'll add specific callouts of EB1911 attributions in any case. David Brooks (talk) 00:59, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

(ETA) For example,

{{sfn|Röhl|1994|p=200}}

inline, and

* {{cite book | last=Röhl | first=John | authorlink=John C. G. Röhl | title=The Kaiser ...blah... ref=harv}}

in the footer. David Brooks (talk) 01:07, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I find Harvard refs utterly unsuited to Wikipedia, one has to look in two different places on the page to see what a ref is, and then can't click back to the point in the text where one was reading. DuncanHill (talk) 01:13, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I have no objection to the change, through I do feel that Mr. Hill is right about checking twice for the reference. But this is not a matter I am inclined to argue over. Best wishes to all.--A.S. Brown (talk) 04:17, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, DuncanHill is right about clicking twice for the reference, and I have had that objection myself. But I wonder how often an article's reader is motivated to dive into sources in the first place, while reading the body of the article. I suggest it's a rare occurrence (does Wikipedia have appropriate telemetry?), and anyone so motivated wouldn't mind an extra click. However, your point about going back is valid. We do have the browser's Back function, but (a) that is conceptually awkward and (b) it doesn't lead precisely to the origin point because it doesn't provide the highlight, albeit subtle, on the superscript. So, granted.

As to the use of Harvard references in general - I find a references section that has multiple repeated long citations, identical except for the page number, an assault on the eye, as with the repeated Röhl references on this page. It's even worse when (not on this page, but others I've visited) they are several lines long and blue-linked to the online book, and it's also a minor irritation when the reference is slightly differently formatted on different occurrences. On this article, which is one of the more consistent: page or p; trailing period or not; comma or period after the publisher. Those effects are what has driven me to learn and prefer the Harvard style. If another of the approved styles can give the benefit of short footnotes, short sources, and consistency, without the drawbacks, please highlight it; I'm open to a compromise if there is one.

@A.S. Brown: the draft is at User:DavidBrooks/sandbox if you want to see the finished article. David Brooks (talk) 05:09, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

To shew what can be achieved without using Harvard refs, I have consolidated the references using the "Ref name" function with the {{rp}} page number template. I haven't introduced templates such as {{citebook}} (although I am a fan of it) because I didn't want to impose a huge change in style all in one go, especially as this discussion continues. Neither have I changed the Ying Hu and Wenxian Xhang references to match the others, for the same reason. The article now has 16 references instead of 39, the page numbers have been preserved, and each source is listed only once. Readers can click once to get to the reference, and once to return to their point in the text.

If the Ying Hu and Wenxian Xhang references were incorporated in a similar style to the others, and citebook or citejournal etc used as appropriate throughout, I think the article would have a good, reader-friendly, system of referencing. DuncanHill (talk) 06:12, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Sounds like a viable solution. The {{rp}} doc says that Cite.php "may be upgraded to solve these issues"; it that still the plan? Perhaps we can end up with the best of both worlds. Anyway, once you are both satisfied with these changes I'll add the inline EB1911 attributions, which is why I was there in the first place. The cite book templates, including those for Hu and Ditmore, are in my sandbox if you want to lift them. David Brooks (talk) 07:23, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

ETA: done the EB1911 attributions and fixed some other errors; the Cite Book entries are still available. David Brooks (talk) 22:58, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you DavidBrooks, they were very helpful. I think there is a template for Times references that generates a link to their archives, If I can find it I will use it for the relevant refs. I'd be grateful if someone could just look over my recent edits to the article, just to make sure I haven't made any howlers! DuncanHill (talk) 00:45, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see the Times references are already using the template. DuncanHill (talk) 01:09, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Brooks, sorry I was being busy the other day, so please excuse my tardiness. It seems all fine by me, and thank you for your work and time. --A.S. Brown (talk) 01:51, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

No problem. I appreciate the kind words from both of you. David Brooks (talk) 04:18, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Issue?

There is no mention of any children, either on Alfred's wiki-page, nor his wife's. But there was a 'Waldersee the Younger' who was a staff officer on the Eastern front in 1914. (Note from the Battle of Tannenberg wiki-page: Probably Moltke had already decided to replace both Prittwitz and his highly regarded chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Alfred von Waldersee.) Was he their son? Valetude (talk) 15:11, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Graf as title?

According to footnote 1, should not his name be "Graf Alfred von Waldersee" rather than "Alfred Graf von Waldersee"? Karl Bildungshunger1965 (talk) 01:11, 8 January 2021 (UTC)