Führerliste by John Moore

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Sid Guttridge
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#16

Post by Sid Guttridge » 30 Dec 2017, 23:57

Hi John P. Moore,

Thank you for a considered and reasonable reply.

My main worry is that the convenience of detailing a much smaller organization at the expense of a more important larger one may lead to a distortion of the available historical record relative to the latter.

I fully appreciate the near impossibility of you single handedly repeating your efforts on behalf of the Waffen-SS for the entire Wehrmacht, but I feel it is worth raising this point occasionally in order to highlight the potential side effects of a very narrow a focus in the hope that any distortion of the wider historical record might one day be addressed.

The wider historical record would probably have been better served by a random selection of 30,000 Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS officers, but I appreciate that you are entitled to focus on whatever you wish and what you have done has some value in its own right.

Again, thank you for the reasoned and reasonable tone of your reply.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Michael Miller
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#17

Post by Michael Miller » 31 Dec 2017, 02:10

An excellent and occasionally updated study of a significant number of Luftwaffe officers may be found here:

http://www.ww2.dk/lwoffz.html

~ Mike


Sid Guttridge
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#18

Post by Sid Guttridge » 31 Dec 2017, 09:27

Hi Michael,

You are absolutely right that I've "been beating this drum for around two decades now..... and I doubt I'm alone in assessing it to be a well-worn drum indeed."

Yup, but then, as the old saying goes, "Many a good tune is played on an old fiddle"!

There is a reason for this - I have rarely seen my concerns engaged with, let alone adresssed.

For example, below is a reply I sent to you several years ago on another thread but to which you, as is your prerogative, did not respond:

"You wouldn't, perhaps, be the Michael Miller who writes books on the SS?

I accept your argument that the minutiae can help towards forming the "big picture".

However, as I have posted before, I would like to see more analysis of its significance, otherwise it is little more than "anorakic" politico-military trainspotting of the sort Trackhead refers to. In this regard, I would like to see much more of your "e.g., Otto Ohlendorf got his Kriegsverdienstkreuz II. Klasse for overseeing the murder of tens of thousands by the men of his Einsatzgruppe D" and less unedited list making.

The second problem is that minutiae mining is going far deeper into the SS than elsewhere. To exagerate for effect, whereas we might find the inside leg measurement of comparitively minor SS officers published, the entire careers of most German Army generals are, by comparison, voids.

The result is that the Waffen-SS, in particular, is assuming a far larger military-historical profile than is justified by its actual performance. The consequence is the distortion of the available military-historical record.

I would very much like to see the likes of you, or Dieter, move onto the more important German Army, and bring our knowledge of that up to the level you have for the SS. This would do a real service in restoring balance to the available historical record.

And I agree, "Frankly, the fact that someone would spend more than a decade reading an incessant wave of baffling minutiae in which he has no personal interest is baffling to me." You are clearly better informed than I, as I know no one in that situation. My assumption has always been that those doing so have a genuine personal interest.

I would liken the pursuit of excessive minutiae in any field to the comment made by the US general tasked with capturing Brest - "winning the war in the wrong direction." It is a marginal positive contribution, but perhaps not the best allocation of time, expertise and resources.

Cheers,

A not entirely unsympathetic Sid.
"

Yup, not only the same drum, but the same tone and tune as well! At least I am consistent!

Please lighten up. No author's work is beyond questioning in a free society. Some know how to justify themselves, but others throw their toys out of the pram. As you are possibly aware, I have twice been barred from different forums for assertive questioning on W-SS subjects by moderators of the latter type and I have no regrets on either count.

To most of us the W-SS is not a sacred cow that needs defending through censorship or self-censorship. Nor, I suggest, should it be. Can we at least agree on this?

Happy New Year,

Sid.

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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#19

Post by steve248 » 02 Feb 2018, 17:00

Having read the posts by Sid Guttridge above I can understand his desire for a German Army listing: “the more important German Army, and bring our knowledge of that up to the level you have for the SS. This would do a real service in restoring balance to the available historical record”. Unfortunately this is pointed at the wrong people.

As I see it, the situation is that the research projects of Mike Miller and John Moore stem from a personal interest in the subject matter. You can see on this Forum different researchers working on their own different and personal research interests. Some do include German Army as a subject but whether any will lead to what would be an enormous A-Z listing, I cannot say. Maybe they feel the Wolf Keiling book, “Die Generale des Heeres” is inadequate when Sid wants to go deeper into the organisational appointments.

As an aside here, this week during yet another day at UK National Archives I came across a wonderful A4 photograph of (Army) Generalmajor Hugo Dempwolff. It is a great picture but I did not copy it because it is of no interest to me.

My own personal research interests involve the Sipo/SD (Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst) and I have my own A-Z of both officers and Unterführer spread over 20,000 pages (in Word, 14 pt). Personal to me for over 40 years from other material I have researched for articles and books. Following the example of John Moore, I will be shortening the 20,000 pages, and making it available digitally for a reasonable sum.

However, I was debating whether to show the archival references and where? As footnotes or a simple list at the end of each entry? And what about the points where different documents give conflicting information. As an example, I have a copy of US NARA digital record RG 260; sometime in 1946-1948 the US Army unit in charge of captured SS-Officer files created a mammoth 3000 page typed list giving a very short description of each SS-Officer, quoting name, date & place of birth, SS number, NSDAP number and last SS rank by date. This was not only a mammoth task it was tiring and mind-numbing for the typists as some officers appear to have born after 1945. Comparing the data on these pages with data from actual SS-Officer files, RSHA Befehlsblatt and interrogation reports, there are occasional conflicts with numbers and dates. Given a choice, I will always accept the actual SS-Officer file data.

Another example is the SS-Dienstaltersliste, especially the 1935 and 1938 issues. Some officers listed here have a first name “Carl”, suddenly during the war they become “Karl”. How is this to be explained when creating a record for them.

I am sorry Sid, but my future contribution will only be about Sipo and SD officials some of whom were not in the SS. They made a contribution to the Holocaust and persecution of countless others and this kind of record becoming available appeals to a wider audience of historians than a really long list of German army-navy-airforce officers. But if someone does want to produce such a list it will be applauded in the same way as the efforts of John and Mike.

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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#20

Post by Sid Guttridge » 04 Feb 2018, 19:13

Hi Steve 246,

You conclude, "But if someone does want to produce such a list it will be applauded in the same way as the efforts of John and Mike."

I would suggest that it would deserve far more applause, especially if it includes an analysis of its own contents, as it would be a much, much larger task, would deal with the main spring of the German war effort, as opposed to a secondary adjunct, and would help correct the historical imbalance that currently gives the W-SS a profile relative to the German Army that far outweighs its relative military importance.

Officer list compilation, useful as it may be as secondary source material, is essentially an act of accountancy rather than historiography, unless it contains analysis of its own contents.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#21

Post by John P. Moore » 04 Feb 2018, 21:09

Sid Guttridge - Your comments over the years concerning the Waffen-SS have added NOTHING to the body of knowledge about this formation that was composed of a very diverse group of individuals. I believe that you are nothing but a boring Troll. Bugger off!

John Moore

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Michael Miller
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#22

Post by Michael Miller » 05 Feb 2018, 19:51

Re: "Analysis of its own contents"

You refer, I suspect, to an analysis of the whole (e.g. SS/Heer/LW/etc. officer corps). I believe that analysis of the individuals within an organization also has merit. It is dependent on the individual reader's particular area of interest.

~ Mike

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Michael Miller
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#23

Post by Michael Miller » 05 Feb 2018, 20:06

I'm going to admit, against my better judgment, that over the years my sometimes fragile feelings have been hurt by the likes of you, Sid, and others (yes, you, John, and our late fellow author, Mark, who penned the foreword to "Leaders of the SS & German Police, Volume 1"). My skin is getting thicker, but it's an ongoing and perhaps lifelong process.

Since 2006, I have produced, in some cases with much-needed and extraordinary assistance, six books (and two self-published CD-Roms). They have their flaws, both conceptually and in execution, but the acclaim I've received far exceeds the negative commentary. Critics are a fact of life, and on occasion, a helpful one. A constant stream of applause from a fan club does not make one a better researcher/author.

~ Mike

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#24

Post by Sid Guttridge » 09 Feb 2018, 18:48

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your tolerant reply.

I feel that the problem with almost all these officer lists, (which in middle and junior ranks strangely seem to be almost exclusively about a small, secondary part of the German armed forces, the Waffen-SS) is that the people best qualified to analyze their contents, the authors themselves, fail to do so.

I would suggest that the value of these books would be mangnified many fold if, instead of just transferring facts from archive to book, the authors explained the significance of the material they are working with. Otherwise their output is in danger of becoming a bit like military-historical trainspotting - factually accurate but of unnecessarily limited utility.

I would like such books to be better, not worse, and to be wider in scope, not so narrow in focus.

Cheers,

Sid.
Last edited by Sid Guttridge on 09 Feb 2018, 19:27, edited 3 times in total.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#25

Post by Sid Guttridge » 09 Feb 2018, 19:17

Dear John,

The final words of my last reply to you were, "....what you have done has some value in its own right. Again, thank you for the reasoned and reasonable tone of your reply."

Your last words to me, which were not in response to anything I had posted to you, were, "I believe you are nothing but a boring Troll. Bugger off!"

I don't think I need say more.

Regards,

Sid.

Targykap
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#26

Post by Targykap » 10 Jan 2019, 21:09

As a new user on the forum, I’m wondering how to get in contact with John Moore so that I can order a CD of his Führerliste. Seems I cannot send PM yet. Thanks for any advice.

John P. Moore
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#27

Post by John P. Moore » 10 Jan 2019, 22:25

I have responded to Targykap

Mori
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#28

Post by Mori » 10 Jan 2019, 22:39

Targykap wrote:
10 Jan 2019, 21:09
As a new user on the forum, I’m wondering how to get in contact with John Moore so that I can order a CD of his Führerliste. Seems I cannot send PM yet. Thanks for any advice.
Many many people have a copy, in case you are looking for other sources.

JM's Führerliste, although quite a piece of work, has aged badly. I would rate it an obsolete source by today's standard (which it wasn't when first published 15-20 years ago).

Main limits are:
- no mention of the source of the documents, making it problematic to refer to if you stick to academic standards
- occasional, self-made editing of documents, making it even more problematic to refer to
- design flaw: database under Word instead of Excel/Access => big limit on what you can do with it. forget about counting, sorting, or filtering functions... The database format has no more flexibility than a hard copy.
- and, last but not least, the mass of A3343 and other source documents widely available for free is now huge. At least 4 times larger than what JM's Führerliste includes.
Last edited by Mori on 10 Jan 2019, 23:49, edited 1 time in total.

John P. Moore
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#29

Post by John P. Moore » 10 Jan 2019, 23:05

Mori - You do NOT know what you are talking about. "Führerliste" is updated on a weekly basis with new information. Much of that data is Restricted and is obtained via a special arrangement with various archives and private contributors. People who purchase my publications receive the most current data, something not available via a printed medium. Further, the A3343 NARA publications are only a small part of multiple sources.

John Moore

Mori
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Re: Führerliste by John Moore

#30

Post by Mori » 10 Jan 2019, 23:46

Apologies then. It's difficult to tell that the list is updated on a running basis when it's introduced as a set of CDs - not quite a format made for updates

This could be another limitation: there is no versioning of the list so that refering to it is even more problematic than I thought.

Certainly the list occasionaly includes more than A3343, but since source data are not referenced, no one can really tell. That said, I had a close look at the CDs and it's plain obvious A3343s make the vast majority of the documents (the folder with photograph of graves being an exception, for those who are into that).

The list does not include any such thing as "restricted data" (e.g., personal diaries or private letters not desposited in a public archive). I could not see anything worth mentioning that could come from "special arrangement with private contributors" yet would not be available at public archives today.

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