Talk:Charles de Gaulle during World War II

Title: WW2, or SWW

Not a major deal, especially not right now, but just to raise it while I'm thinking about it: we should decide whether the last part of the title should be "...World War II", or "...Second World War". The parent section header at the CDG article uses SWW, but I don't think that needs to be the determining factor. If there's a clear tendency in English sources, then we should definitely use that; and if there isn't, we should probably match the title of the war article, which is currently Second World War. Great start, by the way; keep going! Mathglot (talk) 06:00, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Leadership positions in groups he founded

User:XTheBedrockX thanks for creating this, and not sure how far you want to go with this article, but there's a notable gap in coverage of his leadership positions in the groups he founded to administer the Free French during the war. Charles de Gaulle was not only titular head of the Free French from London (later north Africa), he was also the head of numerous organizations he created during the course of the war, including: the Empire Defense Council, French National Committee, National Resistance Council, French Committee of National Liberation, Provisional Consultative Assembly, and finally, the Provisional Government in 1944-6. Iirc, the first one was at the prodding of Churchill, pushing him to come up with some sort of legal framework for claiming legitimacy in establishing Free France opposition to Vichy as German client state, and the rest of them were created on his own initiative. These are currently summarized in the article Liberation of France, and each one has its own article separately.

Because this article is focused on de Gaulle in the war years, his administrative leadership positions and the groups he founded to head FF should probably be covered fairly substantially in this article. I could see starting out by {{excerpt}}ing the entire section § Free French Administration from Liberation of France to begin with, and then work through the subsections one by one (Empire Defense Council), and the others) expanding the shorter ones, and maybe just keeping the longer ones pretty much as is, such as the "French Committee of National Liberation" subsection. I can even see an argument for a refactoring between Liberation of France and this article, eventually hosting most of the content currently found in Liberation of France § Free French Administration here, and shortening the longer subsections at LoF, updating LoF with {{Further}} links to the subsections here, after such a refactoring from LoF was carried out. (Note that one subsection covered at LoF was headed by Giraud and not de Gaulle, namely the § French Civil and Military High Command, so wouldn't be involved in any refactoring, and probably would be mentioned more briefly here.)

I'll volunteer by excerpting some stuff from LoF, to show generally how it might look for starters, and then we can see where to go from here. Adding {{ping|Elinruby|Scope creep|GraemeLeggett}] for their thoughts. Mathglot (talk) 03:03, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I've excerpted from LoF. Since GPRF (Provisional Gov't) already had its own, major section, I didn't excerpt anything on that topic. What do you think? Mathglot (talk) 03:21, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

@Mathglot Looks pretty good! And thanks for the compliments!

If you want my opinion, I think having summaries of his roles in these orgs is probably a good idea, as long as the sub-articles aren't neglected. XTheBedrockX (talk) 03:35, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Sub-articles listed in the {{Main}} template in the originals should've been preserved in the excerpts, but weren't for some reason (possible bug in {{Excerpt}}?) so I've added them directly, now. Thanks for pointing that out. Mathglot (talk) 07:50, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Argghh! Fix broken ping (and adding one): @Elinruby, Scope creep, GraemeLeggett, and Shakescene:. Mathglot (talk) 03:22, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

sidetrack

While I'm flattered and interested in the subject, I really don't know all that much about Gen. de Gaulle. The only point I might make is that it never hurts to keep WP:Article size in mind. The history at present show that this article, at 115 kB, slightly exceeds the guideline's recommended limit of 100 kB. You certainly want to keep the length below 200 kB, which is about the longest anyone can reasonably be expected to read at one sitting. {I have long done some rather peripheral editing of War of 1812, which at ca. 200 kB, I've never read all the way through.) A good guide might be to compare whatever the current article's length is with the length of bios of similarly important — or more important figures — such as Theodore Roosevelt (a Featured Article), Franklin Roosevelt or Winston Churchill. See the table at Article Size: —— Shakescene (talk) 04:16, 7 September 2023 (UTC)— P.S., I just checked the lengths of those bios, as well as those of Francisco Franco, Napoleon III and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and they're all considerably longer, averaging around 200 kB. But one should still keep readability in mind. If someone gives up on reading the article through, you've lost much of your purpose in editing it. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:26, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

P.P.S. I realised, after I'd already commented above, that this is not the article about de Gaulle himself but just about him in WW2. So my comments aren't quite as relevant to this article. However, they would apply more strongly to the whole Charles de Gaulle article, which at 230 kB matches the average length of the other biographical articles I cited, and would approach the maximum for reading and rapid download. This CdG in WW2 article does roughly match the 135 kB of Queen Victoria, a well-received article that can nonetheless be comfortably read — if one so chooses — at one sitting, and presents no serious challenges to download speed. —— Shakescene (talk) 13:33, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

they attacked the Benelux countries and France

section Division commander: Nazi Germany attacked France on 10 May 1940.

On 10 May 1940, the Nazi Regime Wehrmacht troups (commanded started the Westfeldzug against Belgium, the Netherlands (German invasion of the Netherlands) and France (through the Ardennes to Battle of Sedan (1940)).

Wehrmacht troups crossing Luxembourg (Luxembourg in World War II) may have crossed the France–Luxembourg border on 10th May 1940. When were the first fights between Wehrmacht and the French Armed Forces?

The main attack against France was Fall Rot. Army Group B started its attacks 5 June 1940.

My proposal for the sentence critizised above:

On 10 May 1940, the Wehrmacht started the Westfeldzug. It began to invade the Netherlands and Belgium. 88.152.28.155 (talk) 08:59, 8 September 2024 (UTC)