The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved (non-admin closure) Mdaniels5757 (talk) 00:01, 16 June 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

German rearmament → German rearmament between the world wars – The current meaning of this title is imprecise and ambiguous (see related Move request at Talk:Wiederbewaffnung).

One meaning of "German rearmament" is the interwar arms buildup carried out by Germany after WW I and the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and the other is the post-WW II rebuilding of the German military facilitated by the United States. The Wikipedia article for the latter meaning is currently at "Wiederbewaffnung", and there is a pending move request there as well.

Both articles should have a WP:PRECISE, unambiguous name. This article should be renamed to a distinct, descriptive title that unambiguously refers to the interwar period, perhaps German mobilization after World War I, German rearmament between the world wars (or, "...in the interwar period"), Military buildup in Nazi Germany, or the like.

If the related move at Wiederbewaffnung and this one are adopted, then a disambig page should be created linking both titles. Mathglot (talk) 21:14, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Listed at WT:GERMANY, WT:MILHIST. Mathglot (talk) 21:25, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Survey[edit]

• Support German rearmament (1919–1939), or alternately Interwar German rearmament per WP:CONCISE. @Mathglot: What you do think about the dates? Article dates it to "shortly after the Treaty of Versailles [1919]". buidhe 21:30, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Actually Oppose move Judging from my Google Books search, the vast majority of titles which don't have "West German" in the title are referring to interwar rearmament, making this the WP:PRIMARY topic. Hatnotes should be used for navigation. buidhe 21:45, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• As per Buidhe--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:37, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  Just noting here that User:Sturmvogel 66's "as per..." !vote above is (at this writing) a "Support"-vote, pre-WP:REDACT by Buidhe. Mathglot (talk) 21:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Notifying creator and top contribs: @Xufanc, Three-quarter-ten, François Robere, Monopoly31121993(2), Sdio7, and Rjensen: Mathglot (talk) 21:44, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Support German rearmament (1919–1939), with a dab at primary. The dab can also point to West German rearmament and East German rearmament. I'm assuming those articles will exist in the near future. – Reidgreg (talk) 22:14, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  @Reidgreg:, the former already exists: see Talk:Wiederbewaffnung. Mathglot (talk) 22:22, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Comment – Not sure if I get a !vote since I made the proposal, but based on this analysis I now support German rearmament (1919–1939), with German rearmament to become a 3-way disambig page (pre-*, east-*, west-*). Mathglot (talk) 00:38, 26 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Support - I think it's probably wise - while a lot of people are familiar with "German rearmament" to mean policies during the interbellum era, and it is understood as such in academic texts, Wikipedia shouldn't assume this and the title to too generic. I mean the website is meant to be structured like an encyclopedia, so it would be wise to just add "(1919-1939)" to clear that up. Sdio7 (talk) 00:57, 26 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Support German rearmament (1919–1939), with German rearmament to become a 3-way disambig page. And thanks for letting me know.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 19:53, 27 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Oppose move, as West German rearmament and East German rearmament are clearly different and there is not any other period of German rearmament. It would be nice also if someone created those pages when we are done discussing this.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 22:14, 28 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Monopoly31121993(2), You're right: West German rearmament and East German rearmament are indeed different, as everyone agrees. They both took place after World War II, in the Federal Republic, and the DDR, respectively. But there is, of course, another period of German rearmament, namely, the period between the two World Wars. That is the period that this article covers, and it is exactly why this Move request was created in the first place. Mathglot (talk) 02:39, 29 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Mathglot, I understand that but since there is no other "German rearmament" period then it is unnecessary to change the title to begin with. Or am I missing something?Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 11:38, 29 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Monopoly31121993(2), yes, you're missing the fact that there are two periods of rearmament. The first one was in the 1920s and 30s (interwar period), and the second one in the 1950s and 60s and beyond (cold war period). This article covers the interwar period. The article Wiederbewaffnung covers the cold war period, although only for West Germany. There is another move request at that article, related to this one. You are welcome to participate there, if you wish, at Talk:Wiederbewaffnung. Mathglot (talk) 18:22, 29 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

    Mathglot, Ok, I understand. I would think the obvious solution is to rename Wiederbewaffnung (which is meaningless to an English speaker) to West German rearmament and leave this article's title as is. I will write this on the Wiederbewaffnung page as well.Monopoly31121993(2) (talk) 19:33, 29 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Oppose move. Should stay at the present title, since "German rearmament" is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. A hatnote could be added to point to West German rearmament. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:48, 28 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  K.e.coffman, can you elaborate on why you believe "German rearmament" is primary? I've discussed this below and provided some data. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 05:49, 28 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Comment – should we relist? or add some more project listings, to try and get some more eyeballs? Afaict, the policy-based, data-backed, COMMONNAME argument seems clear, yet no one is responding to it. I'll see if there are some projects that might attract some new opinions. Mathglot (talk) 01:20, 7 June 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Listed at: WT:HISTORY, WT:RM.

• Comment Just trying to succinctly restate my position for the benefit of any newcomers. This article should be renamed to a more WP:PRECISE title such as German rearmament (1919–1939), to avoid confusion with post-WW2 German rearmament. This is based on the actual data in reliable sources, showing that no title is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. The claim above (@ 21:45, 25 May) that the "vast majority" of results of a Google books search show that the current title is preferred, shows no work and is without foundation. (It probably resulted from an inaccurate, unquoted search which fails to take into account the difference between a title search and general search; but without the data, that's a mind-read.) In fact, the data from a carefully constructed search show that there is no WP:PRIMARYTOPIC; the data can be viewed here. Any claim to the contrary would have to deal with these facts. Failing that, this article should be renamed, with a disambig page created at the current title. Mathglot (talk) 02:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Regarding WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and the Google books search, I'm not so sure as User:Buidhe indicates above, and I'm doing some tests and will report back. For starters, looking at just the top ten results, of the top four it's two and two. But that's very preliminary and not too meaningful; the data may end up supporting Buidhe in the end. More soon, but I did want to separate this into its own section, so we don't clutter the Survey section with discussion. Mathglot (talk) 22:31, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Results with "West German rearmament" should be discarded as it's a WP:PTM. buidhe 22:35, 25 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Regarding WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, after an initial experiment in Google books checking the top ten de-duped results, I'm not seeing a preference in numbers in either direction, whether for titles about interwar, or cold-war rearmament:

If this holds up on subsequent pages, there is likely no WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Mathglot (talk) 00:19, 26 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I performed similar searches on Scholar, which pretty much confirm what we saw in books, although I didn't make an exact count this time, just eyeballed it. There are two searches, quoted intitle, and quoted unrestricted. The most striking thing I noticed, was that using the INTITLE keyword produces very different results than without it: you can see both senses showing up in the titles, whereas in the unrestricted search, the numbers are much more skewed. This shouldn't be surprising, as in the title-only search, where there is no context, the dates, or an era-settling keyword (such as Wehrmacht) is needed to show what the journal article topic is. I'm not sure why there's such a skew in the unrestricted one, although my conjecture is that it's because the unrestricted search excludes a book entirely if the string "West German rearmamant" appears in it anywhere even in a six hundred page book, regardless how many times it appears without the "West", whereas restricting the search domain to titles only, levels the playing field, so to speak, because they're simply not as long. To be certain, a new search combining two title-restricted keywords and two unrestricted ones could be carried out, and that might settle it. But from what I've seen thus far, I'm satisfied that neither topic jumps out as PRIMARY. Mathglot (talk) 03:56, 27 May 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]