Talk:SS Führungshauptamt

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Translation[edit]

Amt is the name for a government department (e.g. Finanzamt). Führung does mean leadership, but can also mean command (in the sense of military leadership - an order from a superior is a Befehl) which is the obvious translation in this context.

So I think the equivalent English would be SS Central Command. If one wants to remain true to the German wording, you could say "Main Department of SS Command" but as a German speaker I simply see this as a clumsier wording and a pointless exercise, because it's no closer to the original in meaning. 78.53.231.165 (talk) 23:50, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed move[edit]

Suggesting a move to SS Leadership Main Office, as this appears to be the common name in the English-language literature. Please let me know of any feedback. K.e.coffman (talk) 20:52, 20 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 12 June 2016[edit]

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. There are several potential new titles floating around, so until one English translation emerges as dominant, this article should retain its present title. (closed by a page mover) Wikipedian Sign Language Paine 15:37, 30 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

SS Führungshauptamt → SS Leadership Main Office – This is the common name in the English-language literature. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:38, 12 June 2016 (UTC) --Relisting. Anarchyte (work | talk) 08:07, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong translation (no sense). It should be SS Command Main Office or SS Command Central Office or something similar. In the given context Führung does not mean leadership but governance. We should search the translation of Führungsamt, that is: command as in Washington laying down his command. --Robertiki (talk) 15:14, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above 'leadership' is more common I believe; I have also seen: SS Main Operational Office. Führungsamt basically means "command office" or "management office" or one could say "operational office" in true meaning of this particular office. It is a matter of English translation. With that said, I can agree to your suggestion above (SS Command Main Office) with consensus. Kierzek (talk) 15:34, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: "the SS Command Main office" term brings up much fewer sources (4) in Google Books. Because the matter is not in having the most correct translation, but the most common term used in historiography, I believe the original proposal is preferable. K.e.coffman (talk) 15:43, 16 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Let us look historiography. First, let us consider that the translation as SS Leadership Main Office was introduced to wikipedia by IP 71.141.232.114 on 20 September 2009. That was an improvement over “SS Leading Main Office” which (per Google) shows no books using it.
Let us look SS Command Main office, filtering out wikipedia, we have only two books:

If we include also sites that duplicate the given information, result count is raised to about 40 hits.
Now let us look better at the 930 results for “SS Leadership Main Office”. More then 400 come from Wikipedia self and therefore should not be counted. Also many blogs are suspect to be influenced by Wikipedia, and alike answers.yahoo and ebay. So we are let only with books, but, look what happens:

Peter Longerich 2012
Jane Caplan, Nikolaus Wachsmann 2009
Jochen von Lang 2005
Chris McNab - book no more linked
Chaterine Epstein 2010
Nikolaus Wachsmann 2015
Adrian Weale 2010
Nigel Cawthorne 2012
John Mulholland 2012
Robert Lewis Koehl 1989
Michael Thad Allen 2002
Eleanore I.M. Hancock (thesis) 1988
Mathias Schmidt, Tina Winzen, Dominik Groß 2014
Dr. G. Moser Translator: Dr. Erwin D. Fink (Univ. of Toronto) 2014

Only 3 three books and one thesis are prior to 2009: are we sure, the other authors were not influenced ? And one author (Adrian Weale) uses both:

This operational headquarters was formed by the SS-Command Main Office to provide combat formations under Himmler's direct ...
... but these same units were subordinated to the SS-Leadership Main Office when they were not in the combat zone ...

It would be interesting to change experimentally to SS-Command Main Office and wait at least one year to check how many books, pubblished after, will use the alternate proposal :-) After all the count difference is only a couple of books and no harm would be made by testing what wikipedia may influence. --Robertiki (talk) 10:30, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: My proposal was reflective of contemporary mainstream historiography: English-language literature. K.e.coffman (talk) 15:01, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A problem is English translation and the actual meaning and role of the office. Führungsamt basically means "command office" or "management office", not leadership office. Kierzek (talk) 15:08, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nom's comment -- I recently became aware of the Google nGram tool, which Google apparently recommends instead of Google Book Search for ease of comparison: Result. The chart shows that in the English language books, SS Leadership Main Office are predominantly used, while the variations "SS Führungshauptamt" and "SS Command Main Office" do not even register. If the "Leadership Office" is what's being used in English lang sources, then that's what Wikipedia is supposed to use, per WP:ENGLISH. K.e.coffman (talk) 20:32, 26 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please be a little nuanced in your searches. SS-Führungshauptamt has at least 96 hits in a properly conducted Google Books search. I'll note that this includes Stein's quality text on the Waffen-SS. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:50, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I am not convinced there is a settled English name for this - I've seen "SS Leadership Main Office" and "SS Operational Headquarters" as translations in different books. Furthermore, a majority of English book sources do use the German name as far as I can tell from a Google books search.[1][2][3] are a few examples. Thanks — Amakuru (talk) 08:34, 29 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.