Censoring Remarks?

We usually don’t place any restrictions on incoming remarks. So far, this has not been an issue except for one remark a while back that looked suspicious. Our commentators on this blog have always been very respectful. We received another comment the other day that seemed odd. It referenced a paper on Kursk by an author I was not familiar with. A quick glance at the paper clearly showed that this was a bizarre piece not worthy of further attention. So, do I post the remark and let each person make their decision on the referenced paper, or do I decide that this should get no more attention and not post the remark?

Let me quote the third paragraph from the paper which will show why I really don’t want to bring any attention to it:

“To support his enunciation, Kellerhoff quotes only one source – an obscure British historian Ben Wheatley, who allegedly found some obscure aerial photographs in American archives 75 years after the war. And those photographs, allegedly made by the Luftwaffe planes, are Kellerhoff’s only argument for what he called the “disastrous defeat of the Red Army at Prokhorovka.”

Now, I have not read the referenced article by Kellerhoff, but I am familiar with Dr. Wheatley’s work and have blogged about it before. I also went into those same photo files over a decade ago and there is a 32-page aerial photo section in my big Kursk book. He did not reference my work in his paper. I found out about these aerial photo files from John Sloan, a retired Sovietologist who runs the Xenophon Group (link is in our sidebar). So, these files are certainly not “allegedly found” and “allegedly made by Luftwaffe planes.” They are also not that “obscure” (nor is Dr. Wheatley). A couple of Italian Advanced Squad Leader module designers are currently developing their game map sheets from these Luftwaffe aerial photos. See: http://advancingfire.com/

The rest of the article is filled with similar crap. It was bad enough that if I posted it, then I would be obligated to immediately respond to it.  A point-by-point refutation of a ten-page paper would take a while. It sometimes takes more time to refute bad “research” then it takes for the author to make their claims. I do have better and more important, things to do with my time right now. Therefore, I decided not publish the remark and give the referenced article any visibility.

It does appear that the comment is from Russia or a Russian although they use a Chinese appearing name. We will, with some judiciousness, not publish remarks that are obviously deceptive, propaganda-like and based upon poor data. The one other such remark that we did not publish was similar.