The first of those (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42874542) seems to me too topical, i.e. too much about one specific event / specific persons and not enough of intellectual interest.

The second (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911535), I agree with you is interesting, and you're right that it would normally be encouraged. The question is whether it's a good submission in this moment. It was obviously submitted in the spirit of ideological battle and I think that is how it would be received by the community; this is probably one of the worst possible times for that particular article to appear.

One little-understood weirdness of a site like HN is that an article can be good without being good now. I wrote a long thing about this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306, in case anyone is curious.

As for how we decide which threads to "let through", I wrote about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922234 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 (including a later reply). If anyone reads those and still has a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

p.s. Thanks for imputing good faith to the mods!

Edit: the second article you mentioned did end up getting a big frontpage thread:

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42943973 - Feb 2025 (403 comments) pp.s. When there are submissions you think are particularly good, and that particularly should not be flagged, you can always email the link to hn@ycombinator.com. We're happy to take a look, and many times we've turned off flags as a result of such an email.