Exactly what amysarah said. Yellow onions for traditional latkes. I won't argue with amysarah about which of our grandmother's made the best latkes, but I bet they both used the same traditional ingredients.

I think it depends on what type of latkes you're going for - potato pancakes lend themselves to many incarnations. For traditional ones, definitely yellow onions (pretty sure my great grandma - whose latkes were the stuff of legend - didn't grow up eating Vidalias in the shtetl.) But for more modern, eclectic versions, I'd say use whichever onions seem flavor-appropriate.

I think you want a little sharpness - yellow onion.

yes

White or yellow. Save your sweets for uncooked applications. According to Russ Parson's in "How to Pick a Peach", yellow onions have the highest concentration of sweet flavor compounds, they just have a lot more of the sulfurous compounds that are "sharp" as well.

Germans definitely use white or yellow. Hope they are delicious!!!

I was listening to The Splendid Table today and she was saying that for cooking we should use yellow (or white or red) because they hold up texturally better and save the sweets for salads, pickles, and the like