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Radio War Nerd EP #436 — The Battle of Kursk, Pt. 1 (feat. Annibale) (Patreon)

Published:
2024-04-12 02:45:04
Edited:
2024-04-20 23:40:55
Imported:
2024-04
Tags:

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Content

Guest: Annibale

Recorded: April 9, 2024

Annibale joins us for a 3-part series on the Battle of Kursk in WW2, the myths vs the realities, and some parallels to the current war in Ukraine. In part 1, we discuss the background, the battle plans, and the planning.

For more, check out these episodes with Annibale:-A Brief History of the Waffen SS: EP #410-Italy On The WW2 Eastern Front series, starting with EP #226

Maps

*Kursk today

*Front line, Kursk salient, July 1943

*Armies & initial battle moves

Nazi battle plan vs Kursk salient

Music interlude by Brendon Anderegg's Mountains. Buy Mountains here. 

Total time: 1:59:44

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

ploob

ANNIBALE!!

Rory

Damn. This is like my dream episode. Gonna have a whiskey and cigarette on my porch tonight and really get into this.

Michael Conlin-Elsen

I see Annibale, my mud-caked corpse rises from its grave on the steppe to listen

NYCM&AHole

Wo ist die Neunte Armee?

Mr Bean

I drove up with some friends to Oswego, so we had basically the same disappointing weather. Still an incredible experience and well worth the trip.

blazed uncle

Interesting moon tidbit related to Annibale’s comment regarding the uniqueness of Earth’s eclipses: The leading theory on the formation of the moon now is that it’s the result of a collision of a proto-Earth with another Mars-sized planet. It makes one wonder how much having such a relatively large satellite that close to an early Earth influenced the development of complex life.

MoldyTolge

Kursk? Annibale? This is looking like the fillet mignon of War Nerd episodes.

Karl Childers

my layman's understanding is that the transition from sea life to land life occurred in tidal areas which were alternately submerged and dry in accordance with tides -- tides which only exist because of the size and proximity of our moon. i would guess that this created a significant selective pressure to develop organs which could absorb gaseous oxygen rather than only oxygen dissolved in water, because organisms would have to survive when the water retreated. on a planet with no tides, who knows, maybe life would never have had a selective pressure to adapt to land at all.

Annibale

„Mein Führer, befehligen Sie die Neunte Armee oder ich?“

NYCM&AHole

Do you know if they portrayed the Soviet attack in Kursk in the German tv film “unsere Mütter unsere Väter” (Generation war for the English audience)? It’s the second episode, about 30 minutes in.

Annibale

I've watched a bit of the last episode but found it meh. Should I give it another try?

NYCM&AHole

I don’t think it’s that good but I speak zee german as a second language so I’m a little biased. Also I don’t get a lot of German productions here in ‘murika, so the rarity affects my judgment. But that scene with the Soviets getting the jump on the Germans stuck with me.

NYCM&AHole

But the first two episodes are the better of the three. Two has the most combat.

JD

New Annibale episode ==> drop whatever I’m doing, immediate listen.

Chance

I believe the movie Annibale was talking about with the Soviet anti-tank battery is actually called 'Hot Snow' (Горячий снег).

Anne-Marie Verbeken

I messaged a week ago asking if you would consider interviewing Malcolm Kyeyune. I am re-sending here as I am not sure it was read or received even.

Craig Wilson

Cool episode, and feeling warmly smug that I had made a comment on an earlier episode (#416?) making some of these same points and comparisons with the Ukraine War counteroffensive. Looking forward to part two.

krumping4

This episode is like something I would dream about and then wake up disappointed it wasn't real.

Randy Long

Annibale is always a pleasure to listen to

Jake Palmer

Jupiter's moons are worse because they're too big, not because they're too small, so they also obscure the sun's corona during an eclipse on Jupiter (not that you'd want to be "standing on Jupiter" under any circumstance...). The channel minutephysics released a "Which Planet Has The Best Eclipse?" video just recently. Definitely Earth.

Gabe G

I was pleased that Annibale mentioned Mosfilm, and would like to point out another film available on their Youtube channel about the Battle of Kursk - "The Fire Bulge". There are some absolutely incredible set pieces and aerial shots.

Annibale

Yes it's a spectacular film. Very inaccurate though!

radiowarnerd

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check him out.

Benke

Once every solar eclypse War Nerd makes a WWII episode

Jed Hovey

I like hearing about the Eastern front in WWII. I know you're mostly of the opinion it's been covered to death, but it's arguably the largest land war in history and deserves attention. I've had the debate about when Operation Barbarossa was officially kaput, I tended to either say the Battle of Moscow or Stalingrad. It was undeniable after Stalingrad, the Axis just couldn't take those kinda of casualties, didn't have near the population base to draw from. I think Annibale is probably right about Smolensk though, although at that point you might as well say the war was lost the day Hitler tore up Molotov Ribbentrop and invaded the USSR. Kursk, at least before this podcast, was noteworthy to me because it's the first time the Axis was defeated during the summer. Just another obvious sign that it was over. It's fuckeo up to think about, but Hitler could have basically kept Europe if he'd just quit while he was ahead. He probably even could have taken the UK if he'd just let Molotov-Ribbentrop stand. Another dark truth, you can make a good case that Stalin's brutal industriaizaton may have in large part been what held Hitler off long enough to keep Operation Barbarossa from being successful. There are a litany of failures and pointless mass murder you can put at Stalin's feet, but it's hard to argue that industrialization in the USSR wasn't a life and death matter. 20 million Russian civilians were killed in that war...

Gabe G

Interesting to know! What are some of the inaccuracies? I'm not very well versed on the Eastern Front, I'm afraid.

John Waaben

Nobody de-mystifies WW2 like Annibale!

Tom Warner

nazis just couldn't resist the temptation of a big bulge

Patrick Link

Is at your doorstep also called Come and See?

Clammy_Damp

I love the musical intermissions when you do them. I’m fascinated by war but don’t take pleasure in thinking about it and the music definitely helps. Great work and I’m always glad to hear Annibale!

Clammy_Damp

Also some pie in the sky... I’m dreaming about you two collaborating once more with Will Menaker to talk about Alex Garland’s Civil War.

Sam

Is that interlude song available elsewhere or special for this episode? Lovely discussion too 😁👍

Annibale

We'll go though some of it during the next show, I promise it will be interesting

Annibale

I shudder to think what would have happened if Hitler had "dragged his feet" and attacked the Soviet Union later. The war would have been IMHO much longer and probably gone nuclear to a much larger extent than it actually did. I don't think the war in the East could have been avoided: it was Hitler's ultimate goal. But a slower, more deliberate and prolonged war would have been even grimmer than the real WWII

Craig Wilson

A lot of the discussion around Ukraine’s counteroffensive focused on mine warfare. I just wanted to include a few quotes from the report “Mine and Countermine Operations in the Battle of Kursk” (2000) by A. Remson & D. Anderson. Freely available online but have also seen these points emphasised in other published works. “The Battle of Kursk … had two major and long-lasting effects on Soviet engineer doctrine. Impressed by the effectiveness of the minefields at Kursk in slowing the advance of the German tank-heavy forces, the Soviets placed increased importance on minefields …” “The Battle of Kursk also supported the concept of laying mines during the fighting in the path of an advancing enemy. Soviet General Staff Instructions issued … before the battle called for the creation of Mobile Obstacle Detachments at every tactical level to lay mines in front of the enemy advance … Mobile Obstacle Detachments could move quickly to any threatened point. Since they laid mines in the path of the advancing Germans, the mines were much more effective than those laid before the battle … Gen. Tsirlin's generalization that two-thirds of the enemy tanks destroyed by minefields blew up in the minefields laid during the battle was cited by generations of Soviet military writers. Thus the concept of creating Mobile Obstacle Detachments to lay mines in front of an advancing enemy became a permanent part of Soviet engineer doctrine” “The last combat engineer text published before the breakup of the Soviet Union, for example, stated, ‘Minefields are the principal type of artificial obstacle in modern combined arms combat. They are highly effective, easy to set up, and difficult to overcome.’“

theWalrus

Regarding the penetration of German society by Nazism, Omer Bartov pretty convincingly demonstrates its utter ubiquity amongst soldiers (of the Heer, specifically) in 'German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare'

Annibale

Great book. It ruffled a lot of feathers upon release, but now it is considered a classic (with good reasons).

Jed Hovey

I had never thought of it that way. I guess my understanding was that industrialization and production favored the USSR long term. I also was under the impression both Hitler and Stalin understood this....trying to buy more time to build more military equipment was his main motivation for signing Molotov-Ribbentrop and Hitler's main reason for ignoring it. Once it got going it was understood that the industrial of the USSR couldn't be matched long term. Could be totally wrong. It makes sense, both sides would have been better armed a couple years down the road. Another part of thia history that rarely gets mentioned is how much Stalin hated the British. I got that from reading the Stephen Kotkin biographies of Stalin. Stalin and those in control of the party considered the UK as imperialist enemy #1, that the UK was the biggest obstacle in achieving world communism. In addition to buying time to industrialize , Stalin really did think that he could have some kind of temporary alliance with the Nazis and use them against the UK. The British played a similar game on the other side, basically content to let Operation Barbarossa unfold inflicting gigantic amounts of human suffering and destruction on the USSR.

Shane

Love Bulge Talk

Anne-Marie Verbeken

He writes for Compact magazine, New Statesman etc and one can listen to him on the Multipolarity podcast.

William

Never thought about laying mines in battle. Makes sense to lay mines while in retreat

William

100% Germany lost when their manpower was broken on the eastern front. Not only were the experienced soldiers irreplaceable for military reasons, but they were also often the best, most skilled, and most experienced workers. People who claim “Nazis could’ve won with more oil” really miss the point that the minute Barbarossa started, Germany was unable to produce enough material to support the war effort. Hitler’s early aim was to cobble together Europe, North Africa, and the balkans into an economic force that could rival the US and the Soviet Union. Lacking the natural resources to do that pushed him to invade the soviets

David Andrews

Annibale is probably the best guest in the excellent RWN bullpen. Very good episode.

Alexander Fuchs

would love a RWN ep on ernst jünger ... not so much on storm of steel but on the essays that would follow on "war as an inner experience" through "fire and movement" and "total mobilization" up until "the worker" and "the peace"

Alexander Fuchs

nothing to do with Kursk but "thr cranes are flying" deserves a mention as one of the great soviet war movies

Alexander Fuchs

its german memory culture at its most disgusting imo

Alexander Fuchs

how about: reviewing all of fritz langs wwii movies (man hunt, hangmen also die, ministry of fear & cloak and dagger)? 🤤

etienne

if i had been brendan it would have been *so* difficult to not just fuckit and put a tech-death song by Defeated Sanity or something as the break music lol

Craig Wilson

Another quote from the same report: "Once the concept of laying mines rapidly in front of an advancing enemy became doctrine, the Soviets worked to develop equipment for the task. The development process in the postwar period led from mine chutes attached to trucks, through several types of towed minelaying trailers (PMR-2, PMR-3, PMR-4), to armored minelaying vehicles (GMZ). This sort of equipment was absent from the inventories of most western armies until the development of small, scatterable mines ... " I post these quotes mainly to illustrate the apparent importance placed on mines in Soviet and, presumably, subsequent Russian military thinking. Russia has used the ISDM "Zemledeliye" rapid mine-laying system in the war with Ukraine, and if Wikipedia is to be believed, Ukraine also has GMZ armoured mine-laying vehicles in their arsenal, inherited from the USSR days.

Annibale

It's a great movie about the homefront. Surprisingly honest

Maggie+Al

if we are breaking are doing WW2 we might be interesting to talk about the British invasions of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.

J P 3

It's been a while since I saw "Enemy at the Gates", but my recollection is that it celebrated the Russian contribution to WWII. e.g. movie was released in 2001, during the post-Soviet period, at a time before U.S.-Russian relations started to turn south. I don't remember specifically how the movie threaded the needle. At that time the Nazis were still the universal villain. It may be that the movie attempted to portray the Soviet Union in a negative light, while celebrating the heroism of individual Russians.

Doug Cartel

they spread the Nazi lie that the russians just sent unarmed peasants at gunpoint to sprint at german machine guns, and one of the big subplots is how the evil commie newspaper guy rejects communism and sacrifices himself because Jude Law had better dick game than he did

Doug Cartel

The gap in western discourse over the Eastern Front is so large that you will see endless debates by morons about how 6 million Jews could be killed when an oven is so-and-so cubic meters wide, but nobody ever brings up 27 million Russians butchered by the germans as a counterpoint. If anything the retort is 'well most of them died because stalin did human wave attacks' most war nerds deserve to be shoved in lockers

Annibale

...and that's just part of its awfulness :). It begins immediately with the Soviet soldiers being locked in cattle wagons when they're taken to Stalingrad. And it goes downhill from there...

Annibale

Yes, admitting publicly you're a researcher on the Eastern Front is like being locked in a room with endless copies of "Dr Stangelove"'s George C. Scott character "Mr President, if I may speak freely, the Russkie talks big, but frankly, we think he's short of know-how. I mean, you just can't expect a bunch of ignorant peons to understand a machine like some of our boys. And that's not meant as an insult, Mr. Ambassador, I mean, you take your average Russkie, we all know how much guts he's got. Hell, lookit all them Nazis killed off, and they still wouldn't quit."

LC

Over the course of the war the Soviets took over 5000 parts out of the t-34; the cost of materials and construction of a single t-34 dropped in half between 1941 and 1943. The simplicity allowed for mass production by unskilled labor. In contrast, the Germans constantly sought to upgrade the panther, sometimes even in the middle of production, and insisted on using highly skilled mechanics to construct each tank. As a result, the man-hours to build a panther were nearly 10x higher than the t-34.

HarshMalarkey

One of these days I'm going to make you Mrs. Buck Turgidson

HarshMalarkey

Good lord would you look at that bulge

Gengeros

Amazing episode. We need more eastern front episode as they are not very well known in the Anglo speaking world. Maybe an episode about the Courland pocket?

AG

One of my nephews is a lineman (the guys who fix ppwerlines) and became their drone guy on his team. Great application for managing utilities operations. I also pass a billboard advertising to become a drone technician/operator and make $18/hr.

AG

I would counter most politicians and generals should shoved in the locker.

HeyB00B00

Love these Annibale ones. Very old school feeling to this episode. So much new war going on that these ones get rarer and rarer

Sean Atkinson

The British should be hated. As should we (USA). As we are, actually.

Jed Hovey

Of course, no one is innocent. You have to be careful in saying that because saying everyone is deserving of hatred is functionally equivalent to saying no one is. There are graduations of course and you don't want to just say everyone is terrible because it's a cop out and lacks nuance. That said, no one builds an empire with clean hands. You don't amass enough juice to become a world power without doing some really bad things along the way.