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Radio War Nerd EP #444 — Battle of Kursk, Pt. 3: Myths & Memory, feat. Annibale (Patreon)

Published:
2024-05-14 20:42:17
Imported:
2024-05
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Guest: Annibale

Recorded: May 9, 2024

Here's the final episode in our 3-part series on the Battle of Kursk with Annibale. This episode: Annibale's 9 Points about Kursk and the Memory Battles waged by ex-Nazis and their newbie western benefactors long after the kinetic battle ended...

Check out parts 1 and 2:-RWN EP #436  — Pt. 1: Introduction to the Battle of Kursk-RWN EP #439 — Pt. 2: Prokhorovka and the Nazi Retreat

-Images - postwar Nazi-friendly history rewrites, underwritten by NATO

*"great book by a great soldier"

*"Hitler's most brilliant general"

*New York Times: "Ingenious...action-packed...fascinating!"

*Classic account

*"Germany could have won..."

*

Also check out the RWN series, Annibale's Italy on the Eastern Front in WWII, starting here

Music interlude by Brendon Anderegg. Check out music from his group Mountains here. 

Total time: 1:21:02

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

MoldyTolge

WW2 Eastern Front hagiography analysis AND Annibale? You continue to spoil us war nerds.

Sean Atkinson

For God's sakes, WHO is Annibale?

Shane

Bulge Talk III

Shane

He’s a guest on this podcast

drizzly_november

People ask me, they say, who is this ANNIBALE, and you’re hearing it more and more.

Martin

Thank you for the amazing episode! As always its awesome to hear Annibale come on the show. I recently started reading Guicciardini’s History of Italy, and I’m dying to hear the next episode of the Italian Wars series!

Michael Conlin-Elsen

Maybe we can get a bonus episode all about Soviet Commanders in WWII, aka "BIG THICK DUDES"

.oldneon

this may be a dumb question, but do y’all have brendan play the music during the zoom call when you guys take a break or does he just edit it in?

William

Isn’t every army impaired by the bureaucratic system that governs it?

Neil Y

Thanks for the series. Annibale's final point is something we should all strive to keep in mind as we study and learn history. We are all guilty to one extent or another of using history as a political or narrative tool but reminding ourselves that what we know is not almost never definitive is so important!

Clammy_Damp

Singin “Annibale” to the tune of The Lion Sleeps Tonight every time one of his eps drops

Borvis

Re: Mark’s comments on Midway—US intelligence was very much not the final word on that battle. This is a worthwhile series on the battle and discusses just how many key events during the battle were due to pure chance: https://youtu.be/Bd8_vO5zrjo?si=HzuDWvLGStfyD5Rf

ploob

Now I'm looking for an episode on the battle of midway. Can't believe y'all don't have one, please help 🤞

Sean Atkinson

Hmm, that answers the "what", but not the "who". Which was the question. ........God, I'm so close to paraphrasing Donald Sutherland in "JFK"

Doug Cartel

These were really great, I like when people put a new perspective on things. My understanding of kursk is that soviet foreknowledge of the attack, while probably still a result of intelligence work, was also just a logical conclusion of analysis. By which I mean, maybe they needed intelligence on the finer details of any impending assault towards kursk, but also, the battle was an inevitability because the Soviets had such a large salient that it was impossible for the germans to ignore it.

Cary Confino

It’s “Pro-BAB-lé” and “Politicizéd” moving forward

Tom Warner

as far as I'm aware there's no further lore other than "he's an Italian war nerd and frequent guest"

Jackm

Another incredible Annibale series. Also major props to Brendon for the always immaculate composing—I hope these interludes are compiling in a directory somewhere.

drizzly_november

Anyone who can casually mention they've met 10 former SS members has lore.

Jed Hovey

I agree that we seem to be living in an era when there was a sort of negative overreaction after 1991 to everything related to the USSR and the Soviet form of government. Regardless of how you feel about Marxism-Leninism, the "really existing socialism" of the USSR, or anything else. They won. Full stop. Stalin lead the USSR to victory, and it feels like even stating that bare, undisputable, basic fact is somehow controversial today. Yes, countless mistakes were made and yes Stalin's shocking indifference to human suffering and loss of life are some of the most extreme in human history, but he won. So did the USSR. This poses a lot of tough questions, particularly in the West as to what the war meant or what victory even means. People in the US are still often loathe to admit this. They peddle a bunch of nonsense about how the war was won on the Western front with support from the USSR but this is so patently untrue it's embarrassing. My grandfather was in D-Day and I genuinely grew up thinking that was one of the largest battles in the war. Stalingrad was roughly 100 times the size. The real war in Europe was in the East and the USSR did the vast majority of beating the Axis. Any historian with a shred of integrity should be able to admit this.

hamburglar

I don’t recall where I heard it but somebody said he is or was possibly an officer in the Italian military. Could have been pure speculation though

Sean Atkinson

Absolutely- integrity is the first thing abandoned in furtherance of a main line career in history or journalism. Look at how the US causes right wing coups in country after country, then has them start wars to ensure orders at our #1 industry. And it goes completely unreported.

Sean Atkinson

Not at all all. It should be, but it seems the biggest political opponents of an army are its contractors, and the aristocrats that own them.

Jed Hovey

I usually say something like, "To hear some people tell it, the US government has never killed a single person who didn't have it coming," which is obviously absurd. The level of denial in this country or the amount of excuses people are willing to make is beyond belief sometimes.

Nicholas Levis

Historian here. Almost every contemporary I've run into or read doesn't need to "admit" this, because it's self-evident to them. The Soviet Union won the European war and bore the vast share of the cost. US-UK helped. Belatedly, since Stalin had been begging for them to open a Western front for years before D-Day. Let's not blame academic historians -- historians who do scholarship and teach the subject based on applying rigorous methodology to the existing source material (of all kinds). Generally they have integrity, or they'd be, I don't know, think-tankers, or talking heads on TV, or finbros or something. I don't know what his background is, but when Annibale speaks, he's being a historian. But the various sources of funding ain't going to flow his way, they're going to do things like (as he says) hire the former German generals to write the accounts of what supposedly happened. For the popular view of these things you can blame the likes of Steven Ambrose (just one example), the establishment-sanctioned popularizers and national ideologues (of many countries). But it's not them either. They're just serving up the prejudices that are already hegemonic in the society, because that sells. If they didn't meet the market, others would. Sadly.

Annibale

There's indeed a huge and growing gulf between the "professionals" and the "popularizers" here, and it's not a recent phenomena, Glantz already lamented about the first group shrinking, circa 1997. The response one gets is that without the popularizers the general public won't be interested in reading the professional works, but as it happens in hard science, the number of popularizers who can get people interested in complicated things without dumbing them down is minuscule. Also, history is political per se, and overcoming ingrained confirmation biases and prejudices is very difficult, no matter how meticulous and formally correct is your work. And people often wants to read narratives, not analyses, and the writing style of some of the best WWII historians is not easy to read (compare John Erickson's style with Glantz and you'll see what I mean). The truth is what Nicholas says - most of the academic field does honest and useful research, but the money is not going in the direction of serious research, and the reasons are those we did discuss in the last show

Jed Hovey

I agree Nicholas Levis and Annibale, I was conflating popular narratives and common understandings of WWII in the US with the work of serious historians and these things are in no way the same. The common perception among people I knew during my childhood absolutely was that the US won the war and the USSR was doomed without us or some other such nonsense. It was almost like a cherished national myth, but propaganda is strong and I went through childhood during the end of the Cold War (I was in 2nd grade in 1991). No one should be counting on ordinary Americans for an accurate understanding of history no doubt.

Sean

love Brendan’s music on this episode

Mark Ames

Thanks for this. Makes it actually a lot more interesting if this is the case. A truly glorious battle.