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Radio War Nerd EP #534 — Stalin's Officer Purges & Decapitation Strikes, feat. Annibale (Patreon)

Published:
2025-07-05 20:48:39
Edited:
2025-07-05 20:51:15
Imported:
2025-07
Tags:

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Content

Guest: AnnibaleRecorded: July 3, 2025

Annibale returns to RWN to weigh in on the effect of Stalin's purges of the Soviet senior officer command on the USSR's military capabilities and its early disastrous response to Operation Barbarossa. We ask if "decapitation strikes" really work as advertised, and along the way, we rate mammals vs dinosaurs.

Books mentioned:-Russia's War, by Richard Overy-The Labyrinth : Memoirs of Walter Schellenberg, Hitler's Chief of Counterintelligence

More listening on WWII:-Annibale's Battle of Kursk series-Annibale's Operation Bagration series-Annibale's Italy on the Eastern Front series

Total time: 1:20:34Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

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Sound production by Telescope Audio

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

Files

Comments

Garibaldi

Without having yet listened to the episode, I am curious how Stalin and Budyonny's joint failure in the Polish-Soviet War, and their mutual hatred of Tukhachevsky will be handled. Budyonny's incompetence and steadfast opposition to mechanization played a large role here to the best of my knowledge.

William Brame

Annibale the most knowledgeable level headed gamer

Muirneach

If John is staying about London...get down to The Yellow Bittern for some good Irish grub he will enjoy it...

CR

I do think it was interesting for Anibale to end by saying that decapitation strikes don’t work when JD has made it quite clear that at least once it had a huge impact (Lincoln). And that’s probably why he has that impression about McClellan and Burnside, which is also probably accurate.

CR

It’s so odd to imagine JD in the heart of the beast

Yairo Martis

Which Japanese video game did he quote?

Yairo Martis

Another banger episode in the bag, boys.

Garibaldi

Comrade Tukhachecsky's 'confession' was splattered with his blood

The Squash

You heard my chanting ANIBALE!ANIBALE!ANIBALE!

Annibale

Re listening this right now and I've realized I keep making a huge mistake through the show, saying that the Soviet intelligence and repressive apparatus was still the Cheka. Of course this is not true, as the Cheka had been dissolved in 1922, and the bulk of the repression was carried on by NKVD. Apologies for the confusion!

William

I don’t think you can categorically say that they don’t work; it would depend on the depth of leadership. Lincoln is such a leadership anomaly it’s not useful to compare to other situations

Jack Ross

Thank you for standing up for the Dinos Mark

Larry Dimes

I request, nay, demand a paleontology war nerd series.

T

Anibale talks about prehistoric mammals the way most old Italian men talk about women in their 20’s

drizzly_november

Yeah, Dolan's line for years on whether targeted killings are effective has been "well, depends on who gets killed". Lincoln was one of one, a remarkable individual situated at the top of a centralized power structure, whose personal growth and flexibility over the course of the war helped shift the entire Union's war aims, and whose constitutionally mandated replacement was a drunk mediocrity generally opposed to Lincoln's whole project. It's really the exception that proves the rule.

John Waaben

Real man’s take: mammals are cuter but birds are prettier 💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪

Damnboooi

I’m not a Stalin stan but one thing about the purges I have yet to see many historians look at is its effectiveness when compared to France’s military structure. The French surrender was basically precipitated by the generals who handed the political leadership a fait accompli saying the war was lost, partially because they did not want France to face extreme destruction. While military defeat was still likely, the French could have still tried to pull back and fight in the interior, raising new troops and building new defence lines etc. However there was not the political will for an all out fight to the death against Hitler. Stalin was constantly worried about lingering tsarist influence in the military and that his generals might do a ‘patriotic’ coup against him. Although the purges reduced the immediate effectiveness of the military and had the terrible effect of making remaining officers overly passive, the USSR was able to absorb cataclysmic battlefield defeats without the structure falling apart (something the Nazis counted on to win, a la France). I think many western historians see political considerations as primarily interfering nuisances in issues of pure military professionalism. But the fact remains that France collapsed due to its defeatist leadership after suffering a terrible battlefield defeat while the USSR stayed in the fight despite suffering a multitude of like defeats. Perhaps the same would have happened without the purges but this does pose potentially uncomfortable conclusions. Perhaps the bloody purges were necessary to keep the army from capitulating, even if it meant accepting reduced battlefield effectiveness. Many western historians tend to paint excesses of totalitarian regimes as both cruel and ineffective, showing the inherent faults of totalitarianism. But what is even more disturbing is having to evaluate whether the psychopathic purges were essential in keeping the military leadership absolutely loyal to the vozhd. We don’t have any way to test counter factuals but I think more scholarship evaluating the cold hearted logic of the purges with specific comparison to the case of France would be interesting.

Rod Miller

Stalin demonstrated the truth of the proverb "Just because you're clinically paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you."

Rod Miller

The French had bled through a catastrophic war with Germany just two decades earlier. WWII French generals had been through it personally. Now they were facing the Imperial German Army with knobs on. Whereas the Russians knew they were up against a genocidal foe, that defeat meant extermination. Seems to me the Russians were 1000X more motivated.

JJ

Interestingly Schellenberg was portrayed in soviet cinema as a very intelligent spy chief in the mini series Seventeen moments of Springz

JJ

Kotkin ‘s new biography of Stalin argues that Stalin/Budyenny didn’t do anything really wrong strategically in the polish soviet war. Their troops were occupied with taking Lvov and could not have made it north to Warsaw in time to prevent the Soviet route. He blames primarily Lenin for pushing Tukhachevesky to over extend himself by going around Warsaw to link up with Germany.

Quinn

Ofc Annibale is a synapsid appreciator, guy really never misses

CR

Fair enough

CR

They’re still big lizards to me, damn it!

CR

Echo Rod. Germany was going to annihilate every person between Germany and Japan. Some would be worked to death as slaves, probably modeling their Alavert on American slavery, but eventually everyone would be dead. As far as I can tell, Japan had the same plan going the other direction. Annibale’s point about how the defense of the Soviet Union (Apple autocorrect is biased as fuck towards NATO and “anti communists”, BTW) could have succeeded if the front line forces had defended at all costs instead of falling back. It’s an interesting occurrence of trading land for men not being the best choice.

Annibale

I'm a regular watcher of Russian language TV, and one of the regular tropes of Soviet and post-Soviet TV war dramas is that German intelligence is always diabolically clever. You see zillions of successful infiltrations that are, of course, thwarted by the weekly brave Smersh / NKVD / GRU officer. The only difference between the Soviet and post Soviet era is that in the former the "brave Smersh officer of the week" was a staunch communist, in the latter he's just a patriot following orders (and the "traitor of the week" has his dad/brother/spouse etc shot in 1937/38). Which quite contrast with reality as we know it, as, for what we know, most of the people whose family suffered under the purges still fought the Nazis

Annibale

Trading land for men is usually a wise choice, but as I mentioned in the show, you cannot extract an entire "front" from a giant pocket while still keeping it as a coherent structure. If Pavlov had decided to defend Minsk (one of the Soviet Union's most important railway nodes) at all costs, Army Group Centre would have been slowed down so much that a better defence line around Smolensk could have been organised. By insisting on "breaking out" (as he was ordered to do, by the way), the entire Central Front structure collapsed. BTW, it's the same conundrum faced by Von Paulus at Stalingrad. There's no way he could have "broke out" the Sixth Army from the pocket even if Hoth had succeeded in piercing the Soviet lines, so in fact Hitler "insane" decision to tell him to stay there and hold down as many Soviet forces as possible saved Army Group A (Caucasus) from complete annihilation.

Annibale

Yes, this is another story that was severely distorted in the Krushev era

Annibale

Also, Budenny influence has always been overstated

Christopher Small

To John's point, I remember watching a lecture about how George Marshall handled the US military at the outset of WWII. Basically the gist of it was that Marshall issued a lot of demotions to the existing staff of generals across the board, with the basic idea that the older ones would just retire and the competent ones would quickly work their way back up. It was a good lecture, and I'll just link it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxZWxxZ2JGE

Demented Avenger

All I keep thinking during this is that Walter Schellenberg was pretty likable in Seventeen Moments of Spring, and maybe that just wasn't so?

Damnboooi

The people of the Soviet Union also went through World War I and afterwards the Civil War, not exactly a picnic, over 10 million dead if you combine the two. The same can be said regarding many French army officers as with many Red army officers who served in World War 1. The genocidal nature of the war was not entirely popularly known by the Soviet people until they had already suffered numerous defeats and the war was far underway. If you say “the Russians just seemed 1000x more motivated” but don’t come up with any reason to account for it, it seems a bit lazy. I think it’s entirely reasonable to wonder what degree the purges had in preventing high ranking officers deciding to capitulate as occurred in France.

Christian Carrillo

You guys do great content but by Zeus you really outdid yourselves this time. How did we end up discussing the evolution of mammals before going back to Tukhachesky. My goodness, you guys are absolutely amazing and, really, Annibale should be a constant presence in RWN. Wow!

a clash of purple

I really feel that the Polish-Soviet War was The Most Important War in all of human history. If the Soviets had been able to make it to Germany and help the revolution succeed there, and spark the chain of revolutions envisioned by Marx that would resolve the class war in a positive way, then the fate of humanity looks very different. Instead, thanks to the Poles, we live in this doomed capitalist hell world. So thanks a lot, Poland. I think all nation-states are bad, but you really are the worst country ever. Also thanks to Lenin and Trotsky for somehow losing a war against Poland, the worst country ever.

Connor Keeley

Alternatively, a successful drive into Poland provokes the much-feared all-Western alliance against the USSR in the 20s or 30s that might actually have succeeded where Barbarossa failed. Really hard to say I think, but the struggle for Germany was probably more momentous for the fate of global socialism in the 20th century.

Connor Keeley

I’d definitely say it is worth accounting for the fact that +90% of decapitation strikes aren’t aimed at structures where the second-in-command is only a guy sopped in to appease a faction that barely tolerates you politically. Plus Johnson was meant to be killed too, and if the whole cabinet was wiped surely the man at the end of the rope would’ve been better than AJ

Patrick Link

Any good reads on the Western moves that fueled the Great Scare of ‘27?

✮BRAIN SLURRY✮

As a lifelong paleontology nerd, listening to these uncultivated vulgarians stumble their way through deep geological history gives me rare sense of satisfaction.

Andrew Bauer

What Japanese video game was Annibale referencing?

Mac Robertson

The French command also saw the Bolsheviks as the real enemy, and capitulation to Germany as preferable to a long war and mutiny/revolution

Mac Robertson

It’s not hard to see a counterfactual where Lincoln survives but he’s outmaneuvered by “defenders of the Constitution”

Cameron Young

Mammals and others had to survive a couple centuries of being buried under volcanic ash. Dinosaurs had to easy. Those first 150 million years - those are Micky mouse eons. Talk to me when you survived a century of ash.

Annibale

Permian was generally super badass, but its end (and the Triassic's first couple of million years) were absolute hell on Earth; the closest Earth came to becoming another Venus. Only small things that could dig underground and hardy things that could swim very deep into the sea did survive. "Surviving a century of ash" is quite an understatement.