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Radio War Nerd EP #565 — Operation Barbarossa, Pt. 5: Battle of Smolensk, feat. Annibale (Patreon)

Published:
2025-11-28 20:55:11
Edited:
2025-12-01 00:22:56
Imported:
2025-11
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Guest: AnnibaleRecorded: November 21, 2025

In part 5 of our series on Operation Barbarossa, Annibale sets up the famous Battle of Smolensk in 1941. The first serious cracks in the Nazi war machine begin to show three weeks into the invasion.

Maps (reprinted from David Glantz's excellent work Barbarossa Derailed (see below)*Map of Smolensk region

*Map of battle, July 11, 1941

*Soviet Western Front counteroffensive

*Annibale's Bibliography:Glantz, David M. Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk, 10 July–10 September 1941. Volumes 1–3 (and Atlas). Helion & Company (original 2010; later/expanded editions 2013/2022). Note: the definitive history of the campaign from the Soviet point of view (at least so far) is a very technical work, not always easy to read, but indispensable

Stahel, David. “The Battle of Smolensk,” chapter in Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s Defeat in the East, Cambridge University Press. The most up-to-date account of the battle from the German side offers some interesting insights into Guderian’s mistakes and the fragility of Germany’s military structure.

Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (ed.) — Germany and the Second World War, Volume IV: The Attack on the Soviet Union. Oxford/Clarendon (English translation; originally MGFA). The “official” history of the Barbarossa campaign from the German side.

Krivosheev, G. F. (ed.) Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century. Greenhill / Stackpole (English edn. 1997 — English translation of Russian statistical study). While now considered controversial in places, this is still the best way to make sense of the gargantuans human losses generated by the Nazi invasion of Soviet Union

Erickson, John. The Road to Stalingrad (volume 1 of Stalin’s War with Germany). Yale University Press / Harper editions (1975; later reprints). Though now dated, it’s still a monumental accomplishment in focusing on the Soviet side of the war.

Annibale's Operation Barbarossa:-Operation Barbarossa, pt 1: German Military Mindset (EP #552)-Operation Barbarossa, pt 2: Germany's Allies & Poland (EP #554)-Operation Barbarossa, pt. 3: Soviet Military Preparations (EP #555)-Operation Barbarossa, pt. 4: The Invasion (EP #559)

ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW WAR NERD BOOK:THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN HANGED: WAR NERD ESSAYS ON THE U.S. CIVIL WAR

Total time: 1:37:34Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

Buy & review John Dolan's new book, They Should Have Been Hanged: War Nerd Essays on the U.S. Civil War

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Comments

Jack Ross

Annibale, my beloved

Alex

Damn, that 3 month statistic really emphasizes what blitzkrieg really means is a ruthless murder spree

T

Ames does a stellar horse impression 😂

JoR

So glad John’s doing better. No need to rush back

CR

I love how all modern historiography can be summed up as “every accusation is a confession.”

CR

100% of the people mentioning Munich 1938 are idiots who don’t know anything. However, if there is an analogy to be made with whatever surrender comes, it would be more like Ukraine is Poland, Russia is the USSR, and NATO continues being the successor state to the Third Reich. The U.S. has been a bad faith diplomatic actor since before it was even a country doing business with eastern tribes. It will absolutely continue to ratfuck Russia as it has for 108 years, and it will succeed in aggressively starting a new war with Russia over Ukraine and the region within five to ten years. It was so close to having Belarus on its side. It will eventually wait out Lukashenko if it can’t break him. It will take out Moldova. And once again it will wage war with Nazi-like and American military incompetence because it’s not real people dying for the U.S./NATO. It’s just Slavs. Putin (and to a lesser degree, Xi) is the personification of “Evil will always win because good is dumb.” They don’t want to win. They want to do business and survive. And to quote Auron McIntyre again, “the side that wants to win will always defeat the side that wants to be left alone.” If Putin and his cronies weren’t such europhiles, or acquiesced totally to Putin’s europhilia, it would be easier to temporarily do what the west sees as the nightmare scenario in Russia, which is for his successor to permanently look east and sever commercial with the EU/NATO and sever China’s overland connections to Europe. Doing it now would be a functional strategy. When it happens in the future, it will be a dogma and it will make things worse for everyone. So when the “civilized” west breaks that agreement and picks up war with Russia, it will be as inevitable as before. And the outcome will be the same, as well.

Benke

Poor little Russia. I weep everyday for little Russian baby soldiers illegally occupying Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia.

a clash of purple

Russia is employing baby soldiers?? No wonder their initial invasion went so poorly...

a clash of purple

All (mainstream) historiography, period. I mean, it's always been imperial powers who decided what history is. That goes all the way back to Rome, where every emperor summarily executed everyone who wrote about the last emperor upon taking the throne and burned their texts, then commissioned a bunch of new courtiers to write about how great he is and how awful the last guy was. It reminds me of something Annibale said in a previous episode: to a considerable extent, the past is unknowable. Or rather (my words now), the historical record is whatever fiction is most convenient for those in power, and everyone else goes along with it because that's how memory works - it's mostly post facto communal confabulation. It's not that the facts are totally inaccessible, but good luck ever getting those in power to accept any truth that's inconvenient for their ideology or their personal advancement. And yeah, so much of the psychology of those in power is just projection. Even Lord of the Rings dramatizes this in the character of Sauron - Gandalf and company discern his strategies from afar and outwit him because, as smart as he is, he assumes that everyone thinks the way he does. Probably something about the ruling classes needing to rationalize their heinous actions by fantasizing that everyone else is just as bad as they are.

Doug Cartel

as we all know, "International law" means "It's good when USA does it and bad when anyone else does it, and it's EVIL when Russia or China does it"

Doug Cartel

This book is 20 years old so it may have some retort printed somewhere, but "The Blitzkrieg Myth" had some very compelling explanations of how the early war went before ultimately arguing that the hype around the concept of Blitzkrieg is mainly the fault of british historians trying to make excuses for Britain's failures. Aside from explaining why the concept was both never practiced and impossible to do so (issue #1 being fuel and ammo constraints), Mosier explained that Hitler's biggest victories were all political ones: Poland's defense strategy relied too much on the erroneous assumption that France and Britain were not cowards, and Belgium's defense relied too much on the erroneous assumption that british generals are not cowards. France's military held out on the Maginot Line for about a month after Paris surrendered, and only gave up the Maginot Line after Paris sent special negotiators to convince them. So, many of Hitler's biggest wins lie mainly with the awful leadership of the Allies early on (especially the brits). Germany's offensive strength for Barbarossa relied heavily on tanks stolen from France and the Czechs, who had thousands of tanks, many of them better than what Germany had at the time, and Germany's cartel economy never cared enough about demand from the military to throw their tank production into high gear, so they coasted on the thousands of stolen tanks until it was too late. When the Wehrmacht was begging and screaming for Krupp et al to build a tank based on the T34, the cartel yawned and said "how about we stick an 88mm on a tank instead? Seeing as how that cannon was the surprise MVP of the war so far?"

CR

Norm MacDonald: "It says here in this history book that, luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?"

CR

Might Makes Right. That's the genius of legalism and the Anglo-American way of acting through this lens of whatever is legally convenient at a given time. Need to invade Iraq? There's a legal argument for preemptive war. Need to condemn Russia when it literally cites the U.S. invasion as its legal basis for causus belli, then the U.S. argues strict literalism. And meanwhile the U.S. as a diplomatic and legal actor for 300 years treats every negotiation and every treaty as a monad. Every agreement can be broken and "renegotiated." And the hilarious thing is that the President who learned this lesson best and people just hate that he's open about his practices instead of being a duplicitous, manipulative word assassin is fucking Trump. He is the most American president we've ever had; he embodies all the social and government values and practices. He's the one America deserves. He is like The Dude. He's the man for his time and place.

Benke

I red a 10 year old book, The Blitzkrieg Legend by Karl-Heinz Frieser - it deals more strickly with German-French war in 1940 and the thesis seem to mach the one that Mosier had. In kind of a way German-French border dispute was a tit-for-tat deal. French won with Napoleon's 1813 Germany campaign. Germans won the Franco-Prussian war. French won WWI. Germans won in 1940. The losing side had to internalize the mistakes and the winning side stuck to the last war's strategy and lost. On the topic of german economy, you are right. Cartels chasing military contracts, wooing Eeetler with wunderwaffe giant tanks, wasting resources and money on parallel projects, gimmicks and non-standard, costly weapons, while basics like oil, trucks, trains etc were in short supply right from 1939.

Benke

Doug Cartel: It's bad when USA does it and it's mean to scold China or Russia for it.

Jeremy

If any kind of historical study were to be taken here, it failed to tell the truth about the “famine” in Ukraine.

xnfec

Mark is an excellent mimic. One snort and I was in the stable!

Annibale

The problem with Mosier's book is that it pretends he's "debunking" stuff that had been exposed by other authors 20 years before. In particular, the fact that Fuller, Liddel-Hart, Guderian etc were self-aggrandising narcissists was known to Eastern Front researchers well before Moiser wrote his book. That said, it's a nice non-technical summary of why the Blitzkrieg mythology was mostly hype.

Isaac Suárez

It blows my mind that no one in the west knows about this battle. It almost sounds like the Soviet version of the Alamo- and it had a significant impact on the trajectory of Barbarossa. Yet again, an informative and entertaining episode! Even as a WW2 buff, and among other WW2 buffs, there is much “conventional wisdom” about the Eastern front that’s either misleading or dead wrong.

William

Faithfully awaiting at Finland station for Dr. Nerd’s return

William

What are you referring to

William

Why aren’t you condemning US imperialism?

Jeff Normal

I used to buy into how awesome the German military was (especially as a teenager) but If you plan your victory around the incompetence of your opponent, then you should start preparing for defeat. The more I learn about the Germans in the Second World War, the more I come to the conclusion that they were more lucky than brilliant.

SB

Thank you, Annibale! Such a great and informative episode. You are the best!

CR

And like the CSA, they won the non-combat part of the war and peace

CR

Anibale pointed out that NATO militaries hired the losers of this part of the war to write the history. And even if they hadn’t, it was in NATO’s political and social and military (budget) interests to downplay the Soviet capacity to succeed at anything. Meanwhile, like all propaganda, it also relied on the idea that these “incompetents” were also going to take over the world unless they were outspent and out fought in proxy wars. I was actually trying to think earlier today what the last war was where the U.S. or its allies weren’t the aggressors. I couldn’t think of one after WW2.

CR

The show has discussed the Holodomor myth.

CR

If Russia or China ever does it it will be wrong too

Smellslikeupdogs

What is Annibale’s background? I’m endlessly impressed with his knowledge and would assume he’s a professor or researcher? I’d be curious to take a look at whatever he’s working on professionally. If anonymity is his goal no worries, just inspired by his level of knowledge over here. Thanks for another great ep!

Joe S.

That's what eetler said to Guderian after the battle of france

John Waaben

That’s classified. But I would also love to read his work.

CR

Aldo Moro

Rick Rucker

When Rambo said Killing's like Breathing. That's Annibale's background. We destroy Carthage. Fuck them.

parker

If I had to geuss researcher he talks like a researcher rather than a professor. Because he often brings up when the data and facts counter things a lot. And that tends to be what a lot of researchers point out because often that's what there work entails. Uncovering when the narrative is false through documents or disclosure.

Kirk

I'd like to hear more about how the casualty rates were so lobsided. I always assumed aerial support from luftwaffe but 2 million Soviet casualties to 100k Nazis is quite a separation

Mungo Franczak

“All we must do is kick in the door, and the whole rotting structure will come crashing down.” is one of my favorite quotes from the war; goes to show the hubris and arrogance of the Nazis and how they believed their own propaganda