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Radio War Nerd EP #632 — Soviet-Finnish Wars, Pt. 2: The Winter War, feat. Annibale + The War Nerd Settles In (Patreon)

Published:
2026-08-27 19:00:22
Imported:
2026-08
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Guest: AnnibaleRecorded: August 25, 2026

In the second part of RWN's Soviet-Finnish Wars series with Annibale (Part 1: RWN 630), we learn about the much-mythologized Winter War from November 1939 - March 1940 which ended in Finland's surrender, how the Finns were able to initially beat the Soviets back, and why they eventually collapsed. We also ask: What role did Finland's democratic government play in co-planning Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa? Also this episode: The War Nerd delivers a post-journey report from Auckland...

First - Annibale and Ames discuss some current events on recording day, August 25: Ratcliffe and a Vatican representative visit Moscow, Italy's latest far-right "populist" Roberto Vannacci, the death of climate change politics, Japan's finances & more...At 31:12 - The Winter War and its aftermathAt 1:50:25 - Music interlude by Brendon Anderegg. Check out music from his group Mountains hereAt 1:51:47 - John updates us on his journey to NZ and the breakfast buffet worlds

Further listening:-RWN 630 - Soviet-Finnish Wars, Pt. 1: Introduction

*Maps

*Northern Europe, November 1939. Green=neutral, orange=Soviet dominated

*Soviet invasion, three main fronts: Karelian isthmus (southern), Central (Suomussalmi), Northern (Salla, Nautsi)

*Breaching Mannerheim Line on Karelian Peninsula: Dec 1939 vs March 1940

*Finnish territories ceded to Soviet Union after March 1940 treaty

*Soviet propaganda poster against Mannerheim: Serving the Tsar, massacring Finnish leftists, serving capitalist bankers, and 1940

*Finnish anti-USSR propaganda poster, depicting Russians as Asiatic-Bolshevik beasts:

Annibale's Bibliography: See notes to EP 630

Total time: 2:01:58Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

John's new essay collection, To The Crows, is available to subscribers. You can also order a hard copy on Amazon - read it, know it, review it!

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Files

Comments

blazed uncle

Really appreciate Annibale’s clear and concise update on The Saga of the Frozen Russian Assets. It’s the three stooges with the entire European financial system

Mitchell Postich

I have enjoyed Brendon's interstitial music for a long time but I didn't even know he was a member of Mountains until I opened up this newsletter notification and happened upon the mention! "Centralia" has been a favorite since it came out! Shouts out to Brendon, keep up the good work.

CR

I continue to enjoy watching Europe and the U.S. kill themselves. It sustains me.

Robert S Giolito

Maybe climate change is off the political table on the East Coast but certainly not here in the West.

Hugh Jazz

I’ve been dealing with a facial shingles attack along my trigimenal nerve in my face that also gave me the worst ear infection of my entire life and this sudden influx of episodes is honestly helping me get through it. Cheers and thank you! And anyone over 50 in the US- get the shingles vax if you can, this shit sucks ass!

Hugh Jazz

I went down that exact same rabbit hole once lol it was such an unexpected and pleasant surprise

Andrew B

I think the abandonment of climate as an issue also has to do with the failures of the COVID response in the USA and a collapse of belief in state capacity to do anything positive

ben s

I love that John’s first check in back after 2 weeks is mostly talking about breakfast buffets.

ben s

I managed to manifest it the week we were studying it in nursing school. Totally sucks! Told all my patients to get the vaccine!

Hugh Jazz

Man I can’t imagine trying to focus on school through that, I’ve been useless the entire time I’ve been dealing with it..

Amr Saleh

I’m curious, why does Annibale say the ‘g’ in “High”? I’m genuinely ignorant, do they say the ‘g’ in Italian or something?

ben s

Hang in there, I had it in my arm and shoulder, I can only imagine having it on my face.

Viroquan

Yay Another episode with Annibale!

Øystein Monsen

I think it makes sense to abandon a political issue when you can provide no minimally plausible answer for it within the grounds of politically acceptable action.

Yairo Martis

I did buy the War Nerd Illiad recently.

rocksalmon

english is a laughable ghetto of highly-unlikely digraphs waiting to be caught

Dissipatio

Waning interest in climate change politics feels like what happened to population control in the 70's. I hope it doesn't meet the same sad fate.

Benke

Haha at the end Mark strongarmed Annibale into admiting that Finns didn't really had a choice, join with the Germans semi-independent or be invaded like Norway. Same goes for the Winter War, imagining that Soviets wouldn't just gobble up more land after they give up to concession is naive.

Benke

G in gh is mute in english, but people learning english as a foreign language don't always notice that. I remember this far right figure, born to american missionaries in Japan, would pronounce H in words like "white" making it sound more like "huaite".

Jonathan Penn

For what it's worth, I think the "disappearance" of climate change from the political landscape may have more to do with hopelessness than anything else. Any action with even a slim chance of turning back the worst effects of climate change would require vast, government coordinated changes to the USA (e.g., at a minimum, a national, high voltage DC grid capable of utilizing distributed sources such as wind, tidal, pv, and distributed storage (pumped water reservoirs, batteries, etc.) Such huge efforts seem utterly beyond either party. And the idea of the two parties coordinating to accomplish something useful would be funny, if it were not so tragic. Hopelessness and therefrom apathy may be sad but it also seems realistic.

etienne

I'm an ESL and that one took me a while too, it's like how most people who see "half" for the first time will labour under the childish delusion that this word contains a "L" sound

etienne

hey now next time europe has a summer with like 5 months at 40C+ I hope everyone will remember that the Liberal Party of Canada implemented a carbon credit swap market and an extremely stern 3500$ tax credit rebate for electric cars

xnfec

Years ago I read that post-war, Finland had a heart disease epidemic and that the epidemic was mostly among Karelians. The theme of the book was anti-statin and argued that the disease in general was due to emotional reasons rather than simply diet. Other examples were given, not just Finland.

a clash of purple

It's not just political dysfunction in any single country, it's the impossibility of coordinating the necessary global response when nation-states are more interested in competing with each other than with their own long-term survival. Like, in the context of hundreds of nationalist projects fighting each other in a zero-sum game with no endpoint except, eventually but inevitably, mutual annihilation, the idea of confronting the climate crisis is as absurd and hopeless as nuclear non-proliferation is. People have given up on getting rid of nukes, they're giving up on dealing with the climate crisis. Humanity would rather have nationalism than continued survival. It's that simple. We can have capitalism and nationalism, or we can survive the next hundred years. It's a binary choice.

a clash of purple

Doesn't help that certain letters can be silent or not depending on the dialect. The Brits say "colonel" more or less how it's spelled. Americans say "kernel." On the other hand, the Brits omit 'h's from a lot of words. And then there's AAVE... Like, Aamer said once that not all Arabic dialects are mutually intelligible. I don't think English is that diverse, but it's got its fair share of diversity.

a clash of purple

Interest in population control waned because it's Malthusian nonsense. Climate change, on the other hand, is a real crisis, not just something the British made up to justify artificial famines in Ireland and India.

a clash of purple

That Finnish propaganda poster is ugly, but there's definitely much worse. Check out the way Americans were depicting the Japanese during WWII, for example. A lot of anti-Soviet material explicitly depicted Trotsky as a literal demon Jew and treated the Star of David as equivalent to the sickle and hammer. That sort of Mongoloid figure in the clouds is actually fairly tame by comparison. I would actually give the Finns credit for being relatively restrained in their dehumanizing racist propaganda. There was worse stuff in Hong Kong a few years ago depicting mainlanders as swarming locusts coming to steal Hong Kongers' jobs.

showlistener

Question for the WW2 war nerds in here: what's the deal with this James Holland guy? He loves the widely despised "Stalin's War" book, believes in the "Stalin was going to attack the Germans in 1941 but got preempted by Barbarossa" myth that Glantz and others have debunked, and seems to have an outsized focus on the Western Front. Based on my limited knowledge of this guy would it be fair to say he's the avatar of the "WW2 Dad" phenomenon? A vaguely conservative or centrist middle-aged anglo who loves the anglosphere?

Annibale

There's still an enormous market for "Old school WWII nostalgia", people who desperately stick to the pre-2000 popular literature portraying WW2 as a Western crusade against evil, where the Eastern Front was just a sideshow. Despite the fact that academic consensus has moved light years beyond that simplistic portrait, the reality is that if tomorrow I would start writing book after book about Eisenhower and Bradley and Montgomery immense military virtues, while at the same time telling everyone that Soviet Union was just marginally better than Nazi Germany (and of course they won using human wave tactics etc) I would sell thousands of copies in the Anglosphere, even if serious researcher would despise it. It's a pile of lies, but people still believe them

Mark Ames

I just don't hear the national Democrats talk about it anymore, or if they do, it's like a clause in a sentence. Locally, everyone not in MAGA talks about it one way or another.

Mark Ames

That sounds awful, high on the raw pain scale. Good luck getting through it!

Mark Ames

Nah, that's a bit of a misread of my question. I asked a hypothetical. No doubt getting invaded by the Soviets radicalized Finnish ruling class opinion. I also think Finland's leadership was reckless and selfish not to take the original November 1939 deal, as Mannerheim advised.

CR

China seems to be managing by doing it in a way a capitalist country is supposed to, but we’re so far into rent-seeking capitalism that making and selling shit like solar panels and wind turbines and nuclear power is genuinely impossible to imagine for the oligarchy. Oh well. More profit for the Chinese and their global south partners.

Riley Bloomer-Ludwig

Can you explain the military importance of the Murmansk railway ? What is important about Murmansk specifically ?

Annibale

Murmansk was the only major year-round ice-free sea port the Soviet Union had on its northern coast, kept open despite its Arctic latitude by the warm North Atlantic Drift. Arkhangelsk, on the White Sea, freezes in winter and needed icebreaker assistance, making Murmansk the best available northern terminal for the Lend-Lease convoys. Getting the incoming material onward to the front and to Soviet industry depended on the Kirov (Murmansk) Railway, which was consequently of vital importance, and which the Germans and Finns tried to sever in 1941, forcing the Soviets to build a bypass line. That said, the Arctic route was not the main artery of Western aid. Of roughly 17.5 million long tons of Lend-Lease delivered to the USSR, the Pacific route to the Soviet Far East carried the largest share by far, around 8.2 million tons (close to half), moving onward via the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Persian Corridor through Iran and the northern Arctic convoy route to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk carried broadly comparable amounts behind it, on the order of 4 million tons each. So the famous and costly PQ convoys to Murmansk, for all their strategic and symbolic weight, actually delivered only about a quarter of the total, less than the Pacific route alone. Because the USSR and Japan remained at peace until August 1945, that route could only carry non-military goods in Soviet-flagged ships coming from the US, so it moved food, fuel, raw materials and vehicles rather than weapons.

showlistener

The next time you're on for an Eastern Front episode I'd like a very short detour on the "Stalin's War" book detailing what's wrong with it, the strain of thought it represents, and why it appeals to a certain set of people. IIRC, for a book about the Eastern Front it got a lot of press when it came out 5 years ago.

Renee Drezner

Hey John, any chance of audiobook versions?

Timmy V

Climate politics got lumped in with "defund the police" as woke and gay and therefore must be avoided by Dems who are still obsessed with winning over the non-existent rational center.