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Radio War Nerd EP #226 — Italy on the Eastern Front, Pt. 1 with Annibale (Patreon)

Published:
2020-04-22 22:05:29
Imported:
2026-06
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Recorded: April 17, 2020

Guest: Annibale

First, the War Nerd and Ames discuss foxes...

At 07:45 - Annibale joins us for an update on the pandemic in Italy: crackdown on Lombardy's privatized medical care hucksters & coming to grips with possibility there'll be no vaccine or cure...

At 31:00 - Annibale tells the little-known story [in the Anglo world at least] of Fascist Italy's uneasy relationship with Nazi Germany, and how that played out in the eastern front war on the Soviet Union...

Total time: 2:05:19

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

Orge Georgwell (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-07 15:00 Any chance y'all could list Mr. Annibale's feature episodes in historical chronological order if someone wants to marathon them?
2020-04-22 22:13

Matthew Wood

‘He was a nazi man’, You’re like king arthur’, ‘this here sir is my hat, sir. Peach hat!’ etc... so good.

MoldyTolge

I believe their Hundred Years War episodes’ descriptions lists his credits in full. Might not be chronological but on a good day I’m pretty sure that Jean d’Arc died before Aldo Moro was assassinated.

MoldyTolge

Mark, try to score some original recipe Deet spray. If you think Rochester’s mosquitoes are a nuisance you won’t stand a chance when Black Fly season rolls around. If you really get bored up there take the time to walk through Rochester’s abandoned subway tunnels, it’s eerie but also provides the most beautiful views of those towering waterfalls

xnfec

A film was made of the Garden of the Fitzi-Continis - does their name mean pretend counts?. Was it any good? When Mussolini invaded Greece and his troops (the Alpini included) fought well or so I've read, but ran out of ammunition due to bad logistics, Hitler was forced to delay his Russia plans in order to take the Balkans. Both sides would have got the measure of eachother then I would have thought? The writing would have been on the wall then. That might make a good series.

Annibale

No, Finzi Contini is an Italian Jewish second name. The film is good but Bassani (the book's author) was not happy with the changes made to the story.

Annibale

Unfortunately, Greece was by far and large the Italian Army's lowest point during the war. However, it's a myth Hitler had to postpone Barbarossa to help Italy in the Balkans - the (supposed) early planned date to launch the invasion of Russia was simply untenable. Period

Gabe Weisert

I probably missed it but have you guys discussed the Russian film "Come and See"? It makes all other war movies look like a bunch of guys in costumes playing dress-up. And it's set in Belarus during Barbarossa.

Factory Troll

Keeping an eye on Oregon in the stats. Corona/population is now second best in the Contiguous US. Great!

Sergei Kuzmichev

Lmao I was gonna comment this guys channel as well, absolutely precious

Mark Ames

The sheer content on that fox's face, you'd think he spent his whole life in some dog-lover's living room. Thanks for this.

Mark Ames

Black flies sounds bad. If they're anything like the clouds of biting gnats I experienced in Ussuriysk. I'll never forget the poor German Shepherd yelping in agony trying to drown itself to get away from those vampire-clouds. The abandoned subway tunnels on the other hand...

Mark Ames

Italy on the Eastern Front (#226, #227) Venetian Empire (#207, #208, #209, #214); The Hundred Years War (#175, #176, #177, #180, #182, #183); Italy's Years Of Lead (#134, #135, #136, #139); Italian Resistance in WW2 (#131)

Gunnar Hansen

There's a meaningless bit of trivia related (peripherally) to that film, on the night when the swedish prime minister Olof Palme was shot he had visited the cinema and "Come and See" was one of the four films he could have seen. The other three were Ran by Akira Kurosawa, Amadeus by Milos Forman and "The Mozart brothers", a swedish comedy no one remembers. He visited the swedish film. If he had gone and seen "Come and See" who knows, maybe the assassination attempt would have failed. So when in doubt see the war movie, might save your life!

xnfec

I live in West London. The countryside is miles away. We have foxes all over the place and they are losing their fear of humans and just treat us with contempt. I've seen them in Edinburgh too but the countryside is nearer there. Also, the seagulls. They used to winter here when I was a kid but now they never leave.

mark

Can you name those relevant Italian books mentioned in the podcast again?

Ellen Harold

I'm a big fan of Annibale, but isn't it a bit of a simplification to suggest that the Italian version of Fascism was not racist, if that is what is being suggested? Didn't Mussolini justify his imperialist policies by invoking white supremacy and the danger to the white "race" from the races of Africa. According to wikipedia: "On 3 January 1933, Mussolini told the diplomat Baron Pompei Aloisi that the French in Tunisia had made an 'appalling blunder"' by permitting sex between the French and the Tunisians, which he predicted would lead to the French degenerating into a nation of 'half-castes', and to prevent the same thing happening to the Italians gave orders to Marshal Badoglio that miscegenation be made a crime in Libya." Also, I don't think Italian Fascism was as tolerant as all that to modern art, even though it was preceded by (or began with) Futurism (as had happened with supremacism in Russia). As I see it, the official art of both Fascism and Soviet Communism quickly became associated with the idea of the creation of the heroic "new man", monumental and bulging with muscles, accompanied by a simplified architectural neoclassicism.

Ellen Harold

I second the request for the list of books, though I think some were listed already in Annibale's fantastic multi-part series on the Resistance. Also thank, you Annibale for mentioning the "Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht." Some people still apparently believe in it -- I am thinking about the just-published autobiography of a certain recent presidential candidate who touted his own military service in Afghanistan as a presidential qualification.

Annibale

Italian Fascism was racist, but as racist as every European society of that era, no more, no less. It had a larger dose of "cultural racism", because its founding myth was the Roman Empire, but had no real sense of "scientific fascism" until 1938 (and even there, it was just an imitation of Nazi racial politics, not anything done in autonomy (which, in my view, makes it even morally worse than the German version, tbh). The Wikipedia article is not accurate, as the first law addressing mixed marriages was approved by the fascist regime in 1937. As I say in the episode, the law was a result of having conquered new colonies, and not vice versa: the Ethiopian conquest was one enabling factor the Italian fascist state becoming "officially" racist

Annibale

As for modernist and modern art, I'm afraid I must stand my ground. The idea Italian fascism was all neoclassic / retro stuff is simply not correct. Fascism was enamoured of modernism, in particular of modernist architecture, and did whatever they could to impose it even in contexts where there was a perfectly suitable previous architecture. In fact modernism, modern art, "experimentalism" (the Italian Centre For Experimental Cinema) etc was the cultural footprint of Fascism during the late 20s and 30s, I've personally seen the development plans for new ski stations in the Alps that Mussolini oversaw around 1935 and they were pure Le Corbusier. The Via Roma requalification is Turin is another example. Mussolini had rather "normal" cultural tastes (he loved Walt Disney) but many senior Fascist leaders (Dino Grandi being one example) were full card-carrying modernists

Ellen Harold

I have some knowledge of this since my stepfather was an artist on via Margutta who became abstract after the war. I can only say what I remember as I was a small child at the time, but It was very liberating for artists in his circle, for example Alberto Burri, whom we knew, to take up abstract art at that time. Though many relied on church commissions and stuck to figurative art. As for racism, though I did witness some racism against American blacks in Italy when I was a child in the 1950s, I agree that Nazi style racism is not really characteristic of Italian, including Fascist, culture, and never has been. The sentence on miscegenation I quoted (via wikipedia) came from an article by Esmonde Roberton, "Race as a Factor in Mussolini's Policy in Africa and Europe", Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 37-58. (available on JSTOR). The article makes the case that the Italian prohibitions against miscegenation between Italians and Africans and Indians in its foreign colonies dated from 1936 and hence preceded and perhaps facilitated Mussolini's racial decrees against Jews and Africans in 1938. It also notes that there had been racists in the Fascist Party from the first, but they were a small minority and that Mussolini's pronouncements were contradictory. I would not quite say that Facism was neither more nor less racist than any other country. France had no laws against miscegenation, and many American blacks of our acquaintance fled to France. In the USA such laws existed in the Southern states until they were overturned by the Supreme Court, But northern states such as NY and Massachusetts, for example. never had such laws and western states had them but repealed them in the late19th century.

Annibale

Sorry to insist, but I've checked again to be sure I didn't forget anything. The very first Fascist law addressing "race" is #880 13 April 1937 and it didn't forbid mixed marriages but a phenomenon called in Italy "madamato" (can be translated as "concubinage", but it was something slightly different), were Italians in colonies would start a sexual relationship with someone in their household who was at the same time a "paid" for services like cleaning, cooking, etc. It was a sort of legalized prostitution that saw often very young girls involved and was frequent in all colonial territories. The law did NOT forbid "mixed marriages" (who were made illegal only later in 1940 BTW) and was curiously addressed not to all the "imperial" territory but only the Eastern Africa possessions. Of course, Italy being Italy the law was mostly ignored and there are few traces of it being used, but it had some cultural effect. A point to clarify is that this law did NOT make sexual relationships between colonists and locals punishable by law (again - that came in 1940) but only "relazioni d'indole coniugale" so "more uxorio", living with someone without being married. Again - this was the very first Fascist law somehow addressing "race" and before that there was none, and it was a single article law addressing something very specific. So my point is that before April 1937 the Fascist regime was, speaking of "race", more or less at the same level as every other European power except Germany. Mussolini had made few statements after 1933 talking about the subject, they were often very contradictory as you've noted.

Annibale

Before someone thinks I'm belittling or downplaying the seriousness of Italian racial laws: absolutely no, in fact, this in my view makes the 1938 legislation against Jews and the 1940 colonial laws (another big mess) MORE morally reprehensible, not less, because they were the product of a callous mix of political opportunism and objective stupidity that backstabbed a section of Italian citizens (Jews, people born out of mixed marriages, etc) who had largely supported Fascism up until that point, and were demoted to second class citizens basically out of the blue. While it is easy with 100% hindsight to think there were premonitory signs. reality is that for most Italian Jews the racial laws were a massive and deliberate betrayal of the worst kind. The stories of previously enthusiastically Fascist Italian Jews who ended up discriminate before 1943 and imprisoned or murdered between 1943 and 1945 are too sad for words.

Ander Pierce

The "Poor Man's War" diary sounded so interesting, I'd go page by page putting the Italian into google translate

Ander Pierce

I didn't catch the author's name tho, can anyone help me out?

Avery

"Terence, this is stupid stuff" by A.E. Housman

Mark Chassy

Here in East London, we have a momma fox and 4 cubs in the backyard. Dubious or not, they are cute as hell.

Alexandros

My grandfather fought in Albania on the Greek side. Was always telling us how the Italians they captured (or "arrested" as he put it) were jolly fellows glad to be out of the battle. Looking at the Wikipedia article and listening to your show, wow, the Julia Division took a hell of a beating in WW2

Mark Ames

I'm on the pro-fox side of this, but a certain someone who will remain nameless convinced me to watch the Crack Fox episode of the Mighty Boosh and I can never see foxes the same again.

xnfec

Philip Matyzack used a verse from this (Shropshire Lad) in his book on Mithridates the Great

Sannoso

In regards to the memoirs, they are listed in Nuto Revelli's wikipedia page.