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Radio War Nerd EP #228 — Annibale's Italy on the Eastern Front, Pt. 3: Battle of Nikolaevka & Fascist Collapse (Patreon)

Published:
2020-04-30 23:03:16
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: Annibale

Recorded: April 29, 2020

In the third episode in our series with RWN guest Annibale on Italy on the Eastern Front in WWII—the Italian breakout at Nikolaevka & the collapse of Italian fascism.

First - the War Nerd & Ames on memories of Evel Knievel & Bay Area hicksvilles...

At 06:28 - Annibale joins us for the latest in Italy's pandemic. Today we talk about Phase II and Italy politics...

At 31:26 - A brief look at latest war developments in Yemen...

At 46:25 - Annibale continues the series on Italy on the Eastern Front in WWII (RWN #226, #227) - the buildup to the Battle of Stalingrad, the Italian 8th Army's collapse alongside the elite Alpini breakout at Nikolaevka, and how this experience led to the collapse of Mussolini's regime and the rise of the Italian Resistance...

Maps:

*Don front, late 1942: Italian 8th Army between Hungarian 2nd & Romanian  3rd, northwest of Stalingrad:

*Italian 8th Army, or ARMIR - late 1942

*Soviet offensives, late 1942-early 1943

*Operation "Little Saturn"

*Alipini breakout at Nikolayevka

Follow Annibale on Twitter. Listen to Annibale's popular RWN series: Italy on the Eastern Front in WWII (#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). 

Total time: 2:40:32

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

David Gyllenhaal

It's interesting to see Annibale struggling with the specter of a common knowledge view of Fascism and Nazism, which looks for coherence and consistency where there is none. Americans in particular often make three interrelated mistakes: 1. Seeing fascism as a unified and self-consistent phenomenon across various states. (It's not). 2. Seeing fascism as an ideology with strong commitments on the best ordering of economies and thus equivalent in kind to Capitalism and Communism (Most fascisms are not very interested except when it impinges on the question of national sovereignty—so at most there is a broad tend towards autarky). 3. Seeing fascism as primarily antidemocratic. (There's a good argument to be made that it could be described as a kind of democratic authoritarianism, as an Italian scholar named Federico Marcon is arguing in a forthcoming book). I'm inclined to think that the central irony of using fascism as a transhistorical category (or term of abuse) is that the most striking common feature of various fascisms is a charismatic strong man turning himself into the psychopomp of the national Geist. The notion of a national Geist that would allow you to, for instance, distinguish between "real Americans" and the rest of Americans is a stupid and incoherent notion, and one that necessarily produces wildly different outcomes in different societies. From that perspective, if America was going to have a fascism, how could the psychopomp of our national Geist be anything OTHER than a senile gameshow host who inherited his wealth but poses as a self-made man? The strange thing about the anti-Soviet crusade is that it leveraged pretty much the only thing that multiple fascisms will ever have in common: an implacable hatred of internationalism. If you take the existence of national Geists as the polestar of your worldview, as Hitler did, then why wouldn't you eventually conflate the "nationless" Jewish people and the internationalist communist movement into the hybrid monster of "Jewish Bolshevism"? Of course the crusade against Jewish Bolshevism was never going to work, because for all their heterogeneity, fascists are pretty consistent in being fucking dumb as rocks and incapable of playing nice with each other. http://positionswebsite.org/federico-marcon-historical-knowledge-historians-categories-and-the-question-of-fascism/?fbclid=IwAR1ddPnCoIsQ99sb2evFk4lCF3768MrZ1wQAFWDH4eis5lnJg-EyOwqhVyk.

Winterborn

Excellent points. I've always liked 'fascism is the middle classes reaction to the threat of working class power' myself, most of all though it is incoherent.

Annibale

I think reading Nuto Revelli's book (La Guerra Dei Poveri) can give you the perception of what could have been (and indeed was) a "typical" trajectory of someone who begins his military career as an enthusiastic fascist and German admirer, and comes back from Russia as an implacable anti-fascist and anti-German, as it were that he had some kind of veil lifted from his eyes. The same theme is somehow discussed by Mario Rigoni Stern in his "war tales" (a collection of war memories he wrote long after "Sergeant In The Snow") and you get the same sensation the collision between fascist ideals and the grim, cold reality of steppe warfare in Russia left no chance to the ideals - as it was inevitable that an "Alpino", no matter how indoctrinated, would come back being an anti-fascist (something that was indeed common but not universal by any mean, BTW). But this makes the difference of reaction between Italian and German soldiers even more puzzling. The standard explanation is that political indoctrination in the Italian army was just superficial and cultural element (catholicism, deep distrust for German culture, skepticism towards politcal absolutes etc) prevailed, but sometimes I wonder

Ian

Annibale entering phase II, he has been listening to TrueAnon

Rusty Shackleford

Could somebody please do an eXile-style sketch of Annibale?

Annibale

Well. actually I didn't, should I?

Ian

Yes, it's good! Tho more importantly, they are big fans of yours, you should go on their show!

Ander Pierce

Definitely a popular guest ;) Always love RWN content, and Annibale is no exception! Thanks for making the time to come and be on the show again

xnfec

Where I live, I get the impression that discipline is gradually breaking down. I see small groups of kids wandering around. There is more traffic as people make any excuse to go out. More widely, i wonder what will happen when regions that are taking this situation more seriously are next to regions where it is not and wonder if their will arise internal conflicts because of this. Regarding Yemen, I am reminded of the Adam Curtis episode of his Mayfair set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtgEXlWDpuY Also, when I was young, we heard about Aden on the news and the exploits of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and their commander "Mad-Mitch" who later became a conservtive MP. I think South Yemen was the last left wing Arab government. I'd really like to hear from Isa Bumi on this now. The news is noticeably quiet about this but I expect these people have a lot to be quiet about. Anibale's recounting of the Italians maintaining contact with their Soviet counterparts across the lines reminded me of a story I heard regarding the Italians in Afghanistan where thy maintained contact with the Taliban and bribed them to keep quiet. But later, when the French took over the Italians forgot to tell them with the result that the relationship broke down. Is this an aspect of Italian military policy? Finally, the comment about the Germans going from Uber-mench to under-mench upon meeting a major set-back reminded me of the film Aliens, where the marines go from being totally gung-ho to "its all over man" in few scenes. On a personal note, my old landlord was Polish and from Lvov. I await the next episode with interest. Wasn't there some treaty or somesuch signed at Lvov?

Factory Troll

I still find it hard to believe that coronavirus is less contagious is the heat, looking at the disasters unfolding in places like Guayaquil and Manaus, or the fact that Djibouti (essentially a city-state which I believe has the hottest capital city on the planet, climatologically speaking) has the highest number of per capita infections in Africa. How well has this theory been established in the scientific literature? In either case, the relatively low infection number in tropical countries is first and foremost the product of a gigantic intelligence failure. There is an interesting situation in Kano, Nigeria where there are reports of “mysterious” deaths. Its interesting because this news was initially reported by a local Nigerian newspaper, which simply sent some reporters to talk with various undertakers, health officials and government clerks and reported the result (just good journalism really. I put the link at the end). They don’t give a conclusion on what is causing the deaths, but it gives you a good idea of how absolutely confusing the situation is, and how woefully underprepared the government is. 10 days later, WHO and international news outlets have started to pick up on the case, but still no one actually knows why people are dying in Kano. The official explanation is a simultaneous outbreak of 4 different diseases, excluding of course coronavirus, which seems ridiculous, and ironic, given that the government lockdown is being blamed for the supposed outbreak of otherwise perfectly treatable diseases (yet plausible, given that lockdowns elsewhere have set medicine and maternity care back to pre-industrial levels as people can’t find transport to go to the hospital). https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/150-people-die-in-kano-in-3-days.html

Tupac Chopra

WWII might have been a lot different if the Italians had discovered oil in Libya in 1935 rather than 1956. Or if the Japanese had discovered oil in Liaohe in 1935.

Jacob Williams

Don't normally comment, but great show!

Cody Roach

hope there's an episode coming about the Venezuelan "invasion"

Mark Ames

Agree with a lot of your points but not sure what "internationalism" means. What's always united various forms of fascism is anti-communism/ anti-socialism (notwithstanding fascist parties' sometimes use of the word "socialist" which is about as reliable as North Korea calling itself "Democratic People's Republic" or Zhirinovsky calling his party the "Liberal Democratic Party of Russia". It's not as simple as radical anti-communism/egalitarianism, there's a lot more going on there, the mystifications that go with a lot of politics & power, but it is core. All fascist regimes are anti-egalitarian, all of them protected private property, luxury property and unequal wealth.

David Gyllenhaal

Good point. I think there's a weird fissure here between rhetoric and reality, which often makes things tricky to tease apart in specific historical examples. So on the one hand, in practical terms fascism as a form of "revolutionary conservatism" is always anti-egalitarian and aimed against working class power (as Kacey Republic said above). On the other hand, the rhetoric and rituals in which it couches itself usually aim to create a very particular kind of national solidarity —one which often has some genuine success in cutting across class lines—that invokes the uniquely superior national Geist and its historical destiny (even if this sometimes gets weepy and pessimistic and starts talking about the race or nation like it's the superior but declining elves of fantasy settings). Still, in most fascist movements this translates into a fear and suspicion of "internationalism," "globalism," etc. which is closely bound up with the obsession with national purification (from the foreign elements, the illegal immigrants, the communists, the homosexuals, all those who aren't "real Americans.") The communists and socialists are always also the internationalists, the betrayers of native Blut und Boden; this is a pretty straightforward rhetorical move to make for the petite bourgeoisie as an attempt to fracture any incipient class solidarity, and in a lot of cases it can work pretty well. The trouble is that you'd like to be able to draw clear bright lines between suburban boat dealership owners who are cynically invested in the rhetoric of anti-globalism for the sake of their pocketbook and long-haul truckers who listen to talk radio and are true believers—"Trouble With Kansas" false consciousness people. But it always gets messy really fast. When you meet actual human people invested in this stuff you always find a contradictory hash of levels of belief and material interest that it's almost impossible to sort out. Even at the top level where the cynicism is most obvious you can get weird phenomena—so for instance where might Rebekah Mercer be on the "true believer" scale as opposed to her father? I think the really crazy thing about German Nazism is that Hitler himself was kind of an outlier case in that he was a 100% committed card-carrying True Believer. He seems to have actually made his biggest decisions on the premise of the invincibility of superior German blood and historical destiny, and the level of buy-in to these ideas in Wehrmacht conscripts is really astonishing. The problem with our using him as the reference point for "fascism" is that in historical terms I think he's really unusual. Cannier, more cynical figures with an eye to their material interests in the suppression of working class solidarity are way more common.

David Gyllenhaal

Just found this fascinating tidbit in Livy—it appears that the Roman survivors of the Battle of Cannae were likewise "quarantined" from the general population for the duration of Hannibal's adventures in Italy: "De exercitu M. Marcelli, qui eorum ex fuga Cannensi essent, in Siciliam eos traduci atque ibi militare donec in Italia bellum esset placuit; eodem ex dictatoris legionibus reici militem minimi quemque roboris, nullo praestituto militiae tempore nisi quod stipendiorum legitimorum esset." Liv. 23, 25. "It was decided that those of Marcellus' troops who were involved in the flight from Cannae should be transported to Sicily to serve there as long as the war continued in Italy. All the least efficient in the Dictator's army were also to be removed there, no period of service being fixed in their case, except that they must each serve out their time."