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

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."

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

Don't normally comment, but great show!

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.

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

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?

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

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

Isn't this very kind of WHO? https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/28/after-us-suspension-funding-who-expected-cut-80-humanitarian-aid-war-torn-yemen

Annibale entering phase II, he has been listening to TrueAnon

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.