Radio War Nerd

Guest: Annibale Recorded: 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

Guest: Annibale Recorded: August 18, 2026 Annibale launches his series on the two wars fought between Finland and the Soviet Union during World War II: the Winter War (1939-1940), which covered underdog Finland in glory; and Finland's Nazi-allied war on the Soviet Union (1941-45), which has been bur

Guest: Annibale Recorded: July 6, 2026 (thumbnail: mass grave of Soviet POWs) Annibale joins us for his promised bonus episode on Operation Barbarossa, the largest and deadliest invasion in human history, which just quietly passed its 85th anniversary. In this episode, Annibale goes over the unfatho

Guest: Annibale Recorded: April 29, 2026 In this installment of our Operation Barbarossa series, Annibale brings us to the brink of the Soviet counteroffensive outside Moscow, as the Nazi invasion force is stretched beyond its limits, the result of a delusional invasion plan and the many contradicti

Guest: Annibale Recorded: March 24, 2026 As the US Empire descends into madness & defeat, we return to our popular Operation Barbarossa series with Annibale to look at how the Soviet Union adapted to the wartime shock of Hitler's invasion in 1941. First: We update the US-Israel war on Iran At 43:30

Guest: Annibale Recorded: October 14, 2025 In part 3 of our series on Operation Barbarossa, Annibale sorts through fact from fiction regarding Soviet preparations in the lead-up to Nazi Germany's invasion of the USSR in June 1941. Listen to Annibale's Operation Barbarossa series: -Operation Barbaros

Guest: Annibale Recorded: October 1, 2025 While the War Nerd recovers on IR, we begin our series on the largest military offensive in history, Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. And who better to lead us through the slaughter than RWN special correspo

Guest: Annibale In part 2 of our series on the Battles of Nomonhan, Annibale takes us to the main battles between Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union, in March 1939, and in July-August 1939, changing how World War II played out in both Europe and the Far East/Pacific. *Maps *What Imperial Japanese A

Guest: Annibale Recorded: July 26, 2025 The War Nerd is back, along with our old friend Annibale for our series on the Battles of Nomonhan (Khalkhin Gol) on the eve of WWII, the most consequential battles you've never heard of. This episode, Annibale provides background on Japan's politics and milit

Recorded: January 14, 2024 Part 2 of our series on the US Empire's first stab at "reshaping the Middle East", this episode we follow CIA man Wilbur Crane Eveland as he's sent to Lebanon and Syria in the mid-1950s to spread more democracy in the form of coups, election meddling, and ultimately invasi

Guest: Annibale Recorded: August 9, 2024 Part 3 of our series on Operation Bagration with Annibale. This episode: gruesome Wehrmacht experiments in Belarus, including "deadzones" and the Ozarichi human typhus-bombs, fail to stop the Soviet Army and Jewish-Belorussian communist partisans from decimat

Guest: Annibale Recorded: May 9, 2024 Here's the final episode in our 3-part series on the Battle of Kursk with Annibale. This episode: Annibale's 9 Points about Kursk and the Memory Battles waged by ex-Nazis and their newbie western benefactors long after the kinetic battle ended... Check out parts

Guest: Annibale Recorded: April 18, 2024 Part 2 of our 3-part series on the Battle of Kursk (part 1 here), with Annibale. This episode: the Soviets turn the tide against the Nazis at Prokhorovka, popularly known as the largest tank battle in history. Listen to part 1 of our Battle of Kursk series (E

Guest: Sopo Japaridze, labor activist & podcaster Recorded: March 10, 2023 We talk to Georgia-based labor activist Sopo Japaridze about the recent mass protests, backed by the West, against proposed new laws to regulate foreign-funded NGOs. We also discuss the sorry state of post-Soviet politics in

Recorded: July 21, 2022 "If two fish are fighting in the water, an Englishman was there" In part 2 of our series on Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus (part 1: EP #337), we start with the sham independence constitution forced on Cyprus by the departing Brits ensuring sectarian strife and British bases

Guest: Annibale Recorded: June 27, 2021 RWN guest Annibale returns for part 2 of our series on the XB-70 Valkyrie (listen to part 1: RWN #284). In this episode, pick up from JFK's decision to cancel the Valkyrie... discuss the CIA's SR-71 spy plane...and the fallout from the cancelation of the Valky

Guest: Annibale Recorded: June 18, 2021 RWN's highly decorated guest Annibale joins us for a two-part mondo hardware series on the American XB-70 supersonic bomber, an astonishing feat of mid-century aerospace engineering that was scrapped. In part one, we discuss the background of the XB-70 and pre

Guest: The Fakir Recorded: June 2, 2021 In part II in our 2-part series on the 1971 Bangladesh genocide & wars, RWN guest The Fakir takes us from the first months of the genocide in Operation Searchlight in spring 1971, up through the war between India and Pakistan in December 1971 that led to the c

Guest: The Fakir Recorded: May 29, 2021 This is the 50th anniversary of the forgotten genocide in Bangladesh in 1971 , carried out by the US-backed dictator of Pakistan to crush Bangladesh's popular democratic autonomy movement back when Bangladesh was a province of Pakistan known as "East Pakistan.

Recorded: December 22, 2020 We recover lost history from Boris Yeltsin's coup against the Russian parliament in October 1993. Yeltsin's coup came courtesy of his biggest sponsors: then-President Bill Clinton, the international financial institutions, and their waterboys in the western press corps, w

Guest: Piero Gleijeses, author & professor Recorded: May 29, 2020 Thanks to our RWN subscribers, we discovered Piero Gleijeses and his must-read book, "Visions Of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991" . Prof. Gleijeses joins us to discuss the wars in

Guest: Annibale Recorded: May 27, 2020 Fourth in our series with popular RWN guest "Annibale" on Italy on the Eastern Front in WWII. This episode: the fate of Italian POWs taken by the Soviets after they smashed Italian and Axis lines in early 1943, and how the POWs influenced Italian postwar politi

Guest: Vincent Bevins, journalist & author Recorded: May 15, 2020 The 1965 anticommunist holocaust in Indonesia killed somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million, though we don't know the actual figure, for reasons we discuss—and it was fully supported by the US Embassy and Washington. Why do we know s

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 -

Guest: Annibale Recorded: April 24, 2020 In this second part of Annibale's look at Italy on the Eastern Front in WWII, Hitler agrees to have a modest-sized Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia join the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union to perform mostly backup duties well behind the front lines. By

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 - Anniba

Recorded: January 26, 2020 BANGKOK— With the recent death of Oman's longtime ruler Sultan Qaboos, the War Nerd and Ames recover the little known history of Oman, British colonial rule, and the forgotten leftist Dhofar Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. But first: At 08:18 Ames quickly reviews Sam Me

Guest: Audra Wolfe, writer & historian Recorded: June 28, 2019 For non-subscribers, here is a 25+ minute preview of Radio War Nerd episode #188 with guest Audra Wolfe about her new book "Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science" — on the instrumentalization of science for

Guest: Carl Zha, podcaster Recorded: February 23, 2019 It's the 40th anniversary of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, a brief and bloody war between two Communist neighbors that was little understood in the West, and has largely been forgotten since. The War Nerd invites one of our favorite guests back

For non-subscribers, here is a 25+ minute preview of Radio War Nerd episode 53 (total length 2:05:28) on Afghanistan's ongoing wars, going back to the 1970s and the rise & fall of Afghanistan's Communists through today...Also: the FARC peace deal collapses, and USAID funds the pro-interventionist Sy