Radio War Nerd EP 555 — Operation Barbarossa, pt. 3: Soviet Military Preparations, feat. Annibale

What this episode covers

Guest: AnnibaleRecorded: 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 Barbarossa, pt 1: German Military Mindset (EP #552)-Operation Barbarossa, pt 2: Germany's Allies & Poland (EP #554) Reading: David M. Glantz, Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War. University Press of Kansas, 1998. Alexey V. Isaev, Вторжение. 22 июня 1941 года Moscow: Яуза, Эксмо, 2021 (rev. ed.). (standard recent Russian study on preparation and the beginning of the war from the Soviet side) Mark Harrison - Accounting for War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence Burden, 1940-1945. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies) Alexander Hill, The Red Army and the Second World War - Cambridge University Press, 2017.  (In particular, chapter 9 “Reforms and the Road to War”) John Erickson, The Soviet High Command: A Military-Political History 1918–1941 Routledge (reprint of Cambridge original 1962, updated ed. 2001) Total time: 1:25:02Direct link to this episode's mp3 here * Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd Sound production by Telescope Audio Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World