Russian Communist Party Newspaper Pravda Attacks U.S. Author it Alleges "Gave Advice to Hitler How to Defeat Russia"

After I published an article in The National Interest on September 20 2019 entitled How Nazi Germany Could Have Crushed Russia During World War II" Pravda, which serves as the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation angrily responded a few days later with an article entitled U.S. Gave Advice to Hitler How to Defeat Russia" in the science section of their online newspaper. Here is an English translation of the Pravda article:

US gave advice to Hitler how to defeat Russia

Pravda.ru, September 23, 2019

“Ten years after the victory over the Third Reich Hitler Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (1885 - 1960) wrote in his memoirs that German soldiers study the history of the past war knowing that they will once again be called up to defend Europe. Revanchists of all stripes in the West began to lose the possible options for the victory of the Wehrmacht over the Red Army. The old shabby cats had a rest but in the sandboxes for maneuvers they continued to spoil their last ones.

Last week an article titled How Nazi Germany Could Have Crushed Russia during World War II was published. The first advice is far from new - the Wehrmacht did not have to waste time invading Yugoslavia and Greece. In late April 1941 Yugoslavia expressed its readiness to join the Axis powers (Germany Italy Japan) but a coup d’etat took place a few days later as a result of which politicians came to power in this country who were more sympathetic to the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. Despite the promise of the new leaders of Yugoslavia to adhere to the chosen course but to be neutral in the military conflict Hitler saw a personal insult in the incident and transferred German tank divisions from Poland and Romania to Yugoslavia and Greece. It ended with the planned German invasion of the USSR being postponed for five and a half crucial weeks from May 15 to June 22 1941" says David Pyne. In retrospect for Hitler in April 1941 there was no military need to invade Yugoslavia. He could have only sent several German infantry divisions to strengthen Albania in order to prevent its capture by the Greek forces but he feared the potential of a strengthened British presence in Greece which could threaten its southern European flank. Indeed the initial start date for Operation Barbarossa was on May 15 1941. This increased the chances of the Wehrmacht to reach the Soviet capital before the onset of cold weather and frost.

The author of an article in the National Interest writes that the Germans could have captured Moscow by November 1941 albeit with significant human and material resources. Once again an idea is being pulled out in the light of God stretching from Napoleonic times: the victors of the inglorious warriors were General Moroz and not a Russian peasant. However the English military historian Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart who spoke with captured German generals provides indicative evidence of Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist about the Red Army fighters: These people were first-class fighters from the very beginning and we owe our success only to great experience. Having gained experience they became first-class soldiers. They fought fiercely had tremendous stamina and could do without many things that soldiers of other armies would consider vital. Their commanders instantly learned the lessons of the first defeats and in a short time began to act surprisingly effectively.

Even moving away from the military miscalculations of Hitler and the German command the author of National Interest conducts empty talk about the need to free the peoples of the Soviet Union from the Soviet Communist oppression. There were declarations on this subject but de facto Hitler’s policy in the occupied territories was very different from statements. And how could one trust - according to Nazi phraseology - untermensch from Belarus and Ukraine? If the Germans treated the citizens of the liberated Soviet territories and Soviet prisoners of war fairly" David Pyne painfully tormented creating his alternative story. Not one wimp lived in the hope of a glorious life under the Nazis. Not everyone succeeded. The thousand-year-old" Third Reich would have existed more than the 12 years allotted to it; such optimists would become an order of magnitude less.”

The article in question was one of a five-part series I submitted for publication to the National Interest which was originally entitled “Twenty Ways Nazi Germany Could Have Won World War Two.” I thought the title of the Pravda article “U.S. Gave Advice to Hitler on How to Defeat Russia” was interesting and was both surprised and amused by the allegation given the fact that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union nearly three decades before I was born. I have been extremely critical of FDR and Churchill for demanding the unconditional surrender of Germany and refusing to work with the German resistance to help them assassinate evil mass murderer and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler to end the war years earlier and save tens of millions of lives including six million Jews from the Holocaust.

In April 2019, I visited the German Resistance Memorial in Berlin to pay homage to the 5,000 heroic German resistance leaders who gave their lives trying to save the Jews and millions of others who died unnecessarily in the last couple years of the war in Europe.

When I went to see the epic real-life historical suspense thriller Valkyrie about the July 20, 1944 coup against Hitler and viewed the scene where German resistance leader Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg is shot along with fellow resistance leaders, I couldn’t help but cry knowing that with the failure of the coup against Hitler, millions of Jews would perish in the Nazi concentration camps.

It is as if Pravda believes I was a U.S. official or intelligence agent who had advised Hitler on how to conquer the Soviet Union. It was very misleading to say the least but perhaps the actual meaning of the title was lost in translation and they meant to say U.S. gives advice to Hitler after the fact. Even then, their suggestion that I am a U.S. government official is completely false as I have never been a U.S. government employee since I completed my military service as a U.S. Army officer.  My article listed three things that Germany could have done to defeat the Soviet Union in World War Two—1) Invade five and a half weeks earlier as originally planned 2) pursue a Moscow First article in which they drove straight to Moscow without pausing to surround Soviet armies on their flanks and 3) come as liberators not occupiers freeing the captive nations from Soviet Communist oppression granting them independence and then recruit their 5.6 million Soviet prisoners to fight alongside them to help liberate their fellow Soviet citizens from the iron grip of Communism. In addition, I restated the conclusion of multiple Russian historians that Stalin planned to invade western Poland and Romania in June-July 1941 and was only prevented from doing so by the German invasion of the USSR. Given that Pravda did not dispute this conclusion I can only assume that they accept it as fact.

In their article Pravda singled out two of my conclusions for ridicule. First, that if the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union on May 15th 1941 as originally planned instead of June 22th they might have succeeded in capturing Moscow by the end of the year. Second, that had the Germans granted independence to the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and to the Cossacks they might have harnessed the nationalist inspirations of those nations (aided by millions of captured Red Army troops) to force Stalin to accept an armistice recognizing their independence as German protectorates.

I shared this Pravda article with Dr. Peter Pry, a former senior CIA analyst, former Chief of Staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, and a renowned U.S. nuclear expert who currently serves as Executive Director of Task Force on National and Homeland Security. Pry responded “Congratulations on drawing the attention of Russian press with your articles about how Germany could have won World War II. (I) am sure the GRU has noticed too and (will) interpret your articles as more evidence of U.S./NATO planning for WWIII so the West will get it right the next time." After hearing about the Russian response to my article, my wife and extended family members joked that I am “now on Russia’s hit list" for daring to share my ideas about what Germany did wrong in their invasion of the Soviet Union nearly eight decades ago.

As a Western military analyst, we keep hearing that Russian leaders remain paranoid that the U.S. and NATO is planning to attack them which is surprising given the fact that both the U.S. and NATO have undergone massive reductions in their conventional and nuclear force structure since the Soviet Union’s collapse back in December 1991. It seems strange that the Russians would view an article talking about the mistakes of the German army in delaying their invasion not advancing on Moscow first not having winter coats for their troops ready and not coming as liberators to free the captive nations as in anyway applicable to a Western contingency plan for a hypothetical war between NATO and Russia today. However, apparently that is still the mentality of the most paranoid Russian political and military leaders despite the fact that even after the collapse of the Soviet Union Russia remains the largest nation on earth and has never been conquered by any invader since the Mongols invaded Kievan Rus in the 13th century.

On the other hand it is easy to see how NATO’s expansion not only with the inclusion of all former Warsaw Pact members still in existence along with the three former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania along with the issuance of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine would appear provocative to Moscow. It is unfortunate that Pravda continues to defend Russia’s Soviet heritage and considers the Russian Federation the rightful heir of the Soviet Union and that not only do they fight to control Western perceptions today, but also to fight on the battlefields of history itself striving to preserve cherished myths such as the supposed invincibility of the Red Army and presumably the superiority of Communist ideology above all others at the time. Obviously they subscribe to George Orwell’s tenet in his classic book 1984 that Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

Pravda’s critical response to my statement that Germany might have defeated the Soviet Union had they come as liberators and freed the captive nations from Soviet Communist oppression strongly suggests that Russian leaders continue to not only view the Soviet Union and Communism in a positive light but deny that Soviet Communism was oppressive at all. This should not be surprising given that President Vladimir Putin has lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical disaster in world history and has declared his main objective to reunite the former Soviet republics under Russian control starting with his recent annexations of Georgian and Ukrainian territory including most notably the Crimea which have been widely condemned by Western leaders.

Pravda might be surprised to learn that despite my lifelong opposition to Soviet Communist aggression during and after World War Two I have long held out hopes that the U.S. and Russia might return to a period of more friendly and amicable relations. During the past decade I have been calling for U.S. leaders to negotiate a great power sphere of influence agreement with the Russian Federation which would grant Russia a sphere of influence over all of the former Soviet republics while recognizing the vital interests of both nuclear superpowers to help ensure a just and lasting peace. Next week, I will be publishing a comprehensive proposal on WorldNetDaily.com which I hope the Russian state-run press and Russian leadership find more to their liking and more importantly which U.S. policymakers will find attractive as a viable policy option to help avert a potentially catastrophic conflict between the superpowers as well.

© David T. Pyne 2019

David T. Pyne Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and H.Q. staff officer with a M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as a Vice President of the Association of the United States Army’s Utah Chapter. He can be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.