OPINION:
LENINGRAD: THE EPIC SIEGE OF WORLD WAR II
By Anna Reid
Walker, $30. 491 pages, illustrated
Most battles grow out of an army’s attempt to destroy the forces of its enemy or to occupy its terrain. The siege of Leningrad in World War II was different, for Hitler’s armies were stretched too thin to capture the city that had been the cradle of the Bolshevik Revolution. So the blockade of Leningrad over 900 grim days became one of the rare instances in modern times when an invader sought to destroy a city by starving it to death.
In September 1941, three months after invading Russia, Hitler issued a directive that Leningrad was to be blockaded and then razed by bombs and artillery. He did not want to have to feed survivors, so any attempt by the city to surrender was to be refused. The Leningrad front evolved into trench warfare reminiscent of World War I, with neither side able to gain a decisive victory.
The saga of Leningrad (now known by its traditional name, St. Petersburg) is retold here by Anna Reid, a London-based historian who has made extensive use of diaries and other first-person accounts. Her graphic illustrations add to the impact of the book.
Winter came early in 1941, and Leningrad - always dependent on outside sources for food and fuel - felt the pinch. Although the advance of Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb’s invading army was an immediate threat to Leningrad, Soviet authorities were slow to react. Ms. Reid thinks the reason no mass evacuation took place in the summer of 1941 was because military and party officials were afraid of being labeled defeatist. The senior party representative in Leningrad, Andrei Zhdanov, turned away trainloads of food on the grounds that his warehouses were full.
Major artworks from the Hermitage Museum were shipped out in secret, but about 2.5 million people remained, and by the end of 1941, civilian rations had fallen to a starvation level. Lake Ladoga represented a window to the outside world - by boat in the summer, across the ice in winter - but it was incapable of meeting the city’s needs. Those who had something to trade for a few potatoes or a slab of dead horse counted themselves fortunate. “The point at which an entire family was doomed,” Ms. Reid writes, “was when its last mobile member became too weak to queue for rations.”
The hand of the Soviet bureaucracy was to be seen everywhere in the starving city. Well-fed members of the NKVD secret police patrolled the city, rooting out Trotskyites, wealthy merchants, Catholics and former officers of the czarist army. According to the author, by the fall of 1942, more than 9,500 people had been arrested for political crimes.
Workers were prohibited from taking food home to unproductive family members, and an army surgeon who smuggled some of her ration to her aging mother was duly called on the carpet. “I was ordered to report to the commissar,” she later wrote, “and he attempted to persuade me that I had no right to undermine my health. … I agreed, but told him that … my sacred responsibility was to save my mother.”
Religion was an uncertain consolation during the 30-month siege. With the coming of war, Stalin had relaxed the regime’s suppression of religion, but the easing was widely seen as only temporary. A 10-year-old orphan girl awakened one night to see her teacher kneeling, head bowed, at a window. The teacher whispered that she was praying for her son at the front but begged the girl to keep her secret.
It is unfair to the people of Leningrad that Soviet propagandists chose for decades to portray them as heroes of the Great Patriotic War. In fact, most residents of the city did whatever was necessary to survive; many were victims, but few were heroes. Ms. Reid writes, “Anarchy did not reign in Leningrad during the siege, but the city did suffer a crime wave, especially of theft for food and food cards.”
And there is the matter of cannibalism. Soviet authorities made a nice distinction between corpse-eating, which was frowned upon, and murder for food, which was viewed like any other murder. By December 1942, about 2,015 people had been arrested on cannibalism charges.
On Jan. 27, 1944, the last German shell fell on Leningrad. Soon, guns fired in salute and flares soared over the city. The exact number of people who died in the siege is uncertain; Ms. Reid estimates the number at around 750,000.
Her book is not for the faint of heart but represents a valuable addition to the World War II bookshelf.
John M. Taylor’s books include a biography of his father, “An American Soldier: The Wars of General Maxwell Taylor” (Presidio, 2001).
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