Leningrad The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944

by Reid, Anna

• ISBN13: 9780802778819
• ISBN10: 080277881X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-09-04
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

On September 8, 1941, eleven weeks after Hitler's brutal surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Leningrad was surrounded. The German siege was not lifted for two and a half years, by which time some three quarters of a million Leningraders had died of starvation. Stripping away decades of Soviet propaganda, and drawing on newly available diaries and government records, Anna Reid chronicles the Nazis' deliberate decision to starve Leningrad into surrender, the incompetence and cruelty of the Soviet war leadership, the horrors experienced by soldiers on the front lines, and, above all, the ordeal of life in the blockaded city. Leningradtackles a raft of unanswered questions: Was the size of the death toll as much the fault of Stalin as of Hitler? Why didn't the Germans capture the city? Why didn't it collapse into anarchy? What decided who lived and who died? Impressive in its originality and literary style, Leningradgives voice to the dead and throws new light on one of the twentieth century's greatest calamities.

Author Biography

Anna Reid is the author of The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia and Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. She holds a master's degree in Russian history and reform economics from the University of London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies. She was Ukraine correspondent for the Economist and the Daily Telegraph from 1993 to 1995, and from 2003 to 2007 she ran the foreign affairs program at the think tank Policy Exchange.

Table of Contents

Maps	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
Introduction	p. i
Invasion: June-September 1941
22 June 1941	p. 13
Barbarossa	p. 25
'"We're Winning, but the Germans are Advancing'	p. 51
The Peoples Levy	p. 73
'Caught in a Mousetrap'	p. 91
The Siege Begins: September-December 1941
'No Sentimentality'	p. 113
'To Our Last Heartbeat'	p. 139
125 Grams	p. 158
Falling Down the Funnel	p. 174
Mass Death: Winter 1941-2
The Ice Road	p. 195
Sleds and Cocoons	p. 208
'We Were Like Stones'	p. 232
Svyazi	p. 252
'Robinson Crusoe Was a Lucky Man'	p. 268
Corpse-Eating and Person-Eating	p. 280
Anton Ivanovich is Angry	p. 293
The Big House	p. 303
Waiting for Liberation: January 1942-January 1944
Meat Wood	p. 313
The Gentle Joy of Living and Breathing	p. 331
The Leningrad Symphony	p. 356
The Last Year	p. 370
Aftermath
Coming Home	p. 389
The Cellar of Memory	p. 406
How Many?	p. 417
Appendix II	p. 419
Notes	p. 421
Bibliography	p. 459
Index	p. 473
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