World War II Leningrad: A History From Beginning to End (World War 2 Battles), by Hourly History.

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WORLD WAR II LENINGRAD: A HISTORY 

FROM BEGINNING TO END 

(WORLD WAR 2 BATTLES), 

by HOURLY HISTORY. 

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"“There is hardly a parallel in history for the endurance of so many people over so long a time. Leningrad stood alone against the might of Germany since the beginning of the invasion. It is a city saved by its own will, and its stand will live in the annals as a kind of heroic myth.” 

"—The New York Times"

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Repeatedly, author accuses Stalin of not surrendering because he didn't care about the residents. 

This would be true if nazis were known to be beneficial infers, but by the time they arrived at gates of this city they had proved beyond any possible doubts to the contrary. 

Disgusting attempt by author and publishers, due to a sheer bias, to blame Stalin on par with invaders for travails of the residents of the city under siege during WWII - despite public knowledge about devastation wreaked across Europe by nazis before turning East and coming as far as this, from Rotterdam and London, and later throughout Belarus and invaded parts of Russia. 

Is this deliberately fraudulent writing indicative of extremely low expectations from readers, of any knowledge whatsoever about WWII, nazis, and havoc wreaked deliberately by nazis across Europe?

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Tellingly, author goes far more into travails of poor of Russia when discouraging on history of the city that was St Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad and back again now to St Petersburg via Petrograd. 

But a similar discourse on German feudal system and Prussian oppression of its non-German population might, in addition to character of average nazis who were illiterate lots for most part, would be far more relevant as far as the siege, and the resistance by the city, is concerned. 

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"“When the attack on Russia starts, the world will hold its breath.” 

"—Adolf Hitler"

Why hasn't the author dated this quote? 

Was it winter of 1938-39? 

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"“We have no interest in saving lives of the civilian population.” 

"—Adolf Hitler"

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"“The moment has come to put your Bolshevik qualities to work, to get ready to defend Leningrad without wasting words. We have to see that nobody is just an onlooker, and carry out in the least possible time the same kind of mobilisation of the workers that was done in 1918 and 1919. The enemy is at the gate. It is a question of life and death.” 

"—Leningrad Sign"

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"“After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban center. . . . Following the city's encirclement, requests for surrender negotiations shall be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our very existence, we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population.” 

"—German Directive"

Author refrains, for unknown reasons, from mentioning that this directive not only was in line with general policy but came from the top, and from no one else, judging by the language as much by the details of the plans disclosed to top Generals at the secret conference, nine months before invading Poland. 

This omission of where the directive originated shows bias and affiliation of Author and publishers. Nazi much, guys? 

This document might have been discovered only after fall of Berlin, but fact thereof was known long before German forces arrived as far East as either Moscow or St Petersburg by any name. 

Humans do talk, and news of Germans having burnt people alive by millions through Belarus and Russia couldn't have been a secret. 

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"Leningrad was the center of power of one of Stalin’s rivals, Grigory Zinoviev, but when Zinoviev fell, Stalin replaced him with Sergei Kirov and named him first secretary of the Leningrad Party. The Bolsheviks who had supported the Party leaders such as Zinoviev and Trotsky were purged. Kirov was a Russian and a popular leader, loyal to Stalin but viewed by the leader as a threat, particularly since others in the Party regarded him as a better choice than Stalin. Kirov was subsequently assassinated in December 1924. There is no evidence, despite intense suspicion, that Kirov’s death was engineered by Stalin. But his death allowed Stalin to embark on one of his purges, this one of Leningrad, ridding the city of his adversaries along with people who had held positions of influence in the former St. Petersburg society.

"Stalin’s obsession with cementing his power had consumed all of his attention as he ignored the rising threat of Germany beyond Russia’s borders. ... "

Had that been slightest bit true, Stalin wouldn't be the leader he was. 

Fact is Russian leaders - and certainly Stalin - were all too aware of world politics, and most of all, of nazis, their plans, and the threat they represented to Russia. 

" ... Stalin guessed—wrongly—that Hitler would be occupied with the Battle of Britain and would not launch a war on a second front until Germany had defeated the British. ... "

Again, author makes baseless statements, for there's no evidence thereof; Russia had tried their best to join allies, except the latter prefabricated and delayed, in the most ridiculous way. 

Stalin bought time for Russia to prepare by accepting the treaty Germany was eager to seal, to avoid war on two fronts simultaneously. 

As for the "Stalin guessed—wrongly—that Hitler would be occupied with the Battle of Britain and would not launch a war on a second front until Germany had defeated the British" bit, no, it wasn't a guess, it was a hope that Germany turning East woulld be delayed if invasion of Britain proceeded. Battle of Britain did delay invasion of Russia but only as planned by Hitler, several years prior to his initiating WWII. 

That he couldn't accomplish invasion of Britain within the scheduled interval wasn't either a surprise or for lack of intention. 

" ... In his view, there was still time to prepare his army for war and consolidate his power through a reign of terror so massive that he could be confident that there would be no dissent to threaten him. ... "

This author is too stupid to write on this topic! 

The two things weren't related this way. What author calls reign of terror at around this time was result of calculated false propaganda and leaks from Germany that had suspicions falsely point at a large part of Soviet officers and as a result had them purged, something as per intention by nazis. 

Stalin wasn't unaware of this, but couldn't chance the leaks being false. 

" ... But Hitler believed that Russia would be easy to conquer, and he wanted to accomplish this feat as quickly as possible. Britain could wait."

Again, there's evidence of neither. Fact is he kept hoping to terrorise British into making a treaty, in which he failed. 

Fact also is that he intended fully to invade and occupy east Europe right up to Urals and turn it into 'lebensraum' for expansion of Germany by resettlement of German population for breeding, apart from using the land as potato fields to feed the said German population. 

He had explicitly ordered massacres of local civil populations, before beginning of the invasion. 

It's not that he thought Russia would be easy, but rest of Europe had been so, and that Russia would not only resist but turn the tide, was unexpected to him. 

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"“When the attack on Russia starts, the world will hold its breath.” 

"—Adolf Hitler"

Why hasn't the author dated this quote? 

Was it winter of 1938-39? 

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"Hitler had been planning for the assault on Russia since the previous year, and because of this, he lost interest in the Battle of Britain in order to concentrate on his massive enemy to the east. Within a week, the Germans were 200 miles inside the Soviet Union."

Wrong - "lost interest" seems more like someone seeing a bear losing interest in a moose. No, it's more that there was a schedule fixed by him well before winter of 1938-39, for latest possible date of invasion of Russia, to be followed, and he'd expected England to fall sooner, not to be difficult. 

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""Early next year we enter the city (if the Finns do it first we do not object), lead those still alive into inner Russia or into captivity, wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth through demolitions, and hand the area north of the Neva to the Finns." 

"—German High Command"

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"The citizens of Leningrad were informed on June 27, 1941, that the city was in peril. The authorities imposed martial law. The city was to be governed by Lieutenant-General Popov, who commanded the Leningrad garrison, along with the local Communist Party head and the head of the Leningrad Soviet Executive. The authorities mobilized more than one million of the city’s residents to build fortifications along the perimeter of Leningrad to keep the enemy force and their Finish allies, who were advancing from the north and south, from succeeding in their aims.

"Aware of the danger, Leningrad had begun to evacuate its citizens on June 29, sending more than 1,700,000 citizens, including over 400,000 children, out of Leningrad to the Volga region. During the three years of the siege, approximately 1.4 million people would be evacuated in three different stages: June to August 1941; September 1941 to April 1942; and May to October 1942. Most of the evacuees were women, children, and the elderly, but people who were regarded as essential to the war effort was also evacuated.

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"But Leningrad did not know the intentions of the Finns or the Germans and had to consider what the Finns intended to do when planning the city’s defenses. The Finns were not their only problem. On August 30, the remaining rail connection to Leningrad was cut upon the German arrival at the Neva River. The road to Leningrad was shut off on September 8 as the Germans reached Lake Ladoga. All that remained for the Russians was a slender stretch of land between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad. A German bomb had struck Leningrad’s largest food depot on September 12.

"By the end of September, the Germans were engrossed in the most efficient way to destroy Leningrad. They chose not to occupy the city because then they would then have to find food for the residents. The optimum plan, they decided, was to besiege Leningrad and bomb it. Hitler reminded them that under no circumstances were they to accept surrender. Assured that their victory over Leningrad was inevitable, the 4th Panzer Group had been sent from the Leningrad campaign to Moscow to provide support for the German offensive."

This being so and known to be so, what was the author's effort badmouthing Stalin for in context of the siege, in describing him as not caring for human lives? He'd even evacuated most women, children, and more! 

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"Just six miles from Leningrad, the defensive forces including citizens who took part in the desperate fighting were able to stop the Germans from advancing. With the city surrounded and its supply routes cut, Germany was ready to begin its bombing campaign on September 19. The first air raid was the worst: 276 bombers killed 1,000 of Leningrad’s residents, including many in hospitals who were recovering from battle wounds. Five hospitals were hit. A second target, the shopping bazaar, the largest in Leningrad, yielded many casualties because so many of the citizens had fled from the streets to avoid the bombing. The targets were not accidental; the Germans had created maps of the city and deliberately aimed their artillery bombardment to strike hospitals, schools, the transportation system, and businesses."

Typically nazi, that "deliberately aimed their artillery bombardment to strike hospitals, schools, the transportation system, and businesses" bit.  

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"Hitler regarded the Slavs as an inferior race and, in keeping with his genocidal policies, was intent on seeing the city starve to death. He was confident that once the citizens had been demoralized by starvation, aerial bombardment, and ground artillery, they would soon lose their resolve and resistance would cease. To assist in his campaign to break their will, Hitler had the German bombers drop leaflets over the city warning that the population would be reduced to death by starvation if they refused to surrender. German bombs, intent on paralyzing the city, struck the factories, hospitals, and schools, ruining the city’s infrastructure.

"Hitler had no regard for the human value of the city, but the cultural wealth of Leningrad was a different matter. The Russian palaces were located on the outskirts of the city, and these were plundered for their treasures and art collections, which were sent back to Germany.

"The Astoria Hotel was used as a hospital, but the care its patients received was, like everything else in the city, a far cry from what it would have been before the war. Patients were given vitamin tablets in a futile attempt to revive their energy, but ultimately, death claimed most of them. Leningrad, before the war began, had approximately 30,000 doctors and 100,000 nurses, but less than half survived the long siege. In the spring of 1942, cholera broke out but fortunately didn’t spread. Another epidemic, this time of typhus and paratyphoid fever, blossomed in the spring of the following year, but once again, the medical professionals, with the help of the citizens, were able to contain the disease.

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"Stalin would not divert planes to save Leningrad even though an airlift could have kept the death toll and suffering from being so catastrophic. The government did what it could to get supplies to Leningrad while letting evacuees get out and maintaining the morale of the besieged. Still, news about Leningrad was censored from the rest of the country. All of Russia was suffering; sharing the story of Leningrad would not raise morale.

"But Leningrad was not defeated. In order to be able to defend Leningrad, Russian soldiers needed to establish a route for delivery of supplies into the city. The citizens of Leningrad had little to rely on, but in this instance, the brutal Russian winter was their salvation. Lake Ladoga froze, allowing trucks to use it as a highway to bring in supplies, and to provide a route for some, particularly the elderly and the weak, to evacuate. As the population decreased by evacuation and admittedly by mortality, the remaining residents received increased rations.

"The route was located in the southern part of Lake Ladoga, along the stretch of land which the Germans did not occupy. The route became known as the “Ice Road”; during the warm months, goods were transported by various vessels in the body of water. The supplies traveled from Osinovets to Leningrad via a suburban railway. The road was also called the “Road of Life” because of its vital role in bringing in the desperately needed supplies to the starving city. However, the journey in winter over the ice was a dangerous one. Vehicles risked becoming stuck in the snow or sinking in ice that had broken from the German bombardment. As a result of the deaths that took place, the path also was known as the “Road of Death.” But without it, the citizens of Leningrad would have had no means of bringing in food and soldiers into the city, or evacuating civilians and wounded troops from it.

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"Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler are two of the most devastating men the human species has ever produced. They ruled in countries where questions about their fitness to lead could not be asked or, if they were asked, they were quickly quelled. Neither man had qualms about using the most brutal of methods to maintain control over their populations. When World War II brought the two titans into conflict, the consequences for the populations were catastrophic. Through battles, policies of extermination, and deliberate cruelty, Stalin and Hitler were the embodiment of evil."

The turn of phrase "brought the two titans into conflict" seems to absolve both equally of the conflict, falsely. Stalin had attempted to avoid it by getting on board with a treaty; the other, fully intending to initiate a blitzkrieg through Europe, had his plans ready and conveyed privately in a most secret conference with his top generals to them, over nine months in advance - and the dates were not only set in advance that far for invasion of Poland but plans for invasion east, too, were ready. It's only that the latter were postponed due to a desire to punish the Balkans that delayed his Wehrmacht beyond what they thought safe. But the invasion went on anyway since by then he wasn't listening to generals. 

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"But the Siege of Leningrad was a particularly unique form of agony for the citizens who endured it, those casualties of war whose misery was a result of the nature of war. The suffering experienced by the people of Leningrad during the 872 days when they were besieged by the German army takes its place in the grim annals of human misery. The people of Russia were already suffering under the tyranny of Josef Stalin. The Germany soldiers were victims of Hitler’s determination to defeat Russia without factoring in the weather that would, in the end, prove to be a formidable foe. Hitler was convinced that victory would be swift and easy. The Russian winter had other plans."

Perhaps that paragraph sets the tone for the book with its unreasoning bias. Russia isn't easy to survive under any political system as the events leading to the Russian Revolution testify, and while it's difficult enough in peace time, WWII wasn't easy at Buckingham Palace either, which did receive a bomb - or Rotterdam, which was deliberately destroyed by nazi bombing. In short, Leningrad by any name had a tough time during WWII because nobody in Europe had it easy either outside of Germany, and Stalin had little to do with that. 

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"Adolf Hitler’s plans for conquering Russia revealed an ego which failed to account for the massive scale of the land upon which he unleashed Germany’s military might. Leningrad, formerly St. Petersburg, had previously been the capital of Russia before the Soviet Union was formed. The city had been the symbolic center of the Russian Revolution that saw Lenin and his Bolsheviks bring down the Romanov Dynasty. The Bolsheviks replaced the tsar with communism and a system of government that was just dictatorial as it had been under the autocratic Romanovs."

Perhaps, but people had revolted due to starvation just as they had in France, and if it wasn't raining cakes after revolution, people still had satisfaction of a shared misery across nation, unlike the inequities of yore. And whatever the fault of leftism, it did sustain a great land through the horrible WWII until Russia turned the tide. 

US was a late arrival, despite ardent desire of FDR to the contrary, since he knew better but had to carry his nation with him. The two nations that did stand up yo nazis were UK and USSR. If either had succumbed, it would be over for not just Europe but human civilisation. And sacrifices were greater by USSR in loss of human life. 

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"The era of the 1930s was a time when the dark cloud of Nazism, communism, and fascism dominated the landscape. The nations where freedom still reigned were in the throes of a global economic crisis that demanded their full attention. They had no compassion or charity to spare for those belligerent countries where people who were poor, downtrodden, ethnically different, or in dissent would discover that disobedience was not tolerated. Leningrad was an influential city, once the jewel of Russia, but Stalin distrusted its people for their intellectual reputation.

"Hitler, on the other hand, was disdainful of the Slavs and anticipated the opportunity to bring down the city that held such symbolic importance. Before the siege began, German scientists had conducted macabre calculations and were confident that the city would succumb to starvation within weeks. How, they reasoned, could a city populated by the Slavs, one that was encircled by the mighty German army, possibly hope to survive? That the survival of Leningrad’s citizens would include both a stolid refusal to surrender as well as, for some, cannibalism could not have been predicted at the start of the siege. That, in the end, the Slavs would outlast the Nazis was not seen in Hitler’s crystal ball."

There's that bias again and a clear effort to make Russians seem uncivilised, but if author and publishers weren't biased, they could have mentioned nazis burning whole villages to death through Belarus and Russia, killing over two million this way. Anyone discovered attempting escape was shot dead. None of that was impromptu, either. Their leader had ordered the army to clear East for resettlement of German population to breed and grow. 

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"Leningrad was certainly a worthy target and not just as a symbol. In 1939, as Germany was flexing its muscle and on the threshold of beginning its conquest of Europe, Leningrad was responsible for 11 percent of the Soviet Union’s industrial production. It was a center for arms factories and was the main base for Russia’s Baltic Fleet. Stalin knew all this and would not willingly relinquish the city, but he would shed no tears for the hellish fate that the city’s people would endure."

Again the horrible statements from author - due to sheer unthinking bias continue. 

Or is it with a calculated falsehood based on low expectations from readers? 

Siege of this city, St. Petersburg - which was later named Petrograd and then Leningrad, back again via Petrograd to now St. Petersburg - was after invasion of Russia in 1941, and by the time German forces arrived there, they had not only bombed Rotterdam and devastated other places across Europe including attempting to destroy London, but had massacred millions of people through Belarus and Russia by burning village after village alive, not allowing anyone to escape. 

So if Stalin did not surrender Leningrad it wasn’t because "Stalin knew all this and would not willingly relinquish the city, but he would shed no tears for the hellish fate that the city’s people would endure", but becausehe also knew that the people would suffer far worse if surrendered.

This in fact had prompted Russian forces to offer to carry any refugees fleeing East from Poland in military transport with them when German forces invaded across the line, and several did, some loving the war out in Russia and some joining the Russian Army. 

Such an offer could come only as a humanitarian gesture to help those in need of escaping nazis and was only possible because it was allowed by upper echelons. 

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"Hitler knew that the city was more than just a symbol. But Hitler had his Third Reich, and he was confident that he would be the master of Europe; the despised Slavs would not stand in the way of Aryan dominance. Assured of his nation’s superiority in all things, Hitler reputedly printed invitations to a celebration in the Hotel Astoria of Leningrad to commemorate the triumph that he was sure would be his in conquering the city. There were stories that the Fuhrer would rename the city which had once been named for the dynamic Tsar Peter the Great after himself: Adolfsburg. But equally credible is the likelihood that he intended to destroy the city and give his Finnish allies the area north of the River Neva."

Considering his intentions, stated explicitly in the secret conference to his generals, fully over nine months before invading Poland, of turning East Europe - all the way up to Urals - into potato fields to feed Germany, apart from serving as more land to resettle Germans to breed, it's unlikely he intended residents of the city to stay and survive. 

Residents of villages throughout Belarus had been burned alive by German forces invading across, not allowing anyone to escape alive, intentionally and by orders from top. 

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"The overall plan to bring Russia to its knees, Operation Barbarossa, was ambitious. By the time the Siege of Leningrad ended on January 27, 1944—after more than two years—it would reign as history’s longest and most destructive siege. In terms of the casualties suffered, it may also be the most costly siege of all time. Of the three million people who were in Leningrad at the start of the war, approximately one million died during the assault, generally from starvation and the terrible cold. That number is ten times higher than people killed when the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima."

Attempt by author to make guilt of Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem miniscule, which is rampant racism apart from obvious bias against Russia. 

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"But the Germans were not the only cause of death during the war years. Josef Stalin, the cruel, calculating leader of the Soviet Union, tolerated no dissent and no rivals. Leningrad had suffered from Stalin’s paranoia before the siege began, and the city would suffer again when the siege ended. The irony of the Siege of Leningrad is that, because the city was shut off from Moscow and the rest of Russia with news of the terrible ordeal the citizens were enduring censored from the other parts of the country, Leningrad was isolated from the control of Russia’s malevolent leader. Suffering seemed to be the plight of the Russian people during the war and during Stalin’s reign of terror and no people suffered more than the people of Leningrad during the siege."

About half that paragraph is lie, whether intended deliberately or through sheer ignorance, and other part sheer abuse based in fraud. 

To begin with, "tolerated no dissent and no rivals" might be true of best of peace times under Stalin, but its debatable there too; after invasion by Germany it was irrelevant, since Russia united as one against the enemy known to take no prisoners and having burnt alive village after village in Belarus and Russia until reaching as far in as the two most important cities of Russia, having massacred two million civilians including all ages, men and women, not allowing anyone to escape but shooting them dead. 

Russia fought back because there was no alternative for survival, and united for Mother Russia, with Stalin as a leader to look up to - just as England did with Churchill. Questions regarding alternative leadership were only relevant after, not during, this war. 

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"The truth about the Siege of Leningrad was not something that Stalin would allow to be disclosed, and it was not until glasnost opened up the archives that the Russian people could discover, for the first time, the abject depths of horror which the citizens of Leningrad endured. Surviving on a daily ration of bread that amounted to 125 grams, or the size of a cake of soap, the people of Leningrad were forced to be resourceful. The paste that was obtained from scraping wallpaper was eaten. Leather belts and briefcases were boiled down to make jelly. Pancakes were made out of face powder. According to historians, the people of Leningrad devised 22 different recipes with pigskin as an ingredient. Sweeping the attics and ventilation shafts at tobacco factories provided tobacco dust, an unlikely source of Vitamin B. Meanwhile, Vitamin C was extracted from pine needles."

This only makes one admire them, for ingenuity in face of desperation, staying alive every way possible instead of surrendering - for, obviously, if the city was under siege, Stalin could do little to nothing if the city had chosen to surrender instead. 

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"But Leningrad under siege was a frightening place to live. Parents, fearful of the gangs that wandered the city’s streets in search of ration cards to steal, kept their children inside when darkness fell. The city police, aware that the search for meat had made cannibalism a gruesome siege crime, created a division to investigate these incidents.

"As grotesque as cannibalism was, all of Leningrad did not surrender to the depths of base behavior. In fact, there were times when the city rose to heights of nobility. Composer Dmitri Shostakovich was a citizen of Leningrad, and when the siege began, he was working on his “Seventh Symphony,” also known as the “Leningrad Symphony.” As he worked on the first three movements, he drew his inspiration from his rage at tyranny, inditing both Germany and Russia in his music. In August 1942, his orchestra, which like the rest of the city was weak and hungry, played to a packed concert hall. They played to the Germans as well; some of the loudspeakers were aimed at the Germans who encircled their city."

That - "his orchestra, which like the rest of the city was weak and hungry, played to a packed concert hall" says everything about the spirit of this city and the Russian spirit, rising to its best under such circumstances. 

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"There were three million residents of Leningrad before the siege. By the time the siege was broken, the city had 700,000 residents, three-quarters of them women, still alive. ... "

Author ends chapter introducing the subject with further propaganda. 

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"“After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban center. . . . Following the city's encirclement, requests for surrender negotiations shall be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our very existence, we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population.” 

"—German Directive"

Author refrains, for unknown reasons, from mentioning that this directive not only was in line with general policy but came from the top, and from no one else, judging by the language as much by the details of the plans disclosed to top Generals at the secret conference, nine months before invading Poland. 

This omission of where the directive originated shows bias and affiliation of Author and publishers. Nazi much, guys? 

This document might have been discovered only after fall of Berlin, but fact thereof was known long before German forces arrived as far East as either Moscow or St Petersburg by any name. 

Humans do talk, and news of Germans having burnt people alive by millions through Belarus and Russia couldn't have been a secret. 

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"Leningrad, which is located on the Neva River, on the Baltic Sea at the head of the Gulf of Finland, was founded in 1703 by a Romanov. Peter the Great was, in his way, just as revolutionary as Vladimir Lenin, the man for whom the city would be renamed in 1924, after a brief stint as Petrograd from 1914 until 1924. From 1732 until the demise of the Russian monarchy in 1918, St. Petersburg was the capital of Russia. After the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, the Bolsheviks decided that Moscow was better suited to be the center of the Soviet government.

"But the city that would become Leningrad had revolution in its roots. Empress Catherine ruled over Russia following the assassination of her husband, Tsar Peter III. While Catherine’s reputation and achievements in what became known as Russia’s Golden Age allow historians to regard her as an enlightened despot, St. Petersburg benefitted from her ambitious goals for her country and city. As the capital of Russia, St. Petersburg was the setting for a massive architectural rebuilding program which would make the city equal to the capitals of Europe. Catherine intended to see the city take its place among its cosmopolitan rivals; she herself was a woman of diverse cultural interests who did not want her nation to remain backward and rustic.

"Catherine’s son lacked both her abilities and her longevity on the throne and was assassinated in 1801, just five years after his mother’s death. Tsar Paul’s son Alexander I sought to emulate Catherine’s liberal goals, introducing more universities and reforms as well as seeking ways of providing the military with a more stable financial structure. Desirous of making St. Petersburg beautiful, he also engaged in architectural improvements, supporting innovations which would endure throughout the city’s future, making use of the neoclassical Roman and Greek styles.

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"But as the city grew and expanded its boundaries, the needs of the rural residents, many of whom were poor and illiterate, failed to be taken into account. The seeds of discontent, which many other urban centers in the West were witnessing during that period of time, were being sown. Other nations would gradually adapt to the changing expectations and needs, but in Russia, they would yield a drastic and violent harvest.

"Alexander I’s brother, Nicholas I, became tsar when Alexander died on December 1, 1825. On his coronation day, December 14, the city experienced a revolt as members of the Imperial Guard rebelled in quest of reforms to benefit all Russians. Their demands included a constitution and an end to the autocracy which dominated Russian leadership.

"Nicholas’ response was to have his soldiers fire upon them. Many died; others were hanged or sentenced to prison in Siberia. Autocracy was still the rule of the land, and the plea for a more liberal, less exclusive social structure went unheard.

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"Nevertheless, by the mid-nineteenth century, St. Petersburg had justified Tsar Peter the Great’s expectations. It had surpassed Moscow in population, had developed into one of Europe’s major industrial cities, and had a major naval base, a seaport, and a river. Changes were altering the fabric of society all over Europe and industrialization in the mid-nineteenth transformed St. Petersburg’s economy. As the middle class grew, there was an increase in prosperity among the city’s residents. The actual wealth that accrued from the growth went to a select few. The city’s less fortunate and less affluent residents found that for them, industrialization meant more ways to earn a living, but it also meant more slums, as workers needed to be able to live closer to their places of employment.

"Too many people crammed into buildings that were unsafe evolved not only into housing problems but health concerns as well. The city, which was home to thriving metalworking and textile industries, built the factories around the outside edges of its borders. The poor were crammed in the center of the city while the wealthy, along with the manufacturing sources of their wealth, were distant. Being aloof from the misery of the public made it easy to ignore the cries of the people, and the sheltered wealthy did not particularly want to hear those voices.

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"Oppression had been a way of life for a long time in Russia, and one of the most glaring blots on the country’s identity was serfdom. In 1861, the serfs were finally emancipated, the result of decades of discussion which had been going on as far back as the failed Decembrist Revolution, and longer. Empress Catherine had also questioned the issue of owning serfs and its moral ramifications. But the crux of the liberation may not have owed its bearings to altruistic motives but rather from the military defeat in the Crimean War at the hands of the British, whose soldiers were free men, unlike the Russian soldiers, who were serfs.

"But Tsar Alexander II was hesitant to publicize the decision. In order to allay expected uprisings, the announcement of the emancipation was not made until the first day of Lent, a religious time when the faithful were expected to avoid alcohol. Anticipating trouble on the day of liberation, soldiers patrolled St. Petersburg, focusing their vigilance around the Winter Palace which was often the scene of protests and where the Decembrist Revolution had taken place. But the emancipation notice was received without uproar or rioting, perhaps because the schedule for liberation was extended over several years and would not take place at once.

"With liberation came the freedom to move to other places, and St. Petersburg was the desired destination for many of the newly emancipated serfs. Until this time, Russian cities were not population centers, and most of its cities had fewer than 10,000 people living in them. However, by 1900, over a million freed serfs had entered St. Petersburg looking for work. By the time that the momentous year of 1917 would arrive, the population had expanded by nearly 70 percent in only 17 years.

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"In 1905, Nicholas II, the last Romanov, was on the throne of Russia. He was a weak, feckless leader ruling at a time when dynamic change was unsettling the social fabric of Europe, and Russia was not immune to the unrest. On January 9, 1905, workers headed to the Winter Palace. Their intentions were peaceful as they carried religious banners and portraits of the tsar, but the police attacked them in what became known as Bloody Sunday. Thousands were killed or injured, and what had begun as a peaceful protest spawned a much more vigorous revolt in the city. Industry workers went on strike as part of the protests. Alarmed at the interruption of work, which meant a loss of profits, the government responded by promising reforms, issuing the Constitutional Manifesto as the first step toward a national constitution and reinstating the parliament, called the Duma. The changes promised universal male suffrage and expanded participation in the Duma.

"The reforms were illusory; Nicholas II decided that he preferred not to expand the role of the representative government as it would mean limiting his own power. Had Nicholas II been more farsighted and less obdurate, he might have sensed that the rumblings of discontent would threaten the Romanov dynasty. Russia, like other countries in Europe, was embroiled in World War I; the Germans were winning, and Russian soldiers were being humiliated with defeat.

"The February Revolution of 1917 saw protesters taking up arms, but this time, the military did not protect the tsar, taking the side of the rebels instead. Nicholas II was forced to abdicate, and power was shared by the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet. After a coup on October 25, 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, took power and formed a new government.

................................................................................................

"In 1917, the German army was threatening to invade Petrograd, as St. Petersburg had been renamed, forcing the government to move to Moscow in case the invasion was successful. With Red Russians and White Russians engaged in a civil war, Russia reached a separate agreement with Germany, ending Russian involvement in the war. But that didn’t bring peace to the nation in turmoil. The internal war lasted until 1922 when the Bolsheviks triumphed. Lenin was the new power in Russia, and at his side was Josef Stalin.

"The government’s move from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1918 brought with it a loss of prominence, affecting the residents of the city, which had been undergoing a decline for several years. The city had been the scene of rioting as its starving residents protested the lack of bread and food. In 1917, the city now known as Petrograd had over two million residents; by the end of 1920, the population was 720,000. The loss in population was mirrored by the diminution of industry; production was an eighth of what it had been less than a decade earlier. The railroads had suffered as a result of the war, and the inability to transport goods and food contributed to the city’s shortages. Russia’s rigid economic structure under the Bolsheviks did not allow for entrepreneurial innovation, and small businesses could not start to take up some of the economic slack.

"When the sailors stationed at Fort Kronstadt in St. Petersburg mounted a rebellion against the Bolsheviks, Lenin relaxed some of his rules against small businesses in Leningrad and other Russian cities. The shortages of food and fuel eased. The city seemed as though it would adapt to its change in fortune. The government was in Moscow, the Bolsheviks were in charge, but Leningrad had survived. 

"How could anything worse happen to Leningrad after all the city had endured?"

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"Five days after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, the city acquired a new name, and Petrograd, formerly St. Petersburg, became Leningrad as the city paid homage to the revolutionary leader. But the honor done to the city did not indicate affection for it on the part of Lenin’s successor, Josef Stalin. From Stalin’s admittedly paranoid perspective, Leningrad, a former capital, a center of intellectual achievement and advances, and its birthplace of the Russian Revolution identified the city as a place where people might be inclined to think independently. Independent thought was something that Stalin had no intention of encouraging.

"Stalin was engaged in cementing his role as the leader of the vast, impenetrable nation that had seen so much turmoil during its history. During the Bolshevik rise to power, Lenin knew that Stalin was ruthless, but in the wild days of the early revolution, Stalin’s effectiveness made him a useful ally. In 1922, Stalin had been appointed General Secretary after Lenin suffered a stroke that same year. It was then that Lenin began to view Stalin as a man whose innate brutality made him a threat, and in 1923, Lenin planned to have Stalin dismissed from the position."

No sources quoted. 

Did author have a seance? 

................................................................................................

"The position of General Secretary of the Communist Party was one which Bolshevik icons Trotsky and the others regarded as meaningless, but they failed to realize its intrinsic value. Stalin was much more perceptive; as General Secretary, he could appoint his own choices to other Party positions. Lenin’s first stroke led Stalin to choose useful allies and together, they ruled the nation during Lenin’s convalescence. Lenin’s eventual death not long after prevented Stalin from losing power. Stalin’s ravenous quest for control at all costs meant that his rivals had to fall; three of them were brought down, and Trotsky was sent into exile in 1929. By 1930, Stalin, who had appointed his own faithful to posts of importance, dominated the Politburo, the Russian legislature."

This series labels several such leaders as hungry in quest of power, whereas in reality for most part and for different reasons those leaders would have risen to those positions anyway, from anywhere. This much is certainly true in case of Stalin. 

................................................................................................

"Leningrad was the center of power of one of Stalin’s rivals, Grigory Zinoviev, but when Zinoviev fell, Stalin replaced him with Sergei Kirov and named him first secretary of the Leningrad Party. The Bolsheviks who had supported the Party leaders such as Zinoviev and Trotsky were purged. Kirov was a Russian and a popular leader, loyal to Stalin but viewed by the leader as a threat, particularly since others in the Party regarded him as a better choice than Stalin. Kirov was subsequently assassinated in December 1924. There is no evidence, despite intense suspicion, that Kirov’s death was engineered by Stalin. But his death allowed Stalin to embark on one of his purges, this one of Leningrad, ridding the city of his adversaries along with people who had held positions of influence in the former St. Petersburg society.

"Stalin’s obsession with cementing his power had consumed all of his attention as he ignored the rising threat of Germany beyond Russia’s borders. ... "

Had that been slightest bit true, Stalin wouldn't be the leader he was. 

Fact is Russian leaders - and certainly Stalin - were all too aware of world politics, and most of all, of nazis, their plans, and the threat they represented to Russia. 

" ... Stalin guessed—wrongly—that Hitler would be occupied with the Battle of Britain and would not launch a war on a second front until Germany had defeated the British. ... "

Again, author makes baseless statements, for there's no evidence thereof; Russia had tried their best to join allies, except the latter prefabricated and delayed, in the most ridiculous way. 

Stalin bought time for Russia to prepare by accepting the treaty Germany was eager to seal, to avoid war on two fronts simultaneously. 

As for the "Stalin guessed—wrongly—that Hitler would be occupied with the Battle of Britain and would not launch a war on a second front until Germany had defeated the British" bit, no, it wasn't a guess, it was a hope that Germany turning East woulld be delayed if invasion of Britain proceeded. Battle of Britain did delay invasion of Russia but only as planned by Hitler, several years prior to his initiating WWII. 

That he couldn't accomplish invasion of Britain within the scheduled interval wasn't either a surprise or for lack of intention. 

" ... In his view, there was still time to prepare his army for war and consolidate his power through a reign of terror so massive that he could be confident that there would be no dissent to threaten him. ... "

This author is too stupid to write on this topic! 

The two things weren't related this way. What author calls reign of terror at around this time was result of calculated false propaganda and leaks from Germany that had suspicions falsely point at a large part of Soviet officers and as a result had them purged, something as per intention by nazis. 

Stalin wasn't unaware of this, but couldn't chance the leaks being false. 

" ... But Hitler believed that Russia would be easy to conquer, and he wanted to accomplish this feat as quickly as possible. Britain could wait."

Again, there's evidence of neither. Fact is he kept hoping to terrorise British into making a treaty, in which he failed. 

Fact also is that he intended fully to invade and occupy east Europe right up to Urals and turn it into 'lebensraum' for expansion of Germany by resettlement of German population for breeding, apart from using the land as potato fields to feed the said German population. 

He had explicitly ordered massacres of local civil populations, before beginning of the invasion. 

It's not that he thought Russia would be easy, but rest of Europe had been so, and that Russia would not only resist but turn the tide, was unexpected to him. 

................................................................................................

"In order to remake Russia and its cities into Communist centers, Stalin was too busy during the 1930s to bother with the troubles looming on the horizon. By 1934, he had begun the pattern of purges, sentencing any Russians who were found guilty of disloyalty to imprisonment in the prison camps or murdering them outright. Even the leaders of the party were not safe from his paranoia, as 93 out of the Central Committee’s 139 members were executed. One-third of the Communist Party’s membership was killed. Twenty million Russians, common people who had no exalted standing or rank, were sent to Siberian labor camps.

"The military saw its leadership suffer the same plight, as 81 of the armed forces’ 103 generals and admirals were executed. The church was outlawed. Russification meant that the Russian language and ways were the law of the land and ethnic groups had to accept Russian supremacy. The secret police or NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, were everywhere, acting upon the claims of disloyalty made by people against neighbors or colleagues.

................................................................................................

"In acknowledging Stalin as the hero of the revolution and the savior of the nation, every aspect of Russian society paid homage to him. When his name was mentioned, people applauded. Parents instructed their offspring to love Stalin more than their mother and father. The newspapers trumpeted his successes or at least credited him with every achievement that happened. Stalin was intent on bringing Russia out of its backwater status and in order to do so, he needed to govern a nation which owed blind obedience to him.

"To build a loyal population, the people had to be re-educated; school textbooks reflected the revisionist history which showed Stalin as the hero of the nation. Through fear and blind idolatry, the Russian people did as he ordered."

................................................................................................

Having spent great efforts to make Stalin seem far worse, now author admits that Hitler was slightly bad, in a few words. 

Hence the bias, of the author and the publishers, established thereby clearly.

"Germany was also home to a psychopathic dictator whose self-image was based on the subjugation of all dissent.... "

That's like looking at a dinosaur towering above with jaws ready to snap, and labelling it an ordinary house lizard. 

" ... Adolf Hitler intended to avenge the German nation for the humiliating loss of World War I. Only by conquering the nations that surrounded him, Hitler felt, could Germany achieve its intended destiny."

Author again identifies a dinosaur as a lizard - by calling the immense hatred by Hitler as mere feeling, and intended destruction of human civilisation as merely avenging the humiliation of WWI. 

................................................................................................

"In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began. Just a month before, in August, the Russians and the Germans had made a separate peace by signing the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. For the next ten years, the pact decreed, the two countries would not take military action against each other.

"What they would do was divide Eastern Europe. Russia would not interfere with Germany’s invasion of Poland. Stalin was buying time to build up his nation’s battered military. Any agreement by two men as cunning and aggressive as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin must have been viewed with suspicion, and the world was shocked and dismayed when it learned what had happened."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"“When the attack on Russia starts, the world will hold its breath.” 

"—Adolf Hitler"

Why hasn't the author dated this quote? 

Was it winter of 1938-39? 

................................................................................................

"Given the natures of the two men who led Russia and Germany, no one could have logically been surprised when Hitler abandoned the pact he had signed with the Soviet Union and on June 22, 1941, launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Three army units with three million soldiers, a hundred and fifty divisions, and three thousand tanks crossed the Russian border from the North Cape to the Black Sea, a border of over two thousand miles.

"Hitler had big plans for the conquest of the Soviet Union. The land itself would be repopulated by Germans as the native-born Russians were turned into slave labor to support the Nazi war effort. The oil of the Caucasus would benefit Germany, and the fertile farmland would feed Germans. The rapid success of the invasion convinced him that his plans were destined to succeed.

"The saga would have a different ending by 1944 when the siege ended and Germany, having opened up a two-front war, was forced to deal with the consequences of Hitler’s power-mad miscalculation. But in June 1941, with France fallen and Great Britain fighting alone, the United States neutral and the countries of Europe occupied, even the redoubtable Russians must have trembled as what would be the largest military attack of the Second World War was hurled against them. Although the Russians were aware of the adversary that was poised to strike, no one, and certainly not Stalin, expected the invasion to be achieved so quickly, leaving the Russians scant time to mount an effective defense or, in the case of Leningrad, to prepare for a siege.

................................................................................................

"Hitler had been planning for the assault on Russia since the previous year, and because of this, he lost interest in the Battle of Britain in order to concentrate on his massive enemy to the east. Within a week, the Germans were 200 miles inside the Soviet Union."

Wrong - "lost interest" seems more like someone seeing a bear losing interest in a moose. No, it's more that there was a schedule fixed by him well before winter of 1938-39, for latest possible date of invasion of Russia, to be followed, and he'd expected England to fall sooner, not to be difficult. 

................................................................................................

"In less than three weeks, the Germans had captured three hundred thousand Russian soldiers. They had captured or destroyed 2,500 tanks, 1,400 artillery guns, and 250 aircraft. Hitler’s boast that “We have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten Russian edifice will come tumbling down” seemed prophetic.

"However, the speed with which the Germans had succeeded was not entirely to their benefit. Because they moved so fast, their supply lines and communication channels were not able to keep up the pace. But to Hitler’s eyes, it looked as though, once again, the German military machine was poised for yet another easy victory.

"Delighted with his achievement, Hitler, who was convinced of his own military genius, sent a Panzer Group to Kiev, depriving the Army Group Center of a segment of its most effective force. Although sending the mechanized units to the north and south turned out to be a successful maneuver, Hitler failed to realize that the decision would cost him dearly in the long run. The weather was not on his side. The Germans had not counted on having to deal with the depths of the brutal Russian winter but they would find themselves in that position before Hitler’s overall objectives could be achieved. The army was accustomed to moving quickly and winning.

................................................................................................

"Nevertheless, June would eventually turn into winter. By December 1941, although German forces did not quite grasp the significance of it, “General Winter” had arrived on the scene, and Hitler’s intention of conquering the Russians before cold weather came was crushed. The inexorable pace of the years that would follow would see levels of death and deprivation that neither side could have predicted in the beginning.

"The Germans had multiple aims for Operation Barbarossa. The capture of Leningrad was one part of the strategy, and it was the chief target of Army Group North. Hitler, like Stalin, was keenly aware of the symbolism of the city and he wanted to strike at the reputation of what St. Petersburg had been in its past, particularly its recent past as the birthplace of the Russian Revolution. However, Leningrad, with its industrial importance and its home to the Baltic Fleet, also had real significance as an enemy as well. Shutting down the industrial capacity of Leningrad was necessary for the German war plan.

"Stalin could not afford to lose Leningrad; if the front collapsed, Moscow, which had already been penetrated by the Germans, would be dangerously vulnerable. The army’s supplies, weapons, and munitions were in Moscow; the Soviets dared not lose the capital.

................................................................................................

"Marshal Georgy Zhukov was sent to Leningrad with the task of inspiring the city and mustering a defense that would not succumb. Zhukov, the peasant’s son who had been drafted into the Russian Imperial Army in 1915, later joined the Red Army and fought in the Russian Civil War on the side of the Bolsheviks. Rising through the ranks and gaining experience, he attracted Stalin’s attention and was appointed chief of the army general staff. After a falling out with Stalin, Zhukov was forgotten until October 1941, when he was sent to defend Moscow against the Germans. Stalin made a wise choice, and although he would later regard the officer as a threat—which was his standard response to anyone he deemed a rival—for now, he needed him.

"Zhukov came through. Leningrad did not fall to the German attack. It was Zhukov’s effectiveness in inspiring Leningrad that convinced Hitler that instead of capturing the city by military force, he would do better to besiege it and starve its residents into submission. Hitler didn’t realize it at the time, but his decision, rather than being a brilliant inspiration, would contribute to the overall defeat of his forces in Russia. A siege would extend the time of the war and lengthen the amount of time that the Germans would spend in a hostile country with an unforgiving climate. The besieged would not be the only ones at risk of starvation. German troops would be dependent upon Russian crops for their own food; Germany itself was not self-sufficient in providing the food it needed for its people and the army needed to live off the land of the enemy.

"Hitler also failed to realize that for the Russian people, starvation was no stranger. Endurance and survival through desperate times were traits which the people of Leningrad would call upon to survive the siege, particularly that terrible winter of 1941."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

""Early next year we enter the city (if the Finns do it first we do not object), lead those still alive into inner Russia or into captivity, wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth through demolitions, and hand the area north of the Neva to the Finns." 

"—German High Command"

................................................................................................

"The citizens of Leningrad were informed on June 27, 1941, that the city was in peril. The authorities imposed martial law. The city was to be governed by Lieutenant-General Popov, who commanded the Leningrad garrison, along with the local Communist Party head and the head of the Leningrad Soviet Executive. The authorities mobilized more than one million of the city’s residents to build fortifications along the perimeter of Leningrad to keep the enemy force and their Finish allies, who were advancing from the north and south, from succeeding in their aims.

"Aware of the danger, Leningrad had begun to evacuate its citizens on June 29, sending more than 1,700,000 citizens, including over 400,000 children, out of Leningrad to the Volga region. During the three years of the siege, approximately 1.4 million people would be evacuated in three different stages: June to August 1941; September 1941 to April 1942; and May to October 1942. Most of the evacuees were women, children, and the elderly, but people who were regarded as essential to the war effort was also evacuated.

................................................................................................

"Leningrad’s defenses, commanded by Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, included Russia’s 23rd Army which was located between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and the 48th Army to the west. The Leningrad Military District PVO Corp and Baltic Fleet’s naval aviation units were charged with providing air cover. In early summer, the total military strength of the Leningrad defenses numbered two million men.

"Southern fortifications ran from the mouth of the Luga through the Neva River, with a second defensive line running through Peterhof, Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino, and Koltushy. Leningrad had previously had a line of defense against the Finns in the 1930s on its northern border and that fortification system was once again put to use. The boundaries of the defenses were impressive: 190 miles of timber barricades, 395 miles of wire, 430 miles of ditches to repel tanks, and 5,000 earth-and-timber emplacements and concrete weapon emplacements.

"The defenders of Leningrad were facing the world’s best-trained, most battle-tested military force, and the Germans were confident of victory. Hitler’s timeline was specific and succinct: “Leningrad first, Donetsk Basin second, Moscow third.” In geographical terms, that meant that anything going on between the Arctic Ocean and Lake Ilmen was part of the German plan to besiege Leningrad. When the Finns cut off the Murmansk railhead’s link to Leningrad, the delivery of America’s Lend-Lease equipment and British food and supplies was cut off from the city.

................................................................................................

"While the center and southern segments of the German troops headed for Moscow and Ukraine, Germany’s Army Group North quickly marched through Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia until reaching Leningrad. With 600 factories that made it second only Moscow in terms of its production, Leningrad was vital to the survival of the nation.

"While the 18th Panzer Group continued to Leningrad, German soldiers made their way to Pskov and Ostrov as the Soviet soldiers retreated toward Leningrad. The two cities were captured on July 10. Germany’s 4th Panzer Group, under General Hoepner, moving with the famed speed of the army, reached Novgorod by August 16. More than 300,000 refugees from the subjugated cities of Pskov and Novgorod escaped to Leningrad in order to flee the advancing Germans. Hitler was displeased at what he regarded as the slow pace of the advance and told Field Marshal von Leeb that he was to take Leningrad by December.

................................................................................................

"Axis luck seemed to be holding when the Germans found a copy of the city’s defense plans on the body of a Russian officer. The Finns had also been fortunate, thanks to breaking the Soviet military codes. Continuing toward its destination, the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, establishing the foundation of the planned siege of Leningrad by isolating the city from all directions. The plan was for the Finns to move into position by journeying along Lake Ladoga’s eastern shore; their advance was intended to attack to the west on both sides of the lake and keep the Russian army busy. The Finns had reached within 20 kilometers of Leningrad’s northern suburbs by August, overcoming Soviet salients at Beloostrov and Kirjasalo. The Karelian Fortified Region stopped the Finns from advancing, but it was a moot point as the Finnish army had already been given instructions to halt. They then began moving their troops to East Karelia. They would not advance further; their presence in the battle was for the restoration of lands lost to the Russians and not to further the German cause.

"As the border of Finland was a mere 20 or so miles from Leningrad, the city’s residents were understandably concerned about the Finns’ intentions. The Finns had sided with the Germans in order to restore territories lost to the Russians in the Winter War. Finland’s President Ryti would report after that war that the Finns had refused to take part in the offensive of Leningrad because that was not part of their intentions. Ultimately, what this accomplished was to prevent the Germans from approaching Leningrad from the northern direction while the Finnish army neither shelled nor bombed the city.

................................................................................................

"But Leningrad did not know the intentions of the Finns or the Germans and had to consider what the Finns intended to do when planning the city’s defenses. The Finns were not their only problem. On August 30, the remaining rail connection to Leningrad was cut upon the German arrival at the Neva River. The road to Leningrad was shut off on September 8 as the Germans reached Lake Ladoga. All that remained for the Russians was a slender stretch of land between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad. A German bomb had struck Leningrad’s largest food depot on September 12.

"By the end of September, the Germans were engrossed in the most efficient way to destroy Leningrad. They chose not to occupy the city because then they would then have to find food for the residents. The optimum plan, they decided, was to besiege Leningrad and bomb it. Hitler reminded them that under no circumstances were they to accept surrender. Assured that their victory over Leningrad was inevitable, the 4th Panzer Group had been sent from the Leningrad campaign to Moscow to provide support for the German offensive."

This being so and known to be so, what was the author's effort badmouthing Stalin for in context of the siege, in describing him as not caring for human lives? He'd even evacuated most women, children, and more! 

................................................................................................

"Just six miles from Leningrad, the defensive forces including citizens who took part in the desperate fighting were able to stop the Germans from advancing. With the city surrounded and its supply routes cut, Germany was ready to begin its bombing campaign on September 19. The first air raid was the worst: 276 bombers killed 1,000 of Leningrad’s residents, including many in hospitals who were recovering from battle wounds. Five hospitals were hit. A second target, the shopping bazaar, the largest in Leningrad, yielded many casualties because so many of the citizens had fled from the streets to avoid the bombing. The targets were not accidental; the Germans had created maps of the city and deliberately aimed their artillery bombardment to strike hospitals, schools, the transportation system, and businesses."

Typically nazi, that "deliberately aimed their artillery bombardment to strike hospitals, schools, the transportation system, and businesses" bit.  

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"“We have no interest in saving lives of the civilian population.” 

"—Adolf Hitler"

................................................................................................

"Hitler regarded the Slavs as an inferior race and, in keeping with his genocidal policies, was intent on seeing the city starve to death. He was confident that once the citizens had been demoralized by starvation, aerial bombardment, and ground artillery, they would soon lose their resolve and resistance would cease. To assist in his campaign to break their will, Hitler had the German bombers drop leaflets over the city warning that the population would be reduced to death by starvation if they refused to surrender. German bombs, intent on paralyzing the city, struck the factories, hospitals, and schools, ruining the city’s infrastructure.

"Hitler had no regard for the human value of the city, but the cultural wealth of Leningrad was a different matter. The Russian palaces were located on the outskirts of the city, and these were plundered for their treasures and art collections, which were sent back to Germany.

"The Astoria Hotel was used as a hospital, but the care its patients received was, like everything else in the city, a far cry from what it would have been before the war. Patients were given vitamin tablets in a futile attempt to revive their energy, but ultimately, death claimed most of them. Leningrad, before the war began, had approximately 30,000 doctors and 100,000 nurses, but less than half survived the long siege. In the spring of 1942, cholera broke out but fortunately didn’t spread. Another epidemic, this time of typhus and paratyphoid fever, blossomed in the spring of the following year, but once again, the medical professionals, with the help of the citizens, were able to contain the disease.

................................................................................................

"The city was not prepared for a siege at all, and certainly not a prolonged one. In order to conceal their lack of preparation, Communist Party head Andrei Zhdanov had called Stalin to say that the warehouses were filled with food. In the end, it might not have mattered, given the length of time that the siege would continue, but Zhdanov’s false claim meant that trains carrying food were diverted to other parts of Russia, although they were desperately needed in Leningrad.

"Over one million citizens were evacuated, but not all of those survived either, dying as those in the city were dying, from hunger and the German bombs.

"Those German bombs destroyed the main food warehouses, burning the grain, flour, and sugar that had been stored. When the melted sugar began to flow out of the warehouse into the city, the citizens tried to dig up the dirt into which it had flowed so that they could extract it. The sugar-soaked soil was sold in the market, and those who bought it attempted to either melt the dirt so that it would separate from the sugar, or they mixed the sweetened dirt with flour. But the flour too was of dubious origin as the siege lengthened.

................................................................................................

"After the restaurants closed, food rationing was the only option to provide at least minimal food for the residents. There was a seed bank that Tsar Nicholas I had established; nine of the staff died of starvation rather than eat the seeds so that more than 200,000 food items could be grown in the future.

"With the refugees who had fled to the city and the residents who remained after the evacuation, there were not enough supplies to keep the people alive. The area of Leningrad that remained under Russian control only contained one-third of what was needed for grain to feed the population; one-twelfth of what was needed for sugar; and one-half of what was needed for meat. The city authorities, tallying up what they could provide when the siege began, realized that they only had enough flour to last 35 days, meat for 33 days, fats for 45 days, and sugar for 60 days.

"Bread was another casualty of the siege. The bread that was available only contained half of the rye flour that the recipe called for. Barley, oats, and soya were added, but generally, the oats were diverted to feed the horses. Cellulose and cottonseed were added to make up the ingredients the city lacked. When bread was available, the lines for it were long as people waited, hoping there would still be bread left for them by the time their turn came.

................................................................................................

"The winter of 1941-1942 was devastating. Of their daily ration of 125 grams of bread, at least half of it was made of sawdust and additives not typically used for food. The first two weeks of January 1942 took this minimal amount away from civilians, allowing only workers and those connected with the military effort to eat what the city could provide for them.

"The people were only eating approximately ten percent of the calories they should have been consuming for a normal diet. Ingenuity and a disregard for traditional cooking were necessary in order to provide food. Some people did risk their lives to venture outside the boundaries of the city to dig potatoes in the fields, even though they could have been hit by German guns. The potatoes would be turned in to the authorities who would then distribute them."

" ... Broth came from seaweed, and soup was made out of yeast. There were stories that some people ate grease obtained from the bearings in factory machines and drank oil from oil cans.

................................................................................................

"November 1941 saw 11,000 deaths. December brought 53,000. In order to cope with the onslaught of death, where people often simply dropped dead in the street, many people did nothing at all. ... Families did not always disclose the death of a loved one so that they could continue to use the ration card.

"The people had suffered so much that they could not mourn or grieve for the lost, as if they no longer had the energy to feel emotions. Leningrad coordinated mass burials. Sufficient gravediggers were not always available, requiring the use of explosives to blow a hole in the ground. The corpses were thrown into the hole and the exhausted residents waited for snow to cover them."

"The siege and its deprivations also affected the birth rate. In 1939, more than 175,000 children had been born in Leningrad. In 1943, only 700 babies were born alive.

................................................................................................

"Lack of food was a major problem, but not the only one faced by the city. In addition to suffering a catastrophic famine, the winter of 1941-1942 was also one of the coldest for the more than two million people who were trapped inside Leningrad.

"The city only had one-third of the coal it needed to heat the area of Leningrad still under Russian authority. The residents were forbidden to use electricity in their homes as industries and soldiers were prioritized. With kerosene for oil lamps impossible to get, the residents were forced to use wood to heat their homes, sending furniture and floorboards to the flames in order to stay warm. Those who owned books burned the pages for fuel. Fuel and water services had been disrupted by the bombs during a winter where temperatures reached to -22 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 degrees Celsius). January and February 1942 saw deaths of 100,000 per month. Women who went out to seek water beneath the frozen ground faced the peril of the cold, which played a major role in the high mortality rates that the city experienced during the three winters of the siege.

"The lack of power and fuel led to the closing of a number of Leningrad’s factories. Before the war, construction on a metro system had gotten underway, but this ended during the siege and some of the tunnels which had been dug were used as shelters to protect people during the bombing by the Germans.

................................................................................................

"With the end of winter came the spring thaw. The people who had survived the grim winter cleaned up the city, removing the rubble caused by the bombs and burying the dead bodies that had fallen in the streets. The people planted gardens in courtyards and parks so that they would have a source of food.

"And in August 1942, Leningrad showed that although it had faced the very depths of human experience, it was unbowed. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, written at the beginning of the siege, was performed by the Leningrad Radio Orchestra, the only symphony orchestra to remain in the city. The citizens of Leningrad broadcasted the performance over loudspeakers which were pointed in the direction of the German army."

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"“The moment has come to put your Bolshevik qualities to work, to get ready to defend Leningrad without wasting words. We have to see that nobody is just an onlooker, and carry out in the least possible time the same kind of mobilisation of the workers that was done in 1918 and 1919. The enemy is at the gate. It is a question of life and death.” 

"—Leningrad Sign"

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"Stalin would not divert planes to save Leningrad even though an airlift could have kept the death toll and suffering from being so catastrophic. The government did what it could to get supplies to Leningrad while letting evacuees get out and maintaining the morale of the besieged. Still, news about Leningrad was censored from the rest of the country. All of Russia was suffering; sharing the story of Leningrad would not raise morale.

"But Leningrad was not defeated. In order to be able to defend Leningrad, Russian soldiers needed to establish a route for delivery of supplies into the city. The citizens of Leningrad had little to rely on, but in this instance, the brutal Russian winter was their salvation. Lake Ladoga froze, allowing trucks to use it as a highway to bring in supplies, and to provide a route for some, particularly the elderly and the weak, to evacuate. As the population decreased by evacuation and admittedly by mortality, the remaining residents received increased rations.

"The route was located in the southern part of Lake Ladoga, along the stretch of land which the Germans did not occupy. The route became known as the “Ice Road”; during the warm months, goods were transported by various vessels in the body of water. The supplies traveled from Osinovets to Leningrad via a suburban railway. The road was also called the “Road of Life” because of its vital role in bringing in the desperately needed supplies to the starving city. However, the journey in winter over the ice was a dangerous one. Vehicles risked becoming stuck in the snow or sinking in ice that had broken from the German bombardment. As a result of the deaths that took place, the path also was known as the “Road of Death.” But without it, the citizens of Leningrad would have had no means of bringing in food and soldiers into the city, or evacuating civilians and wounded troops from it.

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"The Russian army was not inactive during the siege. In the autumn of 1942, the army launched the Sinyavino Offensive, an attempt to break the German blockade. Ironically, the Germans were also planning to launch an offensive called Operation Northern Light in an effort to capture Leningrad. But until the battle got underway on August 27, 1942, neither the Germans nor the Russians realized that the other side was planning an attack.

"The Russians struck first and were successful in forcing the German army to redirect its soldiers from the original opening of Operation Northern Light in order to mount a counterattack against the Russians. This was the first time that the German Tiger tank was used, but it was not a game-changer in the battle, although ultimately, the Soviet forces had to halt their offensive when segments of their army were encircled and destroyed. However, the Germans achieved little and abandoned the Leningrad offensive.

................................................................................................

"In January 1943, the Russian army was able to open a narrow entrance into Leningrad by capturing a land bridge from the Germans, allowing supplies to enter in greater quantities. Russian engineers were able to construct a railway link which would allow almost five million tons of food and supplies into the desperate city. But it would take another year before the Soviet army, which lost 300,000 soldiers in defense of the city, would achieve victory in ending the siege, in part because the German army had also been weakened by hunger and were unable to withstand the Russian attack.

"When the Soviets were successful, the city sprang back into life. The Germans didn’t stop shelling the city, but the factories, staffed almost entirely by women, produced ammunition and machinery. Women even began to put on make-up once again; the siege was not over, but the war-weary citizens of Leningrad started to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

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"Early in 1944, the Soviet Leningrad Novgorod Strategic Offensive, with the mobilization of 1.25 million men, mounted an offensive against the Germans, forcing them out of the southern rim of the city and into retreat. On January 14, 1944, the Russian army attacked the German defenses outside Oranienbaum, Volkhov, and Novgorod. Between January 19 to 26, the Russians captured Krasnoe Selo, Pushkin, Slutsk, Mga, Gatchina, and Krasnogvardeisk, forcing the Germans to abandon the siege, leaving behind their heavy artillery guns in the process.

"The Russians broke through the Germans defenses to recapture hundreds of towns. In the battle to break the blockade, the Russians destroyed or disabled 82 German tanks and shot down 16 German aircraft during one day’s fighting.
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"On January 27, 1944, Leningrad was free. General Leonid Govorov, commander of the Leningrad Front, said, “A task of historical importance has been completed. The city of Leningrad has been completely freed of the enemy blockade and of the barbaric artillery shelling.” He gave thanks to the soldiers of the Leningrad Front, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet, and the people of Leningrad for enduring the siege.

"One jubilant citizen recalled that the people of the city danced in the streets after a 24-gun salute was fired. People celebrated with vodka and singing and army rations to eat, but they did not forget what they had endured. However, in Stalinist Russia, memory could be dangerous."

With hardly one chapter on the subject, author is returning to malignant Russia, Stalin, et al. 
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"“There is hardly a parallel in history for the endurance of so many people over so long a time. Leningrad stood alone against the might of Germany since the beginning of the invasion. It is a city saved by its own will, and its stand will live in the annals as a kind of heroic myth.” 

"—The New York Times"

................................................................................................


"The story of the siege of Leningrad can only be told in the most gruesome terms. Approximately 800,000 civilians died in the siege, as many as the combined World War II deaths suffered by the United States and the United Kingdom. The citizens of Leningrad, despite the tragedy they experienced, were imbued with a sense of patriotism that, in the end, proved to be more powerful than the bombs and artillery of the Germans.

"When a British reporter interviewed the workers at the Kirov Works factory during the siege, he asked a young woman whether she would prefer to be transferred to another factory where she would be in less danger. She replied, “No, I am a Kirov girl.” The sacrifices that the people of Leningrad had made in defense of their city deserved to be hailed with national acclaim when the war ended and the victory stories were shared. But news about Leningrad was censored during the duration of the siege.

"After the war ended, the city was honored with the Order of Lenin for its outstanding heroism. During the war, the people themselves had begun to collect memorabilia of their ordeal, such as the German plane that had landed in Tavrichesky Garden after it was shot down. Those items, trophies of a hard-fought, hard-won victory over a superior force, were the nucleus of what would become a museum.
................................................................................................


"Leningrad’s leader, Andrei Zhdanov, returned to Moscow and in 1946, he had risen in power until he was second only to Stalin. Zhdanov’s former deputy, A.A. Kuznetsov, became the secretary of the Party Central Committee in Moscow, while a third Leningrad hero, N.A. Voznesensky, was given the duty of planning the Soviet economy."

"After the Soviet Union fell and glasnost ushered in a new period of disclosure about what Russia had endured under Stalin, the archives were opened and people learned the truth of the Siege of Leningrad.

"In 2017, the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, Russia; the Museum of Russian Art, and New York’s Blavatnik Archive partnered to present a multimedia exhibition called the Siege of Leningrad. The exhibit presented an unflinching portrait of the suffering of Leningrad that nonetheless managed to affirm the incredible spirit of the people."

"On September 8, 1989, the anniversary of the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad, the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad reopened with items donated by the survivors and their families. ... "

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Table of Contents 

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Introduction 

St. Petersburg: The City of Three Revolutions 

The Fate of Leningrad under Stalin 

Operation Barbarossa 

Encircling Leningrad 

Inside Leningrad 

The Road of Life 

The Leningrad Affair

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REVIEW 

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Introduction 

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"Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler are two of the most devastating men the human species has ever produced. They ruled in countries where questions about their fitness to lead could not be asked or, if they were asked, they were quickly quelled. Neither man had qualms about using the most brutal of methods to maintain control over their populations. When World War II brought the two titans into conflict, the consequences for the populations were catastrophic. Through battles, policies of extermination, and deliberate cruelty, Stalin and Hitler were the embodiment of evil."

The turn of phrase "brought the two titans into conflict" seems to absolve both equally of the conflict, falsely. Stalin had attempted to avoid it by getting on board with a treaty; the other, fully intending to initiate a blitzkrieg through Europe, had his plans ready and conveyed privately in a most secret conference with his top generals to them, over nine months in advance - and the dates were not only set in advance that far for invasion of Poland but plans for invasion east, too, were ready. It's only that the latter were postponed due to a desire to punish the Balkans that delayed his Wehrmacht beyond what they thought safe. But the invasion went on anyway since by then he wasn't listening to generals. 

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"But the Siege of Leningrad was a particularly unique form of agony for the citizens who endured it, those casualties of war whose misery was a result of the nature of war. The suffering experienced by the people of Leningrad during the 872 days when they were besieged by the German army takes its place in the grim annals of human misery. The people of Russia were already suffering under the tyranny of Josef Stalin. The Germany soldiers were victims of Hitler’s determination to defeat Russia without factoring in the weather that would, in the end, prove to be a formidable foe. Hitler was convinced that victory would be swift and easy. The Russian winter had other plans."

Perhaps that paragraph sets the tone for the book with its unreasoning bias. Russia isn't easy to survive under any political system as the events leading to the Russian Revolution testify, and while it's difficult enough in peace time, WWII wasn't easy at Buckingham Palace either, which did receive a bomb - or Rotterdam, which was deliberately destroyed by nazi bombing. In short, Leningrad by any name had a tough time during WWII because nobody in Europe had it easy either outside of Germany, and Stalin had little to do with that. 

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"Adolf Hitler’s plans for conquering Russia revealed an ego which failed to account for the massive scale of the land upon which he unleashed Germany’s military might. Leningrad, formerly St. Petersburg, had previously been the capital of Russia before the Soviet Union was formed. The city had been the symbolic center of the Russian Revolution that saw Lenin and his Bolsheviks bring down the Romanov Dynasty. The Bolsheviks replaced the tsar with communism and a system of government that was just dictatorial as it had been under the autocratic Romanovs."

Perhaps, but people had revolted due to starvation just as they had in France, and if it wasn't raining cakes after revolution, people still had satisfaction of a shared misery across nation, unlike the inequities of yore. And whatever the fault of leftism, it did sustain a great land through the horrible WWII until Russia turned the tide. 

US was a late arrival, despite ardent desire of FDR to the contrary, since he knew better but had to carry his nation with him. The two nations that did stand up yo nazis were UK and USSR. If either had succumbed, it would be over for not just Europe but human civilisation. And sacrifices were greater by USSR in loss of human life. 

................................................................................................

"The era of the 1930s was a time when the dark cloud of Nazism, communism, and fascism dominated the landscape. The nations where freedom still reigned were in the throes of a global economic crisis that demanded their full attention. They had no compassion or charity to spare for those belligerent countries where people who were poor, downtrodden, ethnically different, or in dissent would discover that disobedience was not tolerated. Leningrad was an influential city, once the jewel of Russia, but Stalin distrusted its people for their intellectual reputation.

"Hitler, on the other hand, was disdainful of the Slavs and anticipated the opportunity to bring down the city that held such symbolic importance. Before the siege began, German scientists had conducted macabre calculations and were confident that the city would succumb to starvation within weeks. How, they reasoned, could a city populated by the Slavs, one that was encircled by the mighty German army, possibly hope to survive? That the survival of Leningrad’s citizens would include both a stolid refusal to surrender as well as, for some, cannibalism could not have been predicted at the start of the siege. That, in the end, the Slavs would outlast the Nazis was not seen in Hitler’s crystal ball."

There's that bias again and a clear effort to make Russians seem uncivilised, but if author and publishers weren't biased, they could have mentioned nazis burning whole villages to death through Belarus and Russia,  killing over two million this way. Anyone discovered attempting escape was shot dead. None of that was impromptu, either. Their leader had ordered the army to clear East for resettlement of German population to breed and grow. 

................................................................................................

"Leningrad was certainly a worthy target and not just as a symbol. In 1939, as Germany was flexing its muscle and on the threshold of beginning its conquest of Europe, Leningrad was responsible for 11 percent of the Soviet Union’s industrial production. It was a center for arms factories and was the main base for Russia’s Baltic Fleet. Stalin knew all this and would not willingly relinquish the city, but he would shed no tears for the hellish fate that the city’s people would endure."

Again the horrible statements from author - due to sheer unthinking bias continue. 

Or is it with a calculated falsehood based on low expectations from readers? 

Siege of this city, St. Petersburg - which was later named Petrograd and then Leningrad, back again via Petrograd to now St. Petersburg - was after invasion of Russia in 1941, and by the time German forces arrived there, they had not only bombed Rotterdam and devastated other places across Europe including attempting to destroy London, but had massacred millions of people through Belarus and Russia by burning village after village alive, not allowing anyone to escape. 

So if Stalin did not surrender Leningrad it wasn’t because "Stalin knew all this and would not willingly relinquish the city, but he would shed no tears for the hellish fate that the city’s people would endure", but becausehe also knew that the people would suffer far worse if surrendered.

This in fact had prompted Russian forces to offer to carry any refugees fleeing East from Poland in military transport with them when German forces invaded across the line, and several did, some loving the war out in Russia and some joining the Russian Army. 

Such an offer could come only as a humanitarian gesture to help those in need of escaping nazis and was only possible because it was allowed by upper echelons. 

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"Hitler knew that the city was more than just a symbol. But Hitler had his Third Reich, and he was confident that he would be the master of Europe; the despised Slavs would not stand in the way of Aryan dominance. Assured of his nation’s superiority in all things, Hitler reputedly printed invitations to a celebration in the Hotel Astoria of Leningrad to commemorate the triumph that he was sure would be his in conquering the city. There were stories that the Fuhrer would rename the city which had once been named for the dynamic Tsar Peter the Great after himself: Adolfsburg. But equally credible is the likelihood that he intended to destroy the city and give his Finnish allies the area north of the River Neva."

Considering his intentions,  stated explicitly in the secret conference to his generals, fully over nine months before invading Poland, of turning East Europe - all the way up to Urals - into potato fields to feed Germany, apart from serving as more land to resettle Germans to breed, it's unlikely he intended residents of the city to stay and survive. 

Residents of villages throughout Belarus had been burned alive by German forces invading across, not allowing anyone to escape alive, intentionally and by orders from top. 

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"The overall plan to bring Russia to its knees, Operation Barbarossa, was ambitious. By the time the Siege of Leningrad ended on January 27, 1944—after more than two years—it would reign as history’s longest and most destructive siege. In terms of the casualties suffered, it may also be the most costly siege of all time. Of the three million people who were in Leningrad at the start of the war, approximately one million died during the assault, generally from starvation and the terrible cold. That number is ten times higher than people killed when the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima."

Attempt by author to make guilt of Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem miniscule, which is rampant racism apart from obvious bias against Russia. 

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"But the Germans were not the only cause of death during the war years. Josef Stalin, the cruel, calculating leader of the Soviet Union, tolerated no dissent and no rivals. Leningrad had suffered from Stalin’s paranoia before the siege began, and the city would suffer again when the siege ended. The irony of the Siege of Leningrad is that, because the city was shut off from Moscow and the rest of Russia with news of the terrible ordeal the citizens were enduring censored from the other parts of the country, Leningrad was isolated from the control of Russia’s malevolent leader. Suffering seemed to be the plight of the Russian people during the war and during Stalin’s reign of terror and no people suffered more than the people of Leningrad during the siege."

About half that paragraph is lie, whether intended deliberately or through sheer ignorance, and other part sheer abuse based in fraud. 

To begin with, "tolerated no dissent and no rivals" might be true of best of peace times under Stalin, but its debatable there too; after invasion by Germany it was irrelevant, since Russia united as one against the enemy known to take no prisoners and having burnt alive village after village in Belarus and Russia until reaching as far in as the two most important cities of Russia, having massacred two million civilians including all ages, men and women, not allowing anyone to escape but shooting them dead. 

Russia fought back because there was no alternative for survival, and united for Mother Russia, with Stalin as a leader to look up to - just as England did with Churchill. Questions regarding alternative leadership were only relevant after, not during, this war. 

................................................................................................

"The truth about the Siege of Leningrad was not something that Stalin would allow to be disclosed, and it was not until glasnost opened up the archives that the Russian people could discover, for the first time, the abject depths of horror which the citizens of Leningrad endured. Surviving on a daily ration of bread that amounted to 125 grams, or the size of a cake of soap, the people of Leningrad were forced to be resourceful. The paste that was obtained from scraping wallpaper was eaten. Leather belts and briefcases were boiled down to make jelly. Pancakes were made out of face powder. According to historians, the people of Leningrad devised 22 different recipes with pigskin as an ingredient. Sweeping the attics and ventilation shafts at tobacco factories provided tobacco dust, an unlikely source of Vitamin B. Meanwhile, Vitamin C was extracted from pine needles."

This only makes one admire them, for ingenuity in face of desperation, staying alive every way possible instead of surrendering - for, obviously, if the city was under siege, Stalin could do little to nothing if the city had chosen to surrender instead. 

................................................................................................

"But Leningrad under siege was a frightening place to live. Parents, fearful of the gangs that wandered the city’s streets in search of ration cards to steal, kept their children inside when darkness fell. The city police, aware that the search for meat had made cannibalism a gruesome siege crime, created a division to investigate these incidents.

"As grotesque as cannibalism was, all of Leningrad did not surrender to the depths of base behavior. In fact, there were times when the city rose to heights of nobility. Composer Dmitri Shostakovich was a citizen of Leningrad, and when the siege began, he was working on his “Seventh Symphony,” also known as the “Leningrad Symphony.” As he worked on the first three movements, he drew his inspiration from his rage at tyranny, inditing both Germany and Russia in his music. In August 1942, his orchestra, which like the rest of the city was weak and hungry, played to a packed concert hall. They played to the Germans as well; some of the loudspeakers were aimed at the Germans who encircled their city."

That - "his orchestra, which like the rest of the city was weak and hungry, played to a packed concert hall" says everything about the spirit of this city and the Russian spirit, rising to its best under such circumstances. 

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"There were three million residents of Leningrad before the siege. By the time the siege was broken, the city had 700,000 residents, three-quarters of them women, still alive. ... "

Author ends chapter introducing the subject with further propaganda. 

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November 22, 2022 - November 22, 2022.

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Chapter 1. St. Petersburg: The City of Three Revolutions 

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"“After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban center. . . . Following the city's encirclement, requests for surrender negotiations shall be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our very existence, we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population.” 

"—German Directive"

Author refrains, for unknown reasons, from mentioning that this directive not only was in line with general policy but came from the top, and from no one else, judging by the language as much by the details of the plans disclosed to top Generals at the secret conference, nine months before invading Poland. 

This omission of where the directive originated shows bias and affiliation of Author and publishers. Nazi much, guys? 

This document might have been discovered only after fall of Berlin, but fact thereof was known long before German forces arrived as far East as either Moscow or St Petersburg by any name. 

Humans do talk, and news of Germans having burnt people alive by millions through Belarus and Russia couldn't have been a secret. 

................................................................................................

"Leningrad, which is located on the Neva River, on the Baltic Sea at the head of the Gulf of Finland, was founded in 1703 by a Romanov. Peter the Great was, in his way, just as revolutionary as Vladimir Lenin, the man for whom the city would be renamed in 1924, after a brief stint as Petrograd from 1914 until 1924. From 1732 until the demise of the Russian monarchy in 1918, St. Petersburg was the capital of Russia. After the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, the Bolsheviks decided that Moscow was better suited to be the center of the Soviet government.

"But the city that would become Leningrad had revolution in its roots. Empress Catherine ruled over Russia following the assassination of her husband, Tsar Peter III. While Catherine’s reputation and achievements in what became known as Russia’s Golden Age allow historians to regard her as an enlightened despot, St. Petersburg benefitted from her ambitious goals for her country and city. As the capital of Russia, St. Petersburg was the setting for a massive architectural rebuilding program which would make the city equal to the capitals of Europe. Catherine intended to see the city take its place among its cosmopolitan rivals; she herself was a woman of diverse cultural interests who did not want her nation to remain backward and rustic.

"Catherine’s son lacked both her abilities and her longevity on the throne and was assassinated in 1801, just five years after his mother’s death. Tsar Paul’s son Alexander I sought to emulate Catherine’s liberal goals, introducing more universities and reforms as well as seeking ways of providing the military with a more stable financial structure. Desirous of making St. Petersburg beautiful, he also engaged in architectural improvements, supporting innovations which would endure throughout the city’s future, making use of the neoclassical Roman and Greek styles.

................................................................................................

"But as the city grew and expanded its boundaries, the needs of the rural residents, many of whom were poor and illiterate, failed to be taken into account. The seeds of discontent, which many other urban centers in the West were witnessing during that period of time, were being sown. Other nations would gradually adapt to the changing expectations and needs, but in Russia, they would yield a drastic and violent harvest.

"Alexander I’s brother, Nicholas I, became tsar when Alexander died on December 1, 1825. On his coronation day, December 14, the city experienced a revolt as members of the Imperial Guard rebelled in quest of reforms to benefit all Russians. Their demands included a constitution and an end to the autocracy which dominated Russian leadership.

"Nicholas’ response was to have his soldiers fire upon them. Many died; others were hanged or sentenced to prison in Siberia. Autocracy was still the rule of the land, and the plea for a more liberal, less exclusive social structure went unheard.

................................................................................................

"Nevertheless, by the mid-nineteenth century, St. Petersburg had justified Tsar Peter the Great’s expectations. It had surpassed Moscow in population, had developed into one of Europe’s major industrial cities, and had a major naval base, a seaport, and a river. Changes were altering the fabric of society all over Europe and industrialization in the mid-nineteenth transformed St. Petersburg’s economy. As the middle class grew, there was an increase in prosperity among the city’s residents. The actual wealth that accrued from the growth went to a select few. The city’s less fortunate and less affluent residents found that for them, industrialization meant more ways to earn a living, but it also meant more slums, as workers needed to be able to live closer to their places of employment.

"Too many people crammed into buildings that were unsafe evolved not only into housing problems but health concerns as well. The city, which was home to thriving metalworking and textile industries, built the factories around the outside edges of its borders. The poor were crammed in the center of the city while the wealthy, along with the manufacturing sources of their wealth, were distant. Being aloof from the misery of the public made it easy to ignore the cries of the people, and the sheltered wealthy did not particularly want to hear those voices.

................................................................................................

"Oppression had been a way of life for a long time in Russia, and one of the most glaring blots on the country’s identity was serfdom. In 1861, the serfs were finally emancipated, the result of decades of discussion which had been going on as far back as the failed Decembrist Revolution, and longer. Empress Catherine had also questioned the issue of owning serfs and its moral ramifications. But the crux of the liberation may not have owed its bearings to altruistic motives but rather from the military defeat in the Crimean War at the hands of the British, whose soldiers were free men, unlike the Russian soldiers, who were serfs.

"But Tsar Alexander II was hesitant to publicize the decision. In order to allay expected uprisings, the announcement of the emancipation was not made until the first day of Lent, a religious time when the faithful were expected to avoid alcohol. Anticipating trouble on the day of liberation, soldiers patrolled St. Petersburg, focusing their vigilance around the Winter Palace which was often the scene of protests and where the Decembrist Revolution had taken place. But the emancipation notice was received without uproar or rioting, perhaps because the schedule for liberation was extended over several years and would not take place at once.

"With liberation came the freedom to move to other places, and St. Petersburg was the desired destination for many of the newly emancipated serfs. Until this time, Russian cities were not population centers, and most of its cities had fewer than 10,000 people living in them. However, by 1900, over a million freed serfs had entered St. Petersburg looking for work. By the time that the momentous year of 1917 would arrive, the population had expanded by nearly 70 percent in only 17 years.

................................................................................................

"In 1905, Nicholas II, the last Romanov, was on the throne of Russia. He was a weak, feckless leader ruling at a time when dynamic change was unsettling the social fabric of Europe, and Russia was not immune to the unrest. On January 9, 1905, workers headed to the Winter Palace. Their intentions were peaceful as they carried religious banners and portraits of the tsar, but the police attacked them in what became known as Bloody Sunday. Thousands were killed or injured, and what had begun as a peaceful protest spawned a much more vigorous revolt in the city. Industry workers went on strike as part of the protests. Alarmed at the interruption of work, which meant a loss of profits, the government responded by promising reforms, issuing the Constitutional Manifesto as the first step toward a national constitution and reinstating the parliament, called the Duma. The changes promised universal male suffrage and expanded participation in the Duma.

"The reforms were illusory; Nicholas II decided that he preferred not to expand the role of the representative government as it would mean limiting his own power. Had Nicholas II been more farsighted and less obdurate, he might have sensed that the rumblings of discontent would threaten the Romanov dynasty. Russia, like other countries in Europe, was embroiled in World War I; the Germans were winning, and Russian soldiers were being humiliated with defeat.

"The February Revolution of 1917 saw protesters taking up arms, but this time, the military did not protect the tsar, taking the side of the rebels instead. Nicholas II was forced to abdicate, and power was shared by the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet. After a coup on October 25, 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, took power and formed a new government.

................................................................................................

"In 1917, the German army was threatening to invade Petrograd, as St. Petersburg had been renamed, forcing the government to move to Moscow in case the invasion was successful. With Red Russians and White Russians engaged in a civil war, Russia reached a separate agreement with Germany, ending Russian involvement in the war. But that didn’t bring peace to the nation in turmoil. The internal war lasted until 1922 when the Bolsheviks triumphed. Lenin was the new power in Russia, and at his side was Josef Stalin.

"The government’s move from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1918 brought with it a loss of prominence, affecting the residents of the city, which had been undergoing a decline for several years. The city had been the scene of rioting as its starving residents protested the lack of bread and food. In 1917, the city now known as Petrograd had over two million residents; by the end of 1920, the population was 720,000. The loss in population was mirrored by the diminution of industry; production was an eighth of what it had been less than a decade earlier. The railroads had suffered as a result of the war, and the inability to transport goods and food contributed to the city’s shortages. Russia’s rigid economic structure under the Bolsheviks did not allow for entrepreneurial innovation, and small businesses could not start to take up some of the economic slack.

"When the sailors stationed at Fort Kronstadt in St. Petersburg mounted a rebellion against the Bolsheviks, Lenin relaxed some of his rules against small businesses in Leningrad and other Russian cities. The shortages of food and fuel eased. The city seemed as though it would adapt to its change in fortune. The government was in Moscow, the Bolsheviks were in charge, but Leningrad had survived. 

"How could anything worse happen to Leningrad after all the city had endured?"

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November 22, 2022 - November 22, 2022.

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Chapter 2. The Fate of Leningrad under Stalin 

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"Five days after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, the city acquired a new name, and Petrograd, formerly St. Petersburg, became Leningrad as the city paid homage to the revolutionary leader. But the honor done to the city did not indicate affection for it on the part of Lenin’s successor, Josef Stalin. From Stalin’s admittedly paranoid perspective, Leningrad, a former capital, a center of intellectual achievement and advances, and its birthplace of the Russian Revolution identified the city as a place where people might be inclined to think independently. Independent thought was something that Stalin had no intention of encouraging.

"Stalin was engaged in cementing his role as the leader of the vast, impenetrable nation that had seen so much turmoil during its history. During the Bolshevik rise to power, Lenin knew that Stalin was ruthless, but in the wild days of the early revolution, Stalin’s effectiveness made him a useful ally. In 1922, Stalin had been appointed General Secretary after Lenin suffered a stroke that same year. It was then that Lenin began to view Stalin as a man whose innate brutality made him a threat, and in 1923, Lenin planned to have Stalin dismissed from the position."

No sources quoted. 

Did author have a seance? 

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"The position of General Secretary of the Communist Party was one which Bolshevik icons Trotsky and the others regarded as meaningless, but they failed to realize its intrinsic value. Stalin was much more perceptive; as General Secretary, he could appoint his own choices to other Party positions. Lenin’s first stroke led Stalin to choose useful allies and together, they ruled the nation during Lenin’s convalescence. Lenin’s eventual death not long after prevented Stalin from losing power. Stalin’s ravenous quest for control at all costs meant that his rivals had to fall; three of them were brought down, and Trotsky was sent into exile in 1929. By 1930, Stalin, who had appointed his own faithful to posts of importance, dominated the Politburo, the Russian legislature."

This series labels several such leaders as hungry in quest of power, whereas in reality for most part and for different reasons those leaders would have risen to those positions anyway, from anywhere. This much is certainly true in case of Stalin. 

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"Leningrad was the center of power of one of Stalin’s rivals, Grigory Zinoviev, but when Zinoviev fell, Stalin replaced him with Sergei Kirov and named him first secretary of the Leningrad Party. The Bolsheviks who had supported the Party leaders such as Zinoviev and Trotsky were purged. Kirov was a Russian and a popular leader, loyal to Stalin but viewed by the leader as a threat, particularly since others in the Party regarded him as a better choice than Stalin. Kirov was subsequently assassinated in December 1924. There is no evidence, despite intense suspicion, that Kirov’s death was engineered by Stalin. But his death allowed Stalin to embark on one of his purges, this one of Leningrad, ridding the city of his adversaries along with people who had held positions of influence in the former St. Petersburg society.

"Stalin’s obsession with cementing his power had consumed all of his attention as he ignored the rising threat of Germany beyond Russia’s borders. ... "

Had that been slightest bit true, Stalin wouldn't be the leader he was. 

Fact is Russian leaders - and certainly Stalin - were all too aware of world politics, and most of all, of nazis, their plans, and the threat they represented to Russia. 

" ... Stalin guessed—wrongly—that Hitler would be occupied with the Battle of Britain and would not launch a war on a second front until Germany had defeated the British. ... "

Again, author makes baseless statements, for there's no evidence thereof; Russia had tried their best to join allies, except the latter prefabricated and delayed, in the most ridiculous way. 

Stalin bought time for Russia to prepare by accepting the treaty Germany was eager to seal, to avoid war on two fronts simultaneously. 

As for the "Stalin guessed—wrongly—that Hitler would be occupied with the Battle of Britain and would not launch a war on a second front until Germany had defeated the British" bit, no, it wasn't a guess, it was a hope that Germany turning East woulld be delayed if invasion of Britain proceeded. Battle of Britain did delay invasion of Russia but only as planned by Hitler, several years prior to his initiating WWII. 

That he couldn't accomplish invasion of Britain within the scheduled interval wasn't either a surprise or for lack of intention. 

" ... In his view, there was still time to prepare his army for war and consolidate his power through a reign of terror so massive that he could be confident that there would be no dissent to threaten him. ... "

This author is too stupid to write on this topic! 

The two things weren't related this way. What author calls reign of terror at around this time was result of calculated false propaganda and leaks from Germany that had suspicions falsely point at a large part of Soviet officers and as a result had them purged, something as per intention by nazis. 

Stalin wasn't unaware of this, but couldn't chance the leaks being false. 

" ... But Hitler believed that Russia would be easy to conquer, and he wanted to accomplish this feat as quickly as possible. Britain could wait."

Again, there's evidence of neither. Fact is he kept hoping to terrorise British into making a treaty, in which he failed. 

Fact also is that he intended fully to invade and occupy east Europe right up to Urals and turn it into 'lebensraum' for expansion of Germany by resettlement of German population for breeding, apart from using the land as potato fields to feed the said German population. 

He had explicitly ordered massacres of local civil populations, before beginning of the invasion. 

It's not that he thought Russia would be easy, but rest of Europe had been so, and that Russia would not only resist but turn the tide, was unexpected to him. 

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"In order to remake Russia and its cities into Communist centers, Stalin was too busy during the 1930s to bother with the troubles looming on the horizon. By 1934, he had begun the pattern of purges, sentencing any Russians who were found guilty of disloyalty to imprisonment in the prison camps or murdering them outright. Even the leaders of the party were not safe from his paranoia, as 93 out of the Central Committee’s 139 members were executed. One-third of the Communist Party’s membership was killed. Twenty million Russians, common people who had no exalted standing or rank, were sent to Siberian labor camps.

"The military saw its leadership suffer the same plight, as 81 of the armed forces’ 103 generals and admirals were executed. The church was outlawed. Russification meant that the Russian language and ways were the law of the land and ethnic groups had to accept Russian supremacy. The secret police or NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, were everywhere, acting upon the claims of disloyalty made by people against neighbors or colleagues.

................................................................................................

"In acknowledging Stalin as the hero of the revolution and the savior of the nation, every aspect of Russian society paid homage to him. When his name was mentioned, people applauded. Parents instructed their offspring to love Stalin more than their mother and father. The newspapers trumpeted his successes or at least credited him with every achievement that happened. Stalin was intent on bringing Russia out of its backwater status and in order to do so, he needed to govern a nation which owed blind obedience to him.

"To build a loyal population, the people had to be re-educated; school textbooks reflected the revisionist history which showed Stalin as the hero of the nation. Through fear and blind idolatry, the Russian people did as he ordered."

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Having spent great efforts to make Stalin seem far worse, now author admits that Hitler was slightly bad, in a few words. 

Hence the bias, of the author and the publishers, established thereby clearly.

"Germany was also home to a psychopathic dictator whose self-image was based on the subjugation of all dissent.... "

That's like looking at a dinosaur towering above with jaws ready to snap, and labelling it an ordinary house lizard. 

" ... Adolf Hitler intended to avenge the German nation for the humiliating loss of World War I. Only by conquering the nations that surrounded him, Hitler felt, could Germany achieve its intended destiny."

Author again identifies a dinosaur as a lizard - by calling the immense hatred by Hitler as mere feeling, and intended destruction of human civilisation as merely avenging the humiliation of WWI. 

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"In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began. Just a month before, in August, the Russians and the Germans had made a separate peace by signing the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. For the next ten years, the pact decreed, the two countries would not take military action against each other.

"What they would do was divide Eastern Europe. Russia would not interfere with Germany’s invasion of Poland. Stalin was buying time to build up his nation’s battered military. Any agreement by two men as cunning and aggressive as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin must have been viewed with suspicion, and the world was shocked and dismayed when it learned what had happened."

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November 22, 2022 - November 22, 2022.

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Chapter 3. Operation Barbarossa 

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"“When the attack on Russia starts, the world will hold its breath.” 

"—Adolf Hitler"

Why hasn't the author dated this quote? 

Was it winter of 1938-39? 

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"Given the natures of the two men who led Russia and Germany, no one could have logically been surprised when Hitler abandoned the pact he had signed with the Soviet Union and on June 22, 1941, launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Three army units with three million soldiers, a hundred and fifty divisions, and three thousand tanks crossed the Russian border from the North Cape to the Black Sea, a border of over two thousand miles.

"Hitler had big plans for the conquest of the Soviet Union. The land itself would be repopulated by Germans as the native-born Russians were turned into slave labor to support the Nazi war effort. The oil of the Caucasus would benefit Germany, and the fertile farmland would feed Germans. The rapid success of the invasion convinced him that his plans were destined to succeed.

"The saga would have a different ending by 1944 when the siege ended and Germany, having opened up a two-front war, was forced to deal with the consequences of Hitler’s power-mad miscalculation. But in June 1941, with France fallen and Great Britain fighting alone, the United States neutral and the countries of Europe occupied, even the redoubtable Russians must have trembled as what would be the largest military attack of the Second World War was hurled against them. Although the Russians were aware of the adversary that was poised to strike, no one, and certainly not Stalin, expected the invasion to be achieved so quickly, leaving the Russians scant time to mount an effective defense or, in the case of Leningrad, to prepare for a siege.

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"Hitler had been planning for the assault on Russia since the previous year, and because of this, he lost interest in the Battle of Britain in order to concentrate on his massive enemy to the east. Within a week, the Germans were 200 miles inside the Soviet Union."

Wrong - "lost interest" seems more like someone seeing a bear losing interest in a moose. No, it's more that there was a schedule fixed by him well before winter of 1938-39, for latest possible date of invasion of Russia, to be followed, and he'd expected England to fall sooner, not to be difficult. 

................................................................................................

"In less than three weeks, the Germans had captured three hundred thousand Russian soldiers. They had captured or destroyed 2,500 tanks, 1,400 artillery guns, and 250 aircraft. Hitler’s boast that “We have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten Russian edifice will come tumbling down” seemed prophetic.

"However, the speed with which the Germans had succeeded was not entirely to their benefit. Because they moved so fast, their supply lines and communication channels were not able to keep up the pace. But to Hitler’s eyes, it looked as though, once again, the German military machine was poised for yet another easy victory.

"Delighted with his achievement, Hitler, who was convinced of his own military genius, sent a Panzer Group to Kiev, depriving the Army Group Center of a segment of its most effective force. Although sending the mechanized units to the north and south turned out to be a successful maneuver, Hitler failed to realize that the decision would cost him dearly in the long run. The weather was not on his side. The Germans had not counted on having to deal with the depths of the brutal Russian winter but they would find themselves in that position before Hitler’s overall objectives could be achieved. The army was accustomed to moving quickly and winning.

................................................................................................

"Nevertheless, June would eventually turn into winter. By December 1941, although German forces did not quite grasp the significance of it, “General Winter” had arrived on the scene, and Hitler’s intention of conquering the Russians before cold weather came was crushed. The inexorable pace of the years that would follow would see levels of death and deprivation that neither side could have predicted in the beginning.

"The Germans had multiple aims for Operation Barbarossa. The capture of Leningrad was one part of the strategy, and it was the chief target of Army Group North. Hitler, like Stalin, was keenly aware of the symbolism of the city and he wanted to strike at the reputation of what St. Petersburg had been in its past, particularly its recent past as the birthplace of the Russian Revolution. However, Leningrad, with its industrial importance and its home to the Baltic Fleet, also had real significance as an enemy as well. Shutting down the industrial capacity of Leningrad was necessary for the German war plan.

"Stalin could not afford to lose Leningrad; if the front collapsed, Moscow, which had already been penetrated by the Germans, would be dangerously vulnerable. The army’s supplies, weapons, and munitions were in Moscow; the Soviets dared not lose the capital.

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"Marshal Georgy Zhukov was sent to Leningrad with the task of inspiring the city and mustering a defense that would not succumb. Zhukov, the peasant’s son who had been drafted into the Russian Imperial Army in 1915, later joined the Red Army and fought in the Russian Civil War on the side of the Bolsheviks. Rising through the ranks and gaining experience, he attracted Stalin’s attention and was appointed chief of the army general staff. After a falling out with Stalin, Zhukov was forgotten until October 1941, when he was sent to defend Moscow against the Germans. Stalin made a wise choice, and although he would later regard the officer as a threat—which was his standard response to anyone he deemed a rival—for now, he needed him.

"Zhukov came through. Leningrad did not fall to the German attack. It was Zhukov’s effectiveness in inspiring Leningrad that convinced Hitler that instead of capturing the city by military force, he would do better to besiege it and starve its residents into submission. Hitler didn’t realize it at the time, but his decision, rather than being a brilliant inspiration, would contribute to the overall defeat of his forces in Russia. A siege would extend the time of the war and lengthen the amount of time that the Germans would spend in a hostile country with an unforgiving climate. The besieged would not be the only ones at risk of starvation. German troops would be dependent upon Russian crops for their own food; Germany itself was not self-sufficient in providing the food it needed for its people and the army needed to live off the land of the enemy.

"Hitler also failed to realize that for the Russian people, starvation was no stranger. Endurance and survival through desperate times were traits which the people of Leningrad would call upon to survive the siege, particularly that terrible winter of 1941."

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November 22, 2022 - November 22, 2022.

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Chapter 4. Encircling Leningrad 

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""Early next year we enter the city (if the Finns do it first we do not object), lead those still alive into inner Russia or into captivity, wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth through demolitions, and hand the area north of the Neva to the Finns." 

"—German High Command"

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"The citizens of Leningrad were informed on June 27, 1941, that the city was in peril. The authorities imposed martial law. The city was to be governed by Lieutenant-General Popov, who commanded the Leningrad garrison, along with the local Communist Party head and the head of the Leningrad Soviet Executive. The authorities mobilized more than one million of the city’s residents to build fortifications along the perimeter of Leningrad to keep the enemy force and their Finish allies, who were advancing from the north and south, from succeeding in their aims.

"Aware of the danger, Leningrad had begun to evacuate its citizens on June 29, sending more than 1,700,000 citizens, including over 400,000 children, out of Leningrad to the Volga region. During the three years of the siege, approximately 1.4 million people would be evacuated in three different stages: June to August 1941; September 1941 to April 1942; and May to October 1942. Most of the evacuees were women, children, and the elderly, but people who were regarded as essential to the war effort was also evacuated.

................................................................................................

"Leningrad’s defenses, commanded by Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, included Russia’s 23rd Army which was located between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and the 48th Army to the west. The Leningrad Military District PVO Corp and Baltic Fleet’s naval aviation units were charged with providing air cover. In early summer, the total military strength of the Leningrad defenses numbered two million men.

"Southern fortifications ran from the mouth of the Luga through the Neva River, with a second defensive line running through Peterhof, Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino, and Koltushy. Leningrad had previously had a line of defense against the Finns in the 1930s on its northern border and that fortification system was once again put to use. The boundaries of the defenses were impressive: 190 miles of timber barricades, 395 miles of wire, 430 miles of ditches to repel tanks, and 5,000 earth-and-timber emplacements and concrete weapon emplacements.

"The defenders of Leningrad were facing the world’s best-trained, most battle-tested military force, and the Germans were confident of victory. Hitler’s timeline was specific and succinct: “Leningrad first, Donetsk Basin second, Moscow third.” In geographical terms, that meant that anything going on between the Arctic Ocean and Lake Ilmen was part of the German plan to besiege Leningrad. When the Finns cut off the Murmansk railhead’s link to Leningrad, the delivery of America’s Lend-Lease equipment and British food and supplies was cut off from the city.

................................................................................................

"While the center and southern segments of the German troops headed for Moscow and Ukraine, Germany’s Army Group North quickly marched through Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia until reaching Leningrad. With 600 factories that made it second only Moscow in terms of its production, Leningrad was vital to the survival of the nation.

"While the 18th Panzer Group continued to Leningrad, German soldiers made their way to Pskov and Ostrov as the Soviet soldiers retreated toward Leningrad. The two cities were captured on July 10. Germany’s 4th Panzer Group, under General Hoepner, moving with the famed speed of the army, reached Novgorod by August 16. More than 300,000 refugees from the subjugated cities of Pskov and Novgorod escaped to Leningrad in order to flee the advancing Germans. Hitler was displeased at what he regarded as the slow pace of the advance and told Field Marshal von Leeb that he was to take Leningrad by December.

................................................................................................

"Axis luck seemed to be holding when the Germans found a copy of the city’s defense plans on the body of a Russian officer. The Finns had also been fortunate, thanks to breaking the Soviet military codes. Continuing toward its destination, the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, establishing the foundation of the planned siege of Leningrad by isolating the city from all directions. The plan was for the Finns to move into position by journeying along Lake Ladoga’s eastern shore; their advance was intended to attack to the west on both sides of the lake and keep the Russian army busy. The Finns had reached within 20 kilometers of Leningrad’s northern suburbs by August, overcoming Soviet salients at Beloostrov and Kirjasalo. The Karelian Fortified Region stopped the Finns from advancing, but it was a moot point as the Finnish army had already been given instructions to halt. They then began moving their troops to East Karelia. They would not advance further; their presence in the battle was for the restoration of lands lost to the Russians and not to further the German cause.

"As the border of Finland was a mere 20 or so miles from Leningrad, the city’s residents were understandably concerned about the Finns’ intentions. The Finns had sided with the Germans in order to restore territories lost to the Russians in the Winter War. Finland’s President Ryti would report after that war that the Finns had refused to take part in the offensive of Leningrad because that was not part of their intentions. Ultimately, what this accomplished was to prevent the Germans from approaching Leningrad from the northern direction while the Finnish army neither shelled nor bombed the city.

................................................................................................

"But Leningrad did not know the intentions of the Finns or the Germans and had to consider what the Finns intended to do when planning the city’s defenses. The Finns were not their only problem. On August 30, the remaining rail connection to Leningrad was cut upon the German arrival at the Neva River. The road to Leningrad was shut off on September 8 as the Germans reached Lake Ladoga. All that remained for the Russians was a slender stretch of land between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad. A German bomb had struck Leningrad’s largest food depot on September 12.

"By the end of September, the Germans were engrossed in the most efficient way to destroy Leningrad. They chose not to occupy the city because then they would then have to find food for the residents. The optimum plan, they decided, was to besiege Leningrad and bomb it. Hitler reminded them that under no circumstances were they to accept surrender. Assured that their victory over Leningrad was inevitable, the 4th Panzer Group had been sent from the Leningrad campaign to Moscow to provide support for the German offensive."

This being so and known to be so, what was the author's effort badmouthing Stalin for in context of the siege, in describing him as not caring for human lives? He'd even evacuated most women, children, and more! 

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"Just six miles from Leningrad, the defensive forces including citizens who took part in the desperate fighting were able to stop the Germans from advancing. With the city surrounded and its supply routes cut, Germany was ready to begin its bombing campaign on September 19. The first air raid was the worst: 276 bombers killed 1,000 of Leningrad’s residents, including many in hospitals who were recovering from battle wounds. Five hospitals were hit. A second target, the shopping bazaar, the largest in Leningrad, yielded many casualties because so many of the citizens had fled from the streets to avoid the bombing. The targets were not accidental; the Germans had created maps of the city and deliberately aimed their artillery bombardment to strike hospitals, schools, the transportation system, and businesses."

Typically nazi, that "deliberately aimed their artillery bombardment to strike hospitals, schools, the transportation system, and businesses" bit.  

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November 22, 2022 - November 22, 2022.

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Chapter 5. Inside Leningrad 

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"“We have no interest in saving lives of the civilian population.” 

"—Adolf Hitler"

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"Hitler regarded the Slavs as an inferior race and, in keeping with his genocidal policies, was intent on seeing the city starve to death. He was confident that once the citizens had been demoralized by starvation, aerial bombardment, and ground artillery, they would soon lose their resolve and resistance would cease. To assist in his campaign to break their will, Hitler had the German bombers drop leaflets over the city warning that the population would be reduced to death by starvation if they refused to surrender. German bombs, intent on paralyzing the city, struck the factories, hospitals, and schools, ruining the city’s infrastructure.

"Hitler had no regard for the human value of the city, but the cultural wealth of Leningrad was a different matter. The Russian palaces were located on the outskirts of the city, and these were plundered for their treasures and art collections, which were sent back to Germany.

"The Astoria Hotel was used as a hospital, but the care its patients received was, like everything else in the city, a far cry from what it would have been before the war. Patients were given vitamin tablets in a futile attempt to revive their energy, but ultimately, death claimed most of them. Leningrad, before the war began, had approximately 30,000 doctors and 100,000 nurses, but less than half survived the long siege. In the spring of 1942, cholera broke out but fortunately didn’t spread. Another epidemic, this time of typhus and paratyphoid fever, blossomed in the spring of the following year, but once again, the medical professionals, with the help of the citizens, were able to contain the disease.

................................................................................................

"The city was not prepared for a siege at all, and certainly not a prolonged one. In order to conceal their lack of preparation, Communist Party head Andrei Zhdanov had called Stalin to say that the warehouses were filled with food. In the end, it might not have mattered, given the length of time that the siege would continue, but Zhdanov’s false claim meant that trains carrying food were diverted to other parts of Russia, although they were desperately needed in Leningrad.

"Over one million citizens were evacuated, but not all of those survived either, dying as those in the city were dying, from hunger and the German bombs.

"Those German bombs destroyed the main food warehouses, burning the grain, flour, and sugar that had been stored. When the melted sugar began to flow out of the warehouse into the city, the citizens tried to dig up the dirt into which it had flowed so that they could extract it. The sugar-soaked soil was sold in the market, and those who bought it attempted to either melt the dirt so that it would separate from the sugar, or they mixed the sweetened dirt with flour. But the flour too was of dubious origin as the siege lengthened.

................................................................................................

"After the restaurants closed, food rationing was the only option to provide at least minimal food for the residents. There was a seed bank that Tsar Nicholas I had established; nine of the staff died of starvation rather than eat the seeds so that more than 200,000 food items could be grown in the future.

"With the refugees who had fled to the city and the residents who remained after the evacuation, there were not enough supplies to keep the people alive. The area of Leningrad that remained under Russian control only contained one-third of what was needed for grain to feed the population; one-twelfth of what was needed for sugar; and one-half of what was needed for meat. The city authorities, tallying up what they could provide when the siege began, realized that they only had enough flour to last 35 days, meat for 33 days, fats for 45 days, and sugar for 60 days.

"Bread was another casualty of the siege. The bread that was available only contained half of the rye flour that the recipe called for. Barley, oats, and soya were added, but generally, the oats were diverted to feed the horses. Cellulose and cottonseed were added to make up the ingredients the city lacked. When bread was available, the lines for it were long as people waited, hoping there would still be bread left for them by the time their turn came.

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"The winter of 1941-1942 was devastating. Of their daily ration of 125 grams of bread, at least half of it was made of sawdust and additives not typically used for food. The first two weeks of January 1942 took this minimal amount away from civilians, allowing only workers and those connected with the military effort to eat what the city could provide for them.

"The people were only eating approximately ten percent of the calories they should have been consuming for a normal diet. Ingenuity and a disregard for traditional cooking were necessary in order to provide food. Some people did risk their lives to venture outside the boundaries of the city to dig potatoes in the fields, even though they could have been hit by German guns. The potatoes would be turned in to the authorities who would then distribute them."

" ... Broth came from seaweed, and soup was made out of yeast. There were stories that some people ate grease obtained from the bearings in factory machines and drank oil from oil cans.

................................................................................................

"November 1941 saw 11,000 deaths. December brought 53,000. In order to cope with the onslaught of death, where people often simply dropped dead in the street, many people did nothing at all. ... Families did not always disclose the death of a loved one so that they could continue to use the ration card.

"The people had suffered so much that they could not mourn or grieve for the lost, as if they no longer had the energy to feel emotions. Leningrad coordinated mass burials. Sufficient gravediggers were not always available, requiring the use of explosives to blow a hole in the ground. The corpses were thrown into the hole and the exhausted residents waited for snow to cover them."

"The siege and its deprivations also affected the birth rate. In 1939, more than 175,000 children had been born in Leningrad. In 1943, only 700 babies were born alive.

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"Lack of food was a major problem, but not the only one faced by the city. In addition to suffering a catastrophic famine, the winter of 1941-1942 was also one of the coldest for the more than two million people who were trapped inside Leningrad.

"The city only had one-third of the coal it needed to heat the area of Leningrad still under Russian authority. The residents were forbidden to use electricity in their homes as industries and soldiers were prioritized. With kerosene for oil lamps impossible to get, the residents were forced to use wood to heat their homes, sending furniture and floorboards to the flames in order to stay warm. Those who owned books burned the pages for fuel. Fuel and water services had been disrupted by the bombs during a winter where temperatures reached to -22 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 degrees Celsius). January and February 1942 saw deaths of 100,000 per month. Women who went out to seek water beneath the frozen ground faced the peril of the cold, which played a major role in the high mortality rates that the city experienced during the three winters of the siege.

"The lack of power and fuel led to the closing of a number of Leningrad’s factories. Before the war, construction on a metro system had gotten underway, but this ended during the siege and some of the tunnels which had been dug were used as shelters to protect people during the bombing by the Germans.

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"With the end of winter came the spring thaw. The people who had survived the grim winter cleaned up the city, removing the rubble caused by the bombs and burying the dead bodies that had fallen in the streets. The people planted gardens in courtyards and parks so that they would have a source of food.

"And in August 1942, Leningrad showed that although it had faced the very depths of human experience, it was unbowed. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, written at the beginning of the siege, was performed by the Leningrad Radio Orchestra, the only symphony orchestra to remain in the city. The citizens of Leningrad broadcasted the performance over loudspeakers which were pointed in the direction of the German army."

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November 22, 2022 - November 22, 2022.

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Chapter 6. The Road of Life 

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"“The moment has come to put your Bolshevik qualities to work, to get ready to defend Leningrad without wasting words. We have to see that nobody is just an onlooker, and carry out in the least possible time the same kind of mobilisation of the workers that was done in 1918 and 1919. The enemy is at the gate. It is a question of life and death.” 

"—Leningrad Sign"

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"Stalin would not divert planes to save Leningrad even though an airlift could have kept the death toll and suffering from being so catastrophic. The government did what it could to get supplies to Leningrad while letting evacuees get out and maintaining the morale of the besieged. Still, news about Leningrad was censored from the rest of the country. All of Russia was suffering; sharing the story of Leningrad would not raise morale.

"But Leningrad was not defeated. In order to be able to defend Leningrad, Russian soldiers needed to establish a route for delivery of supplies into the city. The citizens of Leningrad had little to rely on, but in this instance, the brutal Russian winter was their salvation. Lake Ladoga froze, allowing trucks to use it as a highway to bring in supplies, and to provide a route for some, particularly the elderly and the weak, to evacuate. As the population decreased by evacuation and admittedly by mortality, the remaining residents received increased rations.

"The route was located in the southern part of Lake Ladoga, along the stretch of land which the Germans did not occupy. The route became known as the “Ice Road”; during the warm months, goods were transported by various vessels in the body of water. The supplies traveled from Osinovets to Leningrad via a suburban railway. The road was also called the “Road of Life” because of its vital role in bringing in the desperately needed supplies to the starving city. However, the journey in winter over the ice was a dangerous one. Vehicles risked becoming stuck in the snow or sinking in ice that had broken from the German bombardment. As a result of the deaths that took place, the path also was known as the “Road of Death.” But without it, the citizens of Leningrad would have had no means of bringing in food and soldiers into the city, or evacuating civilians and wounded troops from it.

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"The Russian army was not inactive during the siege. In the autumn of 1942, the army launched the Sinyavino Offensive, an attempt to break the German blockade. Ironically, the Germans were also planning to launch an offensive called Operation Northern Light in an effort to capture Leningrad. But until the battle got underway on August 27, 1942, neither the Germans nor the Russians realized that the other side was planning an attack.

"The Russians struck first and were successful in forcing the German army to redirect its soldiers from the original opening of Operation Northern Light in order to mount a counterattack against the Russians. This was the first time that the German Tiger tank was used, but it was not a game-changer in the battle, although ultimately, the Soviet forces had to halt their offensive when segments of their army were encircled and destroyed. However, the Germans achieved little and abandoned the Leningrad offensive.

................................................................................................

"In January 1943, the Russian army was able to open a narrow entrance into Leningrad by capturing a land bridge from the Germans, allowing supplies to enter in greater quantities. Russian engineers were able to construct a railway link which would allow almost five million tons of food and supplies into the desperate city. But it would take another year before the Soviet army, which lost 300,000 soldiers in defense of the city, would achieve victory in ending the siege, in part because the German army had also been weakened by hunger and were unable to withstand the Russian attack.

"When the Soviets were successful, the city sprang back into life. The Germans didn’t stop shelling the city, but the factories, staffed almost entirely by women, produced ammunition and machinery. Women even began to put on make-up once again; the siege was not over, but the war-weary citizens of Leningrad started to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

................................................................................................

"Early in 1944, the Soviet Leningrad Novgorod Strategic Offensive, with the mobilization of 1.25 million men, mounted an offensive against the Germans, forcing them out of the southern rim of the city and into retreat. On January 14, 1944, the Russian army attacked the German defenses outside Oranienbaum, Volkhov, and Novgorod. Between January 19 to 26, the Russians captured Krasnoe Selo, Pushkin, Slutsk, Mga, Gatchina, and Krasnogvardeisk, forcing the Germans to abandon the siege, leaving behind their heavy artillery guns in the process.

"The Russians broke through the Germans defenses to recapture hundreds of towns. In the battle to break the blockade, the Russians destroyed or disabled 82 German tanks and shot down 16 German aircraft during one day’s fighting.

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"On January 27, 1944, Leningrad was free. General Leonid Govorov, commander of the Leningrad Front, said, “A task of historical importance has been completed. The city of Leningrad has been completely freed of the enemy blockade and of the barbaric artillery shelling.” He gave thanks to the soldiers of the Leningrad Front, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet, and the people of Leningrad for enduring the siege.

"One jubilant citizen recalled that the people of the city danced in the streets after a 24-gun salute was fired. People celebrated with vodka and singing and army rations to eat, but they did not forget what they had endured. However, in Stalinist Russia, memory could be dangerous."

With hardly one chapter on the subject, author is returning to malignant Russia, Stalin, et al. 

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November 22, 2022 - November 22, 2022.

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Chapter 7. The Leningrad Affair

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"“There is hardly a parallel in history for the endurance of so many people over so long a time. Leningrad stood alone against the might of Germany since the beginning of the invasion. It is a city saved by its own will, and its stand will live in the annals as a kind of heroic myth.” 

"—The New York Times"

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"The story of the siege of Leningrad can only be told in the most gruesome terms. Approximately 800,000 civilians died in the siege, as many as the combined World War II deaths suffered by the United States and the United Kingdom. The citizens of Leningrad, despite the tragedy they experienced, were imbued with a sense of patriotism that, in the end, proved to be more powerful than the bombs and artillery of the Germans.

"When a British reporter interviewed the workers at the Kirov Works factory during the siege, he asked a young woman whether she would prefer to be transferred to another factory where she would be in less danger. She replied, “No, I am a Kirov girl.” The sacrifices that the people of Leningrad had made in defense of their city deserved to be hailed with national acclaim when the war ended and the victory stories were shared. But news about Leningrad was censored during the duration of the siege.

"After the war ended, the city was honored with the Order of Lenin for its outstanding heroism. During the war, the people themselves had begun to collect memorabilia of their ordeal, such as the German plane that had landed in Tavrichesky Garden after it was shot down. Those items, trophies of a hard-fought, hard-won victory over a superior force, were the nucleus of what would become a museum.

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"Leningrad’s leader, Andrei Zhdanov, returned to Moscow and in 1946, he had risen in power until he was second only to Stalin. Zhdanov’s former deputy, A.A. Kuznetsov, became the secretary of the Party Central Committee in Moscow, while a third Leningrad hero, N.A. Voznesensky, was given the duty of planning the Soviet economy."

"After the Soviet Union fell and glasnost ushered in a new period of disclosure about what Russia had endured under Stalin, the archives were opened and people learned the truth of the Siege of Leningrad.

"In 2017, the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, Russia; the Museum of Russian Art, and New York’s Blavatnik Archive partnered to present a multimedia exhibition called the Siege of Leningrad. The exhibit presented an unflinching portrait of the suffering of Leningrad that nonetheless managed to affirm the incredible spirit of the people."

"On September 8, 1989, the anniversary of the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad, the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad reopened with items donated by the survivors and their families. ... "

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November 22, 2022 - November 22, 2022.  ................................................

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World War II Leningrad: A History 

From Beginning to End 

(World War 2 Battles), 

by Hourly History. 

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November 20, 2022 - November 22, 2022. 

Purchased November 20, 2022.  

ASIN:- B077P66FX7

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5115845572

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