Russia at war 1941-1945

fighting. The idea of fighting for every house was not an act of self-sacrifice, but aimed at destroying the enemy. Later, the experience of Stalingrad was to show that such warfare could succeed.. .

[ Pavlov, op. cit., p. 19.]

This sounds rather like a piece of bravado; for the problem of feeding and supplying Leningrad, with its nearly three million population, would, in such conditions, have been infinitely more complicated than at Stalingrad. Nevertheless, it is certain, as I was told in Leningrad in 1943, that the possibility of gradually abandoning the southern (and main) part of the city, and of clinging on to the "Petrograd Side" and the Vassili Island on the right bank of the Neva was not entirely ruled out during those desperate days.

The shelling of Leningrad began on September 4, and on September 8, 9 and 10 the city was subjected to some particularly fierce air-raids. That of September 8 caused 178 fires, including that of the famous Badayev food stores—about the destruction of which such exaggerated stories were told, especially after the fearful famine had started.

Firewatching was better organised on September 9, and all but a few incendiaries were rapidly put out. The anti-aircraft guns brought down five planes, but the slow Soviet Chaika fighters were almost helpless against the Messerschmidts; it was then that, in desperation, several Russian pilots rammed the German planes.

In these first major raids, the Germans also dropped many delayed-action bombs and

land-mines, and, not being used to handling these, many volunteers (and there were

volunteers for everything in Leningrad) lost their lives.

There are numerous stories of desperate fighting during those days at Pulkovo, Kolpino and Uritsk—the latter only two or three miles from the Kirov Works, in the south-west of Leningrad; but except for a footnote in the official History saying that Zhukov was in command of the defence of Leningrad from September 11 till the middle of October,

post-war accounts are silent about the changes that took place in the High Command. The dramatic story I heard from several people in Leningrad in 1943 was that about

September 10, when there was practically complete chaos at the front, Voroshilov,

believing that everything was lost, went into the front line, in the hope of getting killed by the Germans. But on September 11 Stalin dispatched Zhukov to Leningrad, and it was

Zhukov who fully reorganised the defence of the city within three days; in a press

interview I attended in Berlin in June 1945, Zhukov proudly referred to this fact, though without going into any details, and Vyshinsky said "Yes, it was Zhukov who saved Leningrad." It was, undoubtedly, during the short Zhukov reign—after which he was placed in charge of the defence of Moscow—that the front round Leningrad became

stabilised.

Having failed to take Leningrad by storm, the German High Command (not

unreasonably) supposed that the city would, before long, be starved into surrender. But Hitler, characteristically, ordered that no capitulation be accepted and that the city be

"wiped off the face of the earth", as Leningrad would present a danger of epidemics and would, moreover, be mined, and so constitute a double threat to any soldiers entering it.

This order (and, incidentally, the German failure to take Leningrad) was to be explained by Jodl at Nuremberg:

Field-Marshal von Leeb, the Supreme Commander of Army Group North at

Leningrad ... pointed out that it would be absolutely impossible for him to keep

these millions of Leningrad people fed and supplied, if they were to fall into his hands, since the supply situation of the Army Group was catastrophic at the time.

That was the first cause. But shortly before, Kiev had been abandoned by the

Russian armies, and hardly had we occupied the city than one tremendous explosion after another occurred. The major part of the inner city was burned down, 50,000

people were made homeless. German soldiers ... suffered considerable losses,