Russia at war 1941-1945

because large amounts of explosives went up into the air... The purpose of the order was exclusively that of protecting German troops against such catastrophes; for

entire staffs had been blown into the air in Kharkov and Kiev.

[ Trial of German Major War Criminals, vol. 15 (London 1947), pp. 306-7. (To be referred to in future as TGMWC.)]

An order from the Führer's headquarters, dated October 7, 1941 and signed by Jodl,

reiterated the Führer's order not to accept capitulation "at either Leningrad or, later, Moscow". Refugees from Leningrad, says the order, must be driven back by fire if they approach the German lines, but any flight to the east by "isolated individuals", through small gaps in the blockade was to be welcomed, since this could only add to the chaos in eastern Russia. This order also said that Leningrad should be razed to the ground by air bombing and artillery fire.

The date of this document is significant: by the beginning of October, the Germans had given up hope of capturing Leningrad by storm. Leningrad, and most of the Leningrad

isthmus continued to remain in Russian hands, and was tying down an army estimated by the Russians at 300,000 men. Although there was no guarantee that the Germans might

not attempt another all-out attack on Leningrad, the desperate preparations made at the end of August and the beginning of September for defending every house and for

destroying any German paratrooper landing in the large open squares of Leningrad lost their immediate urgency; nevertheless the building of firing points and pillboxes inside practically every house (especially corner buildings) continued right on to December; 10,000 soldiers and 75,000 civilians were engaged in this work.

[Karasev, op. cit., p. 123.]

17,000 firing points were set up inside houses and over 4,000 pillboxes were built inside Leningrad, as well as fifteen miles of barricades. Mighty batteries of shore, naval and army artillery were being installed right round Leningrad, and the Baltic Fleet was

invaluable. Even the gun from the cruiser Aurora which had given the signal for the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917, was now stationed on the Pulkovo heights, south of Leningrad. But, by a strange irony, though Leningrad was in grave danger, Moscow in October was in even greater danger, and, despite the blockade, 1,000 guns and

considerable quantities of ammunition and other equipment were flown from Leningrad

to Moscow!

[ Karasev, op. cit., p. 133.]

A grim thought, especially in view of the desperate shortage of ammunition on the

Leningrad Front later in the winter, when the hunger blockade had enormously reduced the output of ammunition in Leningrad itself.

The immediate danger of a German occupation of Leningrad had been averted by the

middle of September; but it was only too clear that, cut off from the "mainland", except for the Lake Ladoga route, the only real hope of keeping the city supplied with food, raw materials and fuel—as well as armaments and ammunition that could not be made on the spot—lay in the breach of the land blockade. In September the Russians made a desperate effort to drive the Germans out of the Mga-Siniavino salient, running to the southern shore of Lake Ladoga, and so to clear the Leningrad-Vologda railway line. But although the Russians succeeded in establishing a small bridgehead on the south bank of the Neva, west of Schlüsselburg, and even in holding it, right through the winter, at terrible cost in lives, the Germans had fortified the Mga-Siniavino area so strongly that no progress could be made, and the German defences here were not to be broken up until February

1943.

[The story of this futile attempt to capture the Mga salient, which ended with the last defenders of the Neva bridgehead being wiped out on April 29, 1942, was one of the

most tragic episodes of Leningrad's attempt to loosen the German stranglehold.]

Chapter III THREE MILLION TRAPPED

So, by the beginning of September, Leningrad was completely isolated by land from the Russian "mainland", and nearly three million people had been trapped there. The only remaining communications were worse than precarious. In 1941 Russia was desperately

short of planes, and, with the Germans enjoying complete air control in the Leningrad area, any Russian plane there was in grave danger of being shot down, even at night.

Apart from that, Lake Ladoga, without any proper harbours, was the only route by which Leningrad could communicate with the "mainland".

How was it possible that so many people should have remained in Leningrad, even

though the dire threat of a German occupation had hung over the city ever since the