Russia at war 1941-1945

extra twenty days, and in a besieged fortress every day counts. The workers of the Volkhov river fleet, the sailors and dockers of Ladoga, the soldiers and officers who took part in these operations, many of them losing their lives, were defending every ton of food against storms, fires, enemy aircraft and looting. The work they did isunforgettable.

[Pavlov, op. cit., p. 118.]

By November 16 a new phase was reached in the ordeal of Leningrad. The city could

now be supplied only by air. Although the Battle of Moscow was at its height, the State Defence Committee gave Leningrad a few transport and fighter planes to fly supplies

from Novaya Ladoga to Leningrad—a distance of about 100 miles. Thereupon the

Germans proceeded to bomb the Novaya Ladoga airfield, and two-thirds of the supplies had to be flown from airfields further inland. Moreover, the air convoys were constantly attacked by the Germans while flying over the lake, and a number of Russian planes were shot down. In view of the very limited cargo space, only pressed meat and other

concentrated foodstuffs were delivered to Leningrad in this difficult and costly way. This small-scale "air-lift" could not, in the long run, solve the problem of feeding nearly three million people.

On top of it all, there now came some truly disastrous new military reverses. At the beginning of November, the Germans attempted to capture the whole southern bank of

Lake Ladoga, including the railway junction of Volkhov; General Fedyuninsky's troops just managed to stop the Germans outside Volkhov; but, further east, the Germans

succeeded in cutting the main Leningrad-Vologda railway line, and, on November 9, they captured Tikhvin. The loss of Tikhvin was critical. Small quantities of food could still, with great difficulty, be delivered by air. The problem of delivering larger quantities of food across Lake Ladoga, even when it was well frozen, became almost insoluble. The

Volkhov and Novaya-Ladoga food bases had gone out of action when the Germans had

cut the railway to the east of them. The new rail-head was now a small station called Zaborie, in wild forest country some 100 miles east of Volkhov and some sixty miles east of Tikhvin. Only a state of mind bordering on despair could have persuaded the

Leningrad War Council to order the building of a "motor road" of nearly 200 miles, along old forest paths and through virgin forest, in a wide circle from Zaborie to Novaya

Ladoga. Soldiers and peasants were mobilised to build this "road" at the height of winter; and it was actually completed on December 6. The whole area was almost uninhabited

and:

Along a large stretch, the road was so narrow that lorries meeting each other could not pass; moreover, the deep snow, the steep hills in a country wholly unfamiliar to the drivers led to constant breakdowns and stoppages. Fortunately, it so happened that three days after the road had been completed, the military situation sharplychanged for the better, with the Red Army's recapture of Tikhvin. It is obvious thatthe new road could not save Leningrad for any length of time. A convoy of trucks

which left Zaborie for Novaya Ladoga took fourteen days to return to its base, and in three days, between Novaya-Ladoga and Yeremina Gora over 350 trucks had got

stuck in the snow. These convoys had travelled at the rate of twenty miles a day.. .

[Pavlov, op. cit., p. 155.]

By driving the Germans out of Tikhvin and beyond the Volkhov river between December

9 and 15 General Meretskov's troops literally saved Leningrad.

[Another great advantage of the recapture of Tikhvin was that it put an end to the threat of a German-Finnish "junction".]

The Germans, whose radio had screamed its head off about the imminent surrender of

Leningrad the day Tikhvin fell, said very little about the loss of the Leningrad "padlock".

Had Tikhvin remained in German hands, it is impossible to see how Leningrad could