Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 by Anna Reid Read Free Book Online Page B

No mercy to the German scoundrels or their accomplices . . .
    Request you inform commanders and division and regimental commissars, also the military council of the Baltic Fleet and the commanders and commissars of ships.
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    [Signed] I. Stalin 12
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    Finally the line held. On 24 September, when his forward units were only fifteen kilometres from the Hermitage – as far as the London suburb of Richmond is from Piccadilly Circus, or the Jersey turnpike from the Empire State Building – von Leeb finally acknowledged that his now exhausted and overextended armies could advance no further, and requested permission to move on to the defensive. Fighting petered out as the two sides retired to count their staggering losses. Within Germany’s Army Group North, 190,000 men had been killed or wounded since the start of the invasion, and 500 guns and 700 tanks lost. 13 Soviet casualties were even heavier. In the same period the Baltic Fleet and Northwestern Army Group had together lost 214,078 men killed, missing or taken prisoner (POWs probably comprising 70–80 per cent of the total), and another 130,848 wounded – two-thirds of their original troop numbers. They had also lost 4,000 tanks, about 5,400 guns, and 2,700 aircraft. 14
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    In traditional siege histories, these days in mid- to late September, with their exhausting battles and ruthless displays of military will, were when the tide turned in the defence of Leningrad. But newer interpretations put the emphasis less on Zhukov’s (still undoubted) tactical brilliance, more on an earlier change of strategy on the German side. In this version, the Red Army did not so much beat off the Germans, as the Germans decide to focus elsewhere.
    Since Barbarossa’s inception, Hitler and his generals had nursed a simmering disagreement over whether Moscow or Leningrad was the more important strategic objective. Hitler’s original directive of December 1940, which laid out the broad scheme for Barbarossa, had been clear: only once the Baltics, Leningrad and Kronshtadt had been taken, knocking out the Baltic Red Fleet and securing Leningrad’s arms manufacturers, was the advance to begin on Moscow. The service chiefs, led by Chief of General Staff Franz Halder, disagreed. Russia’s capital and biggest city should come first, they argued, and Leningrad second.
    Put aside with Barbarossa’s launch, the disagreement broke into the open again in mid-July, as von Leeb asked for more troops and equipment for his Army Group North. A parallel argument over whether to bypass surrounded Russian towns or capture them before advancing further was resolved in the generals’ favour, but on Leningrad Hitler held firm. ‘My representations stressing the importance of Moscow’, Halder grumbled to his diary on 26 July, ‘are brushed aside with no valid counter-evidence.’ Ten days later, as the Wehrmacht approached Novgorod, Halder tried again, this time via General Paulus: ‘At my request the commander of Army Group South raised points of high strategy, emphasising the importance of Moscow. The Führer again showed himself absolutely deaf to these arguments. He still harps on his old themes: 1. Leningrad, with Hoth [commander of Army Group Centre’s 3rd Panzer Group] brought into the picture. 2. Eastern Ukraine . . . 3. Moscow last.’ The following day Halder tried to recruit Chief of Operations Staff General Alfred Jodl to the cause. ‘I put it to him that Leningrad can be taken with the forces already at [von Leeb’s] disposal. We need not and must not divert to the Leningrad front anything that we might need for Moscow. Von Leeb’s flank is not threatened in any way . . . Von Bock must drive with all his forces on Moscow. (Ask the Führer: Can he afford not to reduce Moscow before winter sets in?)’ 15
    Increasingly irritated by von Leeb’s pleas for more resources – ‘Wild requests