Leningrad: State of Siege

“All offers of surrender from Leningrad must be rejected,” wrote Adolph Hitler on September 29, 1941, at the outset of Operation Barbarossa. “In this struggle for survival, we have no interest in keeping even a proportion of the city’s population alive.”

During the famed 900-day siege of Leningrad, the German High Command deliberately planned to eradicate the city’s population through starvation. Viewing the Slavs as sub-human, Hitler embarked on a vicious program of ethnic cleansing. By the time the siege ended in January 1944, almost a million people had died. Those who survived would be marked permanently by what they endured as the city descended into chaos.

In Leningrad, military historian Michael Jones chronicles the human story of this epic siege. Drawing on newly available eyewitness accounts and diaries, he reveals the true horrors of the ordeal—including stories long-suppressed by the Soviets of looting, criminal gangs, and cannibalism. But he also shows the immense psychological resources on which the citizens of Leningrad drew to survive against desperate odds. At the height of the siege, for instance, an extraordinary live performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony profoundly strengthened the city’s will to resist.

A riveting account of one of the most harrowing sieges of world history, Leningrad also portrays the astonishing power of the human will in the face of even the direst catastrophe.

In August 1941, Hitler’s armies blocked the last roads leading into Leningrad. What followed was one of the most horrific sieges in history.

Publishers Weekly

British military historian Jones (Stalingrad) explores the physical and psychological depths of the 872-day siege of Leningrad during WWII-"one of the most horrific sieges in history"-in this sobering chronicle. Leningrad, a city of 2.5 million, was a major objective of Hitler because of its economic, military and symbolic significance (as the "birthplace of the Bolshevik Revolution"). Besieged and poorly served by the corrupt and incompetent city administration, Leningrad descended into starvation, "widespread looting and cannibalism" and deadly epidemics. Despite the appalling conditions, says Jones, "a remarkable humanity still survived," and Leningrad miraculously managed to hold out until the Soviet Army liberated the city in January 1944. It's likely that more than one million civilians perished during the siege. Following in the footsteps of Harrison Salisbury's classic 1969 account, The 900 Days,Jones draws extensively from the diaries of siege victims and interviews with survivors for a harrowing portrait of life reduced to a single pursuit: "the hunt for food." Readers interested in military history, the Soviet Union or the psychology of survival will appreciate this unforgettable saga. 35 b&w illus., 5 maps. (July)

Michael Jones has a Ph.D. in history from Bristol University and has taught at Glasgow University and Winchester College. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he has previously written books on Agincourt and Stalingrad. He lives in Croyden, England.