The Siege of Leningrad: History in an Hour. Rupert Colley

       Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov, 1935

      Hitler based his decision on pragmatism – the risk of going in was too great. His forces were overstretched and in the first three months of the war, his three armies had already lost 180,000 men on Soviet soil. He could ill-afford further losses. Hitler knew the Russians would fight street-by-street and house-to-house (as proved later in the city of Stalingrad); and his commanders feared also that the city would be mined and its population contaminated with various epidemics. As one German officer concluded, ‘It is not worth risking the lives of our troops. The Leningraders will die anyway. It is essential not to let a single person through our front line. The more of them that stay, the sooner they will die. Then we will enter the city without trouble, without losing a single German soldier.’

      The German soldier was under strict orders – anyone caught trying to escape the city, man, woman, or child, was to be shot. However, the German command, aware that shooting unarmed women and children could be detrimental to the mental health of the German soldier, ordered the use of artillery which could be applied from a safer distance.

      Thus, on 8 September, the German advance halted just seven miles from the city gates, its troops dug in, and prepared to subject Leningrad to the most devastating siege in modern history. It was to last almost 900 days. To the east of the city a small corridor of land, a tiny chink, remained in Soviet hands between the Finns on one side and the Germans on the other; a corridor that was to prove a lifeline for the besieged Leningraders.

       The Men in Charge

      The men in charge of the defence of Leningrad were Andrei Zhdanov and sixty-year-old Kliment Voroshilov, one of Stalin’s old favourites. Voroshilov had been criticized for his incompetent leadership during the Winter War against Finland and had been dismissed only to be reinstated to save Leningrad. Stalin, aware of Voroshilov’s failings, realized that under such pressure Leningraders would question the regime and his leadership in particular. He needed a man of utter political reliability to instil in Leningrad the right political thinking. And Voroshilov was that man.