eating off plates, even continuing academic studies. The authorities considered transporting civilians to safety on trucks returning empty across Lake Ladoga. Some mothers and babies indeed travelled, and often died en route; but Stalin rejected a wholesale evacuation, for prestige reasons. Leningrad’s ordeal became a display of fortitude such as only a tyranny could have enforced, and probably only Russians could have endured.
The British and Americans continued to fear Soviet defeat until the end of 1942: they were slow to comprehend the losses and miseries of the invaders. As 1941 drew to a close, two million German soldiers, their tunics lined with newspaper and straw to compensate for the clothing they lacked, were in straits almost as dire as those of Russia’s people. Hans-Jürgen Hartmann wrote from Kharkov: ‘I have often wondered what this Christmas might be like. I always cast out the war from my imaginary picture, or at least push it to the very edges. I conjured up special words for the occasion. Christmas, homeland, longing, joy and hope. Yet these words, always sincere and heartfelt, became increasingly strange and precious to me. They evoked something timeless, precious – and yet, in the conditions of the Eastern Front, seemed scarcely believable any more…How brutal this war is becoming. It is now a total war, a war against women, children and old people – and that is the greatest horror.’
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