Читать книгу The Siege of Leningrad: History in an Hour - Rupert Colley - Страница 10

The German Advance

By 12 July 1941, the German advance had reached the River Luga, the furthest line of fortifications hastily thrown together by Leningrad’s army of defence volunteers. The Soviet soldiers guarding the defences ran off. ‘The gates to Leningrad are open!’ crowed the German commander. Within just three weeks, the Germans had covered almost 500 miles and were now within 60 miles of Leningrad. Thousands of captured Soviet soldiers were forced to march hundreds of miles west to German prisoner-of-war camps, from which many were never to return. The option to transport them by train was dismissed, lest the Russians should ‘contaminate and soil the wagons.’

When the Germans captured the town of Mga, Leningrad lost its last railway station and its link to the rest of the country was severed. A week later, on 8 September, the Germans captured Shlisselburg on the westerly point of Lake Ladoga. This vast lake, 20 miles to the east of Leningrad, would play a significant role during the siege. Meanwhile, the Finns had advanced from the north, reaching the northern shore of the lake, regaining much of the territory they had lost to the Soviet Union during the ‘Winter War’ of November 1939 to March 1940. Leningrad was now virtually an island, cut off from the rest of the country; its people sealed within. It only remained for Hitler to give the order and the city was there for the taking. But Hitler changed tack and decided not to attack the city but to bomb it instead and starve its inhabitants to death. In his directive, dated 22 September, he articulated his intention to ‘wipe the city of Petersburg from the face of the earth.’

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.