Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944

Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944

by Anna Reid
Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944

Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944

by Anna Reid

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Overview

On September 8, 1941, eleven weeks after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, his brutal surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Leningrad was surrounded. The siege was not lifted for two and a half years, by which time some three quarters of a million Leningraders had died of starvation.


Anna Reid's Leningrad is a gripping, authoritative narrative history of this dramatic moment in the twentieth century, interwoven with indelible personal accounts of daily siege life drawn from diarists on both sides. They reveal the Nazis' deliberate decision to starve Leningrad into surrender and Hitler's messianic miscalculation, the incompetence and cruelty of the Soviet war leadership, the horrors experienced by soldiers on the front lines, and, above all, the terrible details of life in the blockaded city: the relentless search for food and water; the withering of emotions and family ties; looting, murder, and cannibalism- and at the same time, extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice.


Stripping away decades of Soviet propaganda, and drawing on newly available diaries and government records, Leningrad also tackles a raft of unanswered questions: Was the size of the death toll as much the fault of Stalin as of Hitler? Why didn't the Germans capture the city? Why didn't it collapse into anarchy? What decided who lived and who died? Impressive in its originality and literary style, Leningrad gives voice to the dead and will rival Anthony Beevor's classic Stalingrad in its impact.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780802778826
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date: 09/06/2011
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 512
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

Anna Reid is the author of The Shaman's Coat: A Native History of Siberia and Borderland: A Journey Through the History of the Ukraine. She holds a master degree in Russian history and reform economics from the University of London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies. She was Ukraine correspondent for The Economist and the Daily Telegraph from 1993-1995, and from 2003-2007 she ran the foreign affairs program at the think-tank Policy Exchange
Anna Reid holds a master's degree in Russian history and reform economics from London University's School of Slavonic and East European Studies. She was the Kiev correspondent for the Economist and the Daily Telegraph from 1993 to 1995. Her first book, Borderland: A Journey through the History of the Ukraine, was published to wide acclaim in 1997. Ms. Reid lives in London.

Table of Contents

Maps ix

Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction i

Part 1 Invasion: June-September 1941

1 22 June 1941 13

2 Barbarossa 25

3 '"We're Winning, but the Germans are Advancing' 51

4 The Peoples Levy 73

5 'Caught in a Mousetrap' 91

Part 2 The Siege Begins: September-December 1941

6 'No Sentimentality' 113

7 'To Our Last Heartbeat' 139

8 125 Grams 158

9 Falling Down the Funnel 174

Part 3 Mass Death: Winter 1941-2

10 The Ice Road 195

11 Sleds and Cocoons 208

12 'We Were Like Stones' 232

13 Svyazi 252

14 'Robinson Crusoe Was a Lucky Man' 268

15 Corpse-Eating and Person-Eating 280

16 Anton Ivanovich is Angry 293

17 The Big House 303

Part 4 Waiting for Liberation: January 1942-January 1944

18 Meat Wood 313

19 The Gentle Joy of Living and Breathing 331

20 The Leningrad Symphony 356

21 The Last Year 370

Part 5 Aftermath

22 Coming Home 389

23 The Cellar of Memory 406

Appendix I How Many? 417

Appendix II 419

Notes 421

Bibliography 459

Index 473

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