Being there . . . in late August 1941 when the German troops of Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb’s
Army Group North had just overrun Leningrad’s outer defenses. To the north, the Karelian
Army of Hitler’s Finnish ally was advancing south between Lake Ladoga and the sea. Stalin had
no troops, planes or tanks to spare. If a major metropolis was to be defended, best she be
Moscow. Soon enough, Stalingrad would have to save herself. So must Leningrad, once the
capital of Russia, in 1917, the Cradle of the Revolution. Andrei Zhdanov, the mayor, or
Communist party secretary, told Stalin, “We will teach people in the shortest possible time the
methods of street fighting. The good people of Lenin’s City, in mere hours, must learn how to
fight in the streets and their buildings. WE WILL DIG A GRAVE IN FRONT OF LENINGRAD FOR
THE GRAVE OF FASCISM AND NAZISM!”!”
When Hitler heard this, he grinned, “How can that be? We have completely encircled their
‘City of Lenin’. It will fall like a leaf before the first snow falls.” Hitler was right that Leningrad
was too weak and near death. Extremely evil, fatal, ill-boding days and nights followed,
guaranteeing absolute and certain demise. Late August, September, November and December
were overpoweringly dire. Bitter cold and mass starvation followed. Although on life-support,
she barely hung on, day after day. Her only water supply was from the heavily thick, frozen
Neva River. Somehow the citizens rallied. “YES!”, they screamed, “the Germans are at our
gates! Let them come in! We, too, are there, waiting to welcome them with sticks and stones!”
The great city rallied, and within five months, as many as 400 trucks a day were shuttling back
and forth across the ice-road atop Lake Ladoga – refugees heading out, food and munitions
pouring in. The worst was over, but Hitler refused to eat his words. It would take an additional
two years before the Germans were to be driven back to Berlin, completely.
LENINGRAD SURVIVED FOR 890 DAYS AFTER THE GERMANS SURROUNDED THE GREAT
HISTORIC CAPITAL OF RUSSIA IN AUGUST OF 1941. DURING THE 43 MONTHS THAT FOLLOWED,
1.6 MILLION PEOPLE, VIRTUALLY ALL RESIDENTS AND SOLDIERS, LOST THEIR LIVES TRYING TO
DEFEND HER. STALIN, TOO, BOASTED LENINGRAD WOULD BE THE GRAVEYARD OF FASCISM,
NAZISM, AND POSSIBILY DEMOCRACY IF THE ALLIES GOT THAT FAR NORTHEAST. ONE OF
HITLER’S THREE GREATEST MISTAKES IN WWII WAS ORDERING HIS ELITE DIVISIONS TO LEAVE
THE GATES OF LENINGRAD ON SEPTEMBER 6 th , 1942, FOR THE GATES OF MOSCOW SINCE
STALIN LIVED AND RULED FROM THERE. DEAR LENINGRAD WAS TO BE NO MORE THAN A
SIDESHOW . . . .
Reviewed and Highly Recommended by Don DeNevi
“RETREAT from LENINGRAD – – Army Group North 1944/1945”, by Steven H. Newton. SCHIFFER
MILITARY HISTORY: 1995, recently republished, 328 pages, 6 ¼” x 9 ¼”, hardcover, $24.95. Visit,
www.schifferbooks.com.
As all serious WW II buffs of the Eastern Front know, 1944, the so-called “Year of the Russia’s
Ten Victories”, began with the relief of Leningrad, signaling to the world that Germany had
indeed lost the war. The year before, the Fuhrer suffered two huge, disastrous defeats, the
surrender of what remained of his 6 th Army at Stalingrad, and his sensational defeat of his
armored reserves in the fields outside of Kursk. Hitler refused to believe, but intuitively knew, it
was only a matter of time before the Soviets would be charging up the step of the Reichstag.
The sword he had wielded on the weaker nations and their people of Europe was now poised
over his head ready to come down and divide his face in two.
The full story of the retreat from Leningrad is narrated here in greater detail than ever
before, thanks to the survivors, the German officers who served as commanders and chiefs of
staff for Army Group North, and its constituent armies. Their accounts were drafted soon after
the war ended at the request of the U.S. Army, but the results languished in poorly translated
manuscripts, that is, until Steven retranslated, corrected, and annotated them, as well as
provided substantial amounts of new material direct from the army groups’s operational
records. For us true armchair enthusiasts, the treasure trove was a Godsend! The result was the
most comprehensive and detailed operational study of sustained combat in the northern sector
of the Russian front yet assembled and published in English.
As this reviewer has been espousing for years, Schiffer Military, Casemate, and Osprey are
the reverent trinity, the union of three closely related military publishing companies in one, for
all semi-serious to deadly serious readers, researchers, and scholars. With researcher-historians
Steven H. Newton, Richard N. Armstrong, Paul Carell, and a host of others, Schiffer, founded in
the 2003-2005 years, hints it may not only have published the most, largest, and best quality
war books, but also the most obscure and alluring titles making it the nonpareil company. How
truly fortunate us buffs have been, are, and will continue to be.
