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By Root 1430 0

Walther Model played a hero’s part in stabilising the line. Stalin, against Zhukov’s strong advice, insisted upon extending operations. On 5 January he ordered a counter-offensive the length of the front. Once more following Hitler’s example, by spurning an opportunity to concentrate forces against the weak point in the German line Stalin threw away the possibility of a great victory; Rokossovsky later offered a scornful catalogue of the blunders made, chances missed. The Germans still resisted fiercely, mowing down attackers in tens of thousands. Soviet reserves were soon exhausted, and their advance ran out of steam. Model recovered some lost ground, and Zhukov’s hopes of encircling Army Group Centre were frustrated. But a decisive reality persisted: the invaders had been pushed back between sixty and 150 miles. The Russians held Moscow.

Even as the fate of Russia’s capital was decided, further west a parallel drama unfolded, of almost equal magnitude and embracing even greater human suffering. From north-west and south, in the autumn of 1941 Axis forces closed upon Russia’s old capital Leningrad. Barbarossa persuaded the Finns to avenge their 1940 defeat: in June 1941 Finland’s army, re-equipped by Hitler, joined the assault on the Soviet Union. German troops thrust from north Norway to reach positions within thirty miles of Murmansk. The Finns showed no enthusiasm for advancing much beyond their 1939 frontier, but on 15 September, with their aid the Germans completed the encirclement of Leningrad. The ensuing siege of the city – the tsars’ St Petersburg, with its elegant avenues, baroque palaces and seaside quays – became an epic that continued for more than two years. It assumed a character unique in its horror, and cost its defenders and citizens more lives than Britain and America together lost in the entire war.

Before the battle began, Soviet commanders had anticipated a direct assault. Tens of thousands of civilians dug defensive works under incoming artillery fire; shells fell on them ‘methodically, precisely’, in the words of a veteran. ‘Our soldiers dashed from their dugouts, grabbing youngsters and women, pulling them off the road and out of the line of fire … An incendiary shell landed. A herd of cattle, frightened by the flaming asphalt, began a stampede, kicking up a huge cloud of dust. Then the terrified animals charged straight into a minefield.’ Some children were belatedly evacuated from the city – into the path of the advancing Germans: more than 2,000 perished in a Luftwaffe attack on a trainload of fugitives at Lychkovo.

The credentials of the hoary old Bolshevik general Kliment Voroshilov, charged with the defence of Leningrad, rested solely upon his loyalty to Stalin; he despised professional soldiers and understood nothing of military science. Moscow dispatched a large food convoy to the city, but Voroshilov decided that to acknowledge a need for it would represent defeatism. He diverted the supplies elsewhere, and launched impromptu assaults on the Germans which yielded only slaughter. A despairing Lieutenant Yushkevich wrote in his last diary entry before being killed: ‘Our soldiers are only issued with old rifles and we have pathetically few machine-guns. We haven’t any grenades either. There are no medics! This is not a military unit – we are simply cannon fodder.’ He described his men ‘being hunted through the woods like animals … Constant shooting – panzers everywhere.’

On 8 September the encirclement of Leningrad became complete, its siege formally commenced. Next day, Stalin dispatched Zhukov to relieve Voroshilov. His unexpected arrival by light aircraft prompted a petty farce: for fifteen minutes guards at the city’s front* headquarters beside the Smolny Institute declined to admit him, for lack of a pass. ‘Well, that’s the army for you,’ shrugged Zhukov later, but at the time he was probably less philosophical. Voroshilov, flown back to Moscow, dared to denounce Stalin to his face, shouting: ‘You have yourself to blame for all this! You’re the one who annihilated the Old Guard