All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [108]
Zhukov reorganised Leningrad’s defence, countermanding Voroshilov’s order to scuttle what was left of the Baltic Fleet in the harbour; through the years ahead, the warships’ guns provided critical support for the land forces. The general launched a series of thrusts against the Germans which climaxed on 17 September, cost thousands of lives, and foundered amid devastating artillery fire. A marine officer, Nikolai Vavin, described an attempt to reinforce the island fortress of Oreshek on Lake Ladoga: ‘Our guys just didn’t have a chance. The Germans quickly spotted us from the air – and it became a mass execution. The enemy’s planes first bombed and then machine-gunned us. Out of my own landing group of two hundred men, only fourteen reached the shoreline.’ Faced with protests from his officers about the futility of such attempts, especially from the Nevsky bridgehead on the east bank of the Neva, Zhukov remained implacable: ‘I said attack!’ Casualties soared, while medical facilities for the wounded were almost non-existent. Zhukov placed blocking units – zagradotryady – behind the front, to shoot down his own men who attempted to flee, a practice that became institutionalised in the Red Army. German propaganda loudspeakers taunted the doomed assailants on the battlefield: ‘It’s time to assemble at your extermination points again – we shall bury you on the banks of the Neva.’ Then the next barrage fell upon Soviet troops milling helplessly in their positions.
For weeks, the Russians remained oblivious of the fact that the Germans had no intention of launching a ground attack on Leningrad, nor even of accepting its surrender. Zhukov acquired a prestige in Stalin’s eyes as saviour of the city, rooted in failure to understand that it had not been seriously assaulted. In a moment of fantasy, German staff officers in Berlin discussed the possibility of making a propaganda gesture by inviting the United States to accept the 2.5 million inhabitants of Peter the Great’s capital as refugees. Hitler, instead, set out to starve them to death. Professor Ernst Ziegelemeyer of Munich’s Institute of Nutrition – one of many scientists who provided satanic counsel to the Nazis – was consulted about practicalities. He agreed that no battle was necessary; it would be impossible for the Russians to provide their beleaguered citizens with more than 250 grams of bread a day, which could not sustain human life on a protracted basis: ‘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 there, the sooner they will die, and then we will enter the city without trouble, without losing a single German soldier.’
Hitler declared: ‘Petersburg – the poisonous nest from which, for so long, Asiatic venom has spewed forth into the Baltic – must vanish from the earth’s surface. The city is already cut off. It only remains for us to bomb and bombard it, destroy its sources of water and power and then deny the population everything it needs to survive.’ The first major Luftwaffe attack on Leningrad destroyed the waterside Badaev warehouses, holding most of the city’s food stocks; melted sugar ran along a neighbouring road, and fires burned for days. The citizens quickly understood their plight. A woman named Elena Skryabina wrote in her diary: ‘We are approaching the greatest horror … Everyone is preoccupied with only one thought: where to get something edible so as not to starve to death. We have returned to prehistoric times. Life has been reduced to one thing – the hunt for food.’
Pravda correspondent Lazar Brontman described in his diary how citizens made soup and bread with grass. Once such fare was accepted as a norm, he said, ‘grass cakes found their own price in the market’. A single match cost a rouble, which