Hero City: Leningrad 1943–44
St Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, St Petersburg. Peter the Great’s window on the world, the birthplace of the Bolshevik Revolution and of Vladimir Putin. It has always been seen as occupying a strategic position, although its geographic vulnerability partly explains the Soviet invasion of the Karelian Isthmus in 1939 and the annexation of the Baltic states in 1940 and of Kaliningrad (Königsberg) in 1945. Those who have read Prit Buttar’s masterly To Besiege a City – Leningrad 1941-42 (and if you have not, you should) will welcome its sequel Hero City which continues the story of the siege until the recapture of the city by the Red army in February 1944. As with his earlier works Buttar relies mainly on primary sources: letters, reports and memoirs from officers ranging from army group and army commanders down to lieutenants commanding companies and from Other Ranks as well, drawing equally from German and Soviet sources but also looking at the Finns, Latvians and Spanish forces that were involved.
The author is well aware of the justificatory aspect of memoirs which he subjects to critical examination. He relates the difficulties the German army had to face with Hitler’s constant interference in operations on the Eastern Front, with his reluctance to take a decision until he absolutely had to, when it was generally too late. In terrain that was unsuited to the use of armour and the frequent removal of formations from Army Group North to bolster up other sections of the Front, the wretched Küchler was faced with an almost impossible task: unable to close the Lagoda gap and the Finns unwilling to, refused permission to withdraw and shorten his front when it was militarily imperative to do so, he must have been mightily relieved when replaced by Model in January 1944. Model’s reputation takes somewhat of a knock from the author who highlights his reluctance to work through the established, and well tried, chain of command in preference to personal visits to units in order to enthuse their men to greater efforts – a laudable objective, but not the job of an army group commander.
One impression gained from this book by the reader is: was the siege ever necessary? The German army was trained and equipped to fight short campaigns of swift manoeuvre, withdrawing where necessary to form a reserve which could counter attack. German doctrine eschewed sieges of any duration and one has to wonder whether Leningrad – and indeed Stalingrad – could not simply have been masked to prevent the city being used as a jump off for Soviet attacks, while continuing to bottle up the Soviet Baltic fleet, with the erstwhile siege troops used elsewhere. The siege of Leningrad would seem to be an example of Hitlerian politics overriding military necessity.
The text of the book is well sourced and it has a comprehensive bibliography. The maps are good but would have benefited from having a complete page, rather than half, devoted to each, and it is comprehensively illustrated. There have been many published accounts of the war on the Eastern Front in general, and the siege of Leningrad in particular, but this book, and its predecessor, by its well-researched sheer detail, and by its putting the siege in the context of the war as a whole, will surely be the definitive history.
by Prit Buttar is out now and published by Osprey Publishing.
Gordon Corrigan is a military historian and author of
