What is the name of a good history book pertaining to the siege of Leningrad during the 2nd World War?

Answer 1

The 900 Days, The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison Salisbury

Answer 2

I remember reading a book titled 'Nine Hundred Days"

Answer 3

Don't know.

Answer 4

I got the best feel for the history of World War II from the very first book I read on the subject: "Life's Picture History of World War II," published in 1950 by Time Incorporated. I was in seventh grade in 1950, in junior high school in a small town in Indiana, and there was a copy of the book, hot off the presses, in the school library. I haunted the library every day during the noon hour until I had completed the book.

I didn't see the book again until I was about 35 years old, living in Winnetka, Illinois, with my wife and two children. My wife found a copy of the book in good condition at a church rummage sale and bought it for $15. She gave it to me for my birthday, and I was privileged to enjoy it all over again. I just took it down off the shelf and turned to page 57, where I find the following:

"Invasion of Russia. Hitler's alliance with Russia was less than one year old when he secretly decided to have done with it. On December 18, 1940 he put his decision in writing: 'Crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign before the end of the war against England.' The Nazi dictator had been proceeding for two decades on the theory that Communist Russia must be annihilated. Nonetheless, his stubborn insistence on fighting on another front, before he had prevailed over the British, was mad. Operation Barbarossa began at dawn, June 22, 1941, with an attack along a 2,000-mile front, from the White Sea to the Black Sea. Into this biggest campaign of mankind's biggest war, Hitler sent some 121 divisions and some 3,000 planes, dwarfing Napoleon's effort 129 years earlier. With the troops went a number of German artists, and it is their captured canvases of the early advances which appear on this and the following pages.

"Hitler knew the Russians had about 120 divisions facing the German front and he expected to destroy them before reaching the Dnieper River 350 miles away. For a month he seemed likely to succeed; his armies rolled forward as much as 40 miles a day. Stalin, despite a lifetime of intrigue, was apparently caught napping by his partner. But these Russians defending their motherland were not the same people the Finns had made look ridiculous. Deeper and deeper into Russia's awesome, scorched emptiness they drew the Germans. Hitler soon had 200 divisions committed. Winter -- the worst in many years -- came early. Supply lines began to fail.

"Blitzkrieg of unimaginable proportions swirled upon Russia in the north, the center and the south. The first Panzer drives pointed toward the Soviet Union's three greatest cities: Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev. The world's military 'experts' gave the Red Army a maximum of 13 weeks -- Hitler himself had told his generals it would be over in ten. Only a fortnight had passed before it became apparent that something was wrong. The ill-trained Russian soldiers fought back with a contemptuous disregard for death and the Germans found no psychic paralysis anywhere. Two great offensives pierced south and center, von Runstedt with three armies and four armored divisons, General Fedor von Bock drove 400 miles to Smolensk, then swerved south and joined von Rundstedt's armor beyond Kiev in an envelopment which yielded prisoners to the fantastic number of 665,000. Von Runstedt swept on to Kharkov and Rostov, but by then it was November, about 20 costly weeks since the attack began. Stalin still had not mentioned surrender. Late in November, Marshal Semion Timoshenko counterattacked savagely at Rostov and took back 40 of the 50 miles von Runstedt had won.

"Moscow was saved by Hitler's decision to attack first toward Leningrad on the north and the Caucasus on the south. When he changed his mind in September and ordered von Bock to proceed he gave that field marshal 48 additional infantry divisions plus 12 with armor. Von Bock now had 1,500,000 men. His troops jumped off on October 2, with Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge in command of two armies and two Panzer groups. Soon snow -- in mid-October instead of mid-November -- began to cover tanks already mired in Russian mud, and enemy counterattacks grew more frequent, more fierce. Nonetheless the attack carried within 40 miles of Moscow. Hitler's soldiers could see the antiaircraft fire directed at German bombers over the city, and a few patrols actually reached Moscow's suburbs. But it was now December. Snow was falling heavily in the forests and fields around the Soviet capital and the temperature was well below zero. Then, on December 6, General Georgi Zhukov struck von Kluge's shivering soldiers with -- of all things -- a hundred divisions. The Germans fell back to spend a miserable winter in too-light clothing, harassed by guerillas, bedeviled by machines and weapons that stuck and froze. These things did not please Hitler, who fired his commander in chief, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, and Chief of Staff Franz Halder, and took their jobs himself. He also booted out all his top field commanders in Russia, including the ablest, von Rundstedt. Hitler still thought he could turn the Russian trick in 1942. With some reason he could blame his failure in 1941 on the weather -- but so could Napoleon in 1812.

"Leningrad, which means 'Lenin's city,' is what the Soviets named Peter the Great's beloved 'window to the sea.' Leningrad's capture was assigned to another Prussian field marshal, Wilhelm von Leeb, with two armies, four armored divisions and the help of 12 Finnish divisions under old Field Marshal Carl Mannerheim, who wanted to get back what the Kremlin had clumsily taken from him in 1940. But in the north the Russians had near equality, and progress was slow. The heroism of Leningrad's defenders -- civilian and military -- inspired Composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who was one of them, to write a symphony about the Battle of Leningrad, as Tchaikovsky had memorialized Napoleon's retreat in his classic 1812 Overture. In October the German news agency, attempting to explain Leningrad's survival, said there was no reason for 'a prestige attack on this city, in which probably every cellar is loaded with dynamite.'

"The Russians' fight for their motherland stood with the R.A.F.'s defense of Britain. Its implications were immediate and worldwide. Winston Churchill, who had battled Communism for a quarter century, sided with Stalin: 'If Hitler invaded Hell I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.' In the U.S. President Roosevelt received the vociferous support of the Communist party and its organ the Daily Worker, which had castigated him since 1939 as an imperialist warmonger. Roosevelt followed Churchill's lead; five weeks after Hitler invaded Russia he sent Harry Hopkins to find out what Stalin needed. (Stalin said antiaircraft guns, aluminum, machine guns, rifles.) Although it was not yet August, the Russian dictator convinced Hopkins his troops could stop Hitler. The Grand Alliance was about to be forged."

Just below the foregoing text, there is a photograph, on page 66, that occupies two-thirds of the page, showing a huge, land-based artillery piece just after it had been fired, with between 15 and 20 Geman soldiers engaged in tending it, the caption of which read, "For 515 days the Nazis bombarded Leningrad with big siege guns like this. Here, after firing, gunners wheel up another shell."

On the following page are several photographs, the caption under one of which tells a famous story about the siege of Leningrad: "Soviet trucks brought supplies across the winter ice of Lake Ladoga after the Germans blocked all land routes to Leningrad."