Leningrad - Tragedy of a City Under Siege, 1941 - 44

'28 December 1941 at 12.30am - Zhenya died. 25 January 1942 at 3pm - Granny died. 17 March at 5am - Lyoka died. 13 April at 2am - Uncle Vasya died. 10 May at 4pm - Uncle Lyosha died. 13 May at 7.30am - Mama died. The Savichevs are dead. Everyone is dead. Only Tanya is left.'

Thus wrote a twelve-year-old girl in the pages of a pocket address book during the siege of Leningrad, the deadliest blockade of a city in human history.

When Hitler made his surprise attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, his intention was to capture Leningrad - Russia's pre-revolutionary capital - before turning on Moscow. Soviet resistance forced him to change his mind: with his forward troops only thirty kilometres from the city's historic centre, he decided instead to starve it out. Leningrad did not surrender, but for the next two winters no food was able to reach it, nor refugees to leave, save by air or across Lake Ladoga to its east. By January 1944, when the Wehrmacht finally began its long retreat, an estimated 750,0000 civilians - a quarter to a third of Leningrad's entire pre-siege population - had died of hunger.

Format: Hardback - Excellent condition

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Published: 2011

ISBN: 9780747599524