Leningrad

Leningrad Synopsis

When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, he intended to capture Leningrad before turning on Moscow. Soviet resistance forced him to change tactics:

• with his forward troops only thirty kilometres from the city's historic centre, he decided instead to starve it out. Using newly available diaries and government records, Anna Reid describes a city's descent into hell - the breakdown of electricity and water supply
• subzero temperatures
• the consumption of pets, joiner's glue and face cream
• the dead left unburied where they fell - but also the extraordinary endurance, bravery and self-sacrifice, despite the cruelty and indifference of the Kremlin