Informative, Readable, Superb | The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad

Superb example of how history should be written | The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad | Harrison Salisbury

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	• The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad Harrison Salisbury Da Capo Press, 2003 - 672 pages average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Surviving the Deadliest Battle in Human History

If "war is hell," as General Sherman said, then at the innermost circle of hell you'll find the 900-day siege of Leningrad (now renamed St. Petersburg). It was, by all accounts, the deadliest battle in human history. More than 300,000 Soviet soldiers perished, plus uncounted thousands of Germans. Inside the blockade zone, an estimated 1.2 million civilians slowly starved to death as Hitler and Stalin used the city like a giant chess piece on the Eastern Front.

The late Harrison Salisbury captured this epic struggle better than anyone else in "The 900 Days," a book every student of 20th century history should read at least once. He begins the story with Leningrad at peace during the balmy "white nights" of June 1941. Culture is flourishing throughout the city. Composers, writers, musicians and artists are busy at work. Families are vacationing on the Baltic coast. Meanwhile, Stalin and his minions are in a massive state of denial about the coming Nazi assault, despite dozens of warnings and signs.

After the first few fascinating chapters, "The 900 Days" can be slow going as Salisbury details the military intrigue and paranoia that decimated the Soviet leadership in the years leading up to the siege, which yielded tragic consequences for Russian defenses in 1941 and 1942. If you're primarily interested in the human side of the story, skip to Part IV on page 393.

The emotional core of this book is the immense civilian catastrophe that took place during the 2.5 year siege. Despite heroic attempts by local citizens and Young Communist brigades, the city became a slow-motion killing zone without nearly enough food, fuel or even fresh water to sustain the population. People resorted to the most desperate and barbaric measures to stay alive. (Warning: Not for children or the squeamish.) Compassion and brutality roamed the streets simultaneously.

Ultimately, the siege was broken in January 1944, but not before Leningrad was largely destroyed. Stalin gets much of the blame for failing to evacuate more civilians earlier on. But the real lesson of "The 900 Days" is that human suffering has no limit in times of war. Let's not forget that before we start another one.

Final note: This book is relatively short on maps, photos and diagrams. Some courageous publisher should republish the book with a complete set of photos from the period, many of which are available at the St. Petersburg library.

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Informative, Readable, Superb

This gripping narrative looks at the horrific siege of Leningrad from 1941-1944. Author Harrison Salisbury opens by examining Soviet Russia on the eve of the June, 1941 invasion - when commanders that suspected a German attack dared not prepare and risk the wrath of Stalin. Then the author describes the invasion, the approach of Nazi tank columns, and the surrounding of Leningrad's 2.5 million residents (and 500,000 defenders) at the end of August, 1941. Readers learn of the city's leadership, its battered but defiant defenders, and Stalin's machinations. The author devotes many chapters to the horrific winter of 1941-1942, when the besieged city ran out of food and coal. Imagine trying to survive on daily food rations of a few ounces of bread, in a frozen city with no heat or electricity, and with German bombs and shells falling daily. Dogs, cats, and birds disappeared into frying pans, and brave truckers brought in some supplies over a frozen Lake Lagoda, but over 250,000 civilians died of starvation during that first winter. After describing that horrific first winter, the author bascially fast forwards to the massive Russian offensive in January of 1944 that ended the siege. Then he concludes with a brief post-war epilogue that mentions survivors, rebuilding, and Stalin's brutal purge of the city's leadership.

Journalist Harrison Salisbury (1908-1993) wrote readable prose that almost makes us feel as if we're inside Leningrad during the siege. His book does need better maps - even with a handy atlas I couldn't locate every town and river mentioned. Still this is gripping history, considered by some as definitive, and well worth your time. Readers might also enjoy many of the author's other works on Russia, China, etc.

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Superb example of how history should be written

Salisbury gave us a monumental work of history: not just in scope, but in depth. This is a book which entwines the epic story with the human story, basing both on the kind of scholarship too few writers are dedicated enough to accomplish. I wrote a well-received history on the early satellites (The First Space Race, Texas A&M, 2004) which I was proud of, but I can't resist the feeling that Salisbury did as much research for every chapter as I did for an entire book.
As always with a well-written history, there are lessons which are important for our own times. The most striking example comes at the beginning of the book, where the reader learns the German invasion of Russia was anything but the complete surprise Russan leaders claimed it was. The German preperations were too large to hide, and all kinds of intelligence, even exact dates, made it into the briefings given to the Russian leadership. But Stalin had his own view of the way things were, and anything to the contrary was ignored or disparaged. The Russians were also victimized by a system in which initiative was dangerous: military and civilian officials who read the tea leaves and tried to take some preparatory action on their own were slapped down. Salisbury shows us, in sometimes-agonizing detail, how these factors resulted in what may have been the most brutal, dehumanizing, and costly battle in history. I agree with some other reviewers that more maps and photographs would be useful, but that's a minor quibble.
This book is a breathtaking achivement.

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A Classic Shows its Age

Straight up, the Siege of Leningrad lasted either 872 or 880 days, depending on whether you begin the count from the German capture of Mga or Shlissel'burg, not 900 days. I guess "The 880 Days" didn't sound so good as a book title, but in any case, deliberately mis-labeling a historical event is not a good way to write a history of that event. Harrison E. Salisbury's The 900 Days was a sensation when it first appeared in the West in 1969 since it was really the first major book in English that covered the epic siege of Leningrad in any detail. Furthermore, compared to the white-washed Soviet histories of the Great Patriotic War which attempted to conceal that over one million civilians died in Leningrad during the siege, Salisbury's book was brutally frank and honest. I remember reading this book in the early 1970s and considered it quite good. However, The 900 Days has not aged well and now nearly forty years after it first appeared, the value of this book has been reduced by over-reliance on too narrow a source base and the author's acceptance of Soviet-era falsehoods. When I re-read this book recently, I saw a journalistic account that is riddled in places with factual inaccuracies or mistakes, some of which it is clear that the author never bothered to check. Also, The 900 Days, like David Glantz's more recent books on Leningrad only focuses on the Soviet perspective, while failing to address the German or Finnish sides in any detail. Furthermore, the book really only covers the first year of the siege in any depth; the remaining two years are glossed over quickly in the final chapter. Nevertheless, The 900 Days is very well written in parts and it remains a `classic' in conveying the suffering endured by the people of Leningrad. Yet given its limitations, the book should now be viewed as an introduction to the siege, rather than a definitive history.

The 900 Days is divided into five parts. Part I, "The Night Without End," should have been called "the introduction without end," because the author spends an interminable 130 pages - nearly a quarter of the book - describing events before the German invasion. It is particularly annoying in the manner in which the author describes how a host of minor characters heard about rumors of war approaching and his depiction of Leningrad as a sun-filled `paradise' with women wearing diamonds and children eating ice-cream. No Stalinist-repression or Gulags here, please. Everything was happy, happy before the war. Part II, "The Summer War," comprises about 140 pages and is easily the best section in the book, detailing the German advance toward Leningrad and the desperate Soviet measures to erect hasty defenses. The role of Leningrad Party boss Andrei Zhdanov is particularly well covered (he had already been exorcised from post-war Soviet histories, so Salisbury's account may remain the definitive one on this character) and Salisbury is at pains to point out that Zhukov's brief role at Leningrad was less vital that the standard "the General-who-never-lost-a-battle" histories depict. Salisbury does mention German plans and actions from time to time, but mostly at high-level. Soviet units and some commanders are mentioned - the role of engineer Bychevsky is interesting - but there are very few front-line accounts. There are a significant number of factual errors - such as the frequent claim that the German paratroopers were frequently used in airborne drops in this sector (there were frequent rumors of this in July-August 1941 because of the German airborne attack on Crete in May 1941, but the author failed to `weed out' wartime rumors), that entire German units were destroyed, etc. He claims that the German commander for Leningrad was going to be "SS General Knut" when there was no such officer in the Wehrmacht or SS. At least Salisbury admits - unlike Soviet sources - that it isn't clear why the Germans failed to continue the offensive in September 1941 when Leningrad's defenses were crumbling.

Part III, "Leningrad in Blockade," covers the German encirclement of the city and also is well written, although marred by a number of factual errors. Part IV, "The Longest Winter," is really the heart of the book and this is the section that most readers will remember, with all its somber details about a civilian population starving to death en masse. The final section, "Breaking the Iron Ring," is only 50 pages long and covers the period summer 1942 to January 1944 in a twinkling (and skips over several Soviet disastrous offensives on the Volkhov). By this point, the author appeared to be running out of steam (or sources) and events are described briskly. In conclusion, the author estimates that one million or more civilians died in Leningrad during the siege, marking it as one of the most horrific experiences ever inflicted on a city(comparing it to Hiroshima and the 1870 siege of Paris).

First and foremost, The 900 Days is a journalistic account and the author has a predilection for `human interest' type anecdotes over narrative history, although some is provided. The author's focus on a group of Soviet `poets' (it seems like every other person is described as a poet) and `intellectuals' continues ad naseum throughout the book, but the author neglects that most of these favored `peacocks' were approved by the party (while other writers went to the Gulag). All in all, the 900 Days remains a classic of sorts and it remains the best depiction of the human tragedy in Leningrad, but as more historical material comes to light, its failings are becoming more evident with time.

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The Nazi siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944 was one of the most gruesome episodes of World War II. Nearly three million people endured it; just under half of them died. For twenty-five years the distinguished journalist and historian Harrison Salisbury pieced together this remarkable narrative of villainy and survival, in which the city had much to fear-from both Hitler and Stalin.

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