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It's not an in-depth military history, for that you will have to look elsewhere (David Glantz and Harrison Salisbury). The book is full of sad and terrible accounts with the occasional uplifting story of the human spirit persevering against all odds.
While those in position of authority stuffed themselves with delicacies the average person tried to survive on an adulterated bread ration as low as 150 grams.Overall a decent account of this terrible WW2 siege, but for those who want more on the military aspects of the siege of Leningrad they may need to look elsewhere. One thing with this book was that I was quite taken back with the ineptitude of the Soviet command within the city and the abuse of power of those who made decisions affecting the lives of so many innocent people.
This is a decent book covering the World War Two siege of Leningrad. Some of the stories are fairly horrific with accounts of cannibalism and murder as morals break down with those slowly starving to death.
The book is full of first-hand accounts from those caught in the city and besieged by the German Army who had adopted a deliberate policy of starving the city to death.
Most of the accounts are from Russian civilians caught up in this terrible siege and generally cover the slow starvation of the city and its affects on the population.
In short, I thought a lot of what he said was over-simplified.Anyone who reads this book will probably already be aware of the malfeasance perpetrated on Soviet citizens by Stalinist officials so it serves little purpose to harp on about it continuously. I would actually say it helped in some ways because it stopped reader fatigue from setting in.While there are many positives to this book, there are nearly as many negatives. The positives outweigh the negatives and although I'm no expert on the Eastern Front in WWII, I have a better appreciation now than I had before, particularly of the human toll. Of particular note is the awful story of 12-year-old Tanya Savicheva who noted the passing of all of her family members until she was the only one left. Jones' hatred for Voroshilov might be entirely justified in his mind but it would make better history to provide more objective analysis rather than a 40-page diatribe against the man. The focus of the book is split fairly evenly between the military and civilian aspects of the campaign and from this point of view it makes a good introduction.The bulk of the book is concerned with the first year of the siege and the catastrophic toll it took on the people of Leningrad. I felt that this was a necessary issue to discuss and a positive aspect of the book.This book is a mixed bag. Writers know that you can attract a lot more reader attention and sympathy by creating notions of corruption and treachery than you can by being even handed.
The same might also be said of his references to Stalin, who is always going to be a lightning rod for severe criticism but it should be remembered that not everything he did was stupid or fanatical. Michael Jones' book is a good introduction to the Siege of Leningrad but suffers from a few problems which, while they are clearly intended to illustrate his points, often detract. It's things like that which give one a greater appreciation of how much worse things could be.Jones also goes into some detail on the lengths people went to get food and water. They ate just about anything. I can't say that for many books, least of all military history books which tend towards being clinical and technical.
I'm not fool enough to think that these things did not happen but he labours the point to the extent that the message is lost.Some of the stories like the woman praying for food and then receiving a package the next day just come off as trite to me.On the positive side, the stories of the citizens of Leningrad have actually left a mark on me. Such was the desperation of the time. I can't quite bring myself to give it 4 stars but it gets an honest 3. People ate furniture glue, leather belts and in some cases, they even ate each other. At that point it becomes almost ritualistic.Jones has used a very simple formula to tell the story: heroes and villains and fools. By early 1942 there were no animals left in Leningrad because they had all been eaten, rats included. Jones frequently hops between military and civilian topics and while many people might find this distracting, it was not a problem for me.
That was a story which affected me in quite a profound way. The villains are the government and apparatchik military leaders and the fools are the Wehrmacht. At that point it starts to sound less than credible. The heroes are the citizens and soldiers of the Soviet Union.
For seventeen months, until mid-January 1943, the Germans succeeded in blockading the city, cutting it off--except for an "ice road" over Lake Ladoga--from the rest of the country. Prof. Jones suggests that the total number of Leningrad deaths caused by the 872-day siege exceeded one million." [Read more at[.]. Even after the blockade was broken, the siege continued another year, until late January 1944, when Soviet troops pushed the Germans back far enough to end it. Walter Moss writes: "In Leningrad: State of Siege, British military historian Michael Jones mainly recounts the effects of the German siege on the people of Leningrad. Beginning in September 1941, it caused the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Leningraders, especially during the winter of 1941-2.
The people of Leningrad suffered horribly, but their spirit, in the end, was not broken. Even cannibalism was rampant in parts of the city. Mesanwile, the party leaders hoarded food and made sure that they and their families and well-connnected friends were well fed, and hardly noticed the tragedy unfolding around them.The book makes excellent use of contemporary diaries to highlight what actually happened during the siege, and there are many tales of both heroism & horror. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many secrets have been revealed about life under Communist rule. Read this book to discover the best and the worst about people in an almost impossible situation. That, of course, is not the true story, as this extremely well written book discloses. One of the events we now have a more balanced picture of is the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis beginning in 1941 and lasting almost 900 days.Official Soviet information centered on the heroic resolve of the citizens of Leningrad, led by their popular party leaders. The common people of the city suffered horribly, and the death toll was staggering.
He looks at aspects of the siege long-suppressed by the Soviets, and paints a very up-close-and-personal portrait of this difficult time. Stalin's dictatorship showed its flaws vividly in the first days and months of the war. (As reviewed in Russian Life) It is presented in eleven chapters that read like fine magazine journalism, each examining different facets of residents' experience in the besieged city, each as well-written and affecting as the last. Less than three months after Hitler attacked Russia in 1941, Leningrad was surrounded and besieged, forbidden from surrenderand therefore doomed to starvation. The tale was told in excruciating detail in Harrison Salisbury's 900 Days, and now historian Michael Jones provides a sobering update, Leningrad, by tapping into newly available eyewitness accounts and diaries.
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