The Siege of Leningrad in German Documents

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Scott Smith
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Re: Slighly Off-Topic but Germane, IMHO...

#151

Post by Scott Smith » 05 Sep 2002, 16:49

Roberto wrote:But, as atkif wonders, what, exactly, does this have to do with the subject of the Siege of Leningrad, Roberto?

Nothing, except that Smith likes to fish for distractions when he's got his back agains the wall and the Eternal Jew came in handy.
In spite of your desperate posturing, it still doesn't change the fact that no surrender offer was made to the Germans at Leningrad. Therefore, your whole Genocide-thesis is hogwash.
:wink:

Have a nice day!
:)
Last edited by Scott Smith on 09 Sep 2002, 10:12, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Slighly Off-Topic but Germane, IMHO...

#152

Post by Roberto » 05 Sep 2002, 17:11

Scott Smith wrote:
Roberto wrote:But, as atkif wonders, what, exactly, does this have to do with the subject of the Siege of Leningrad, Roberto?

Nothing, except that Smith likes to fish for distractions when he's got his back agains the wall and the Eternal Jew came in handy.
Scott Smith wrote:In spite of your desperate posturing,
The wishful thinking of a frustrated whiner.
Scott Smith wrote:[it still doesn't change the fact that no surrender offer was made to the Germans At Leningrad.
Which is perfectly irrelevant because accepting surrender was excluded rightaway and the last thing the besiegers were interested in. Learn to read, Mr. Smith.
Scott Smith wrote:[Therefore, your whole Genocide-thesis is hogwash.
:wink:
Hogwash is what Smith is full of.

Siege warfare aimed at total destruction and depopulation of a large urban center rather than the submission of an enemy stronghold is mass murder by the standards of law and reason, however often Smith repeats his nonsense.
Under international humanitarian law (IHL), siege is not prohibited per se. The capture of an enemy-controlled city is a legitimate military aim, and army commanders have often seen siege as less costly than the alternative—fighting house to house, street by street. Historically, a key element of siege warfare has been to reduce a town’s defenses and force its surrender by cutting off its vital supplies and leaving the population, civilian and military alike, to starve. Cruel as this tactic is, the laws of war permitted it at least until the end of World War II, under the rationale of military necessity.
Source of quote:

http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/siege.html

Emphasis is mine.

I don't see what the "military necessity" justifying the siege in question could possibly have been, aimed as it was not at forcing the surrender of an enemy stronghold, but at obliterating a whole city and getting rid of its inhabitants.
Scott Smith wrote:[Have a nice day!
:)
Same to you, buddy. Be careful not to slip in any of that bullshit of yours.


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#153

Post by Roberto » 05 Sep 2002, 20:45

The following three documents transcribed are reconnaissance reports on the situation inside Leningrad as a consequence of the German blockade.

12. Operational Situation Report (Ereignismeldung) UdSSR No. 154 of 12.1.1942 (Bundesarchiv, R 58/220)
[...]Erkundung Petersburg,
Bevölkerung:
Die Bevölkerung Leningrads hat sich mittlerweile an den ständigen Artilleriebeschuss derart gewöhnt, dass kaum jemand die Schutzräume aufsucht. [...] Die Verluste unter der Zivilbevölkerung sind demgemäss stark angestiegen. Trotzdem dürften die Verluste durch Artillerie und Bombeneinwirkung nach übereinstimmenden Schätzungen aufs Ganze gesehen gering sein und nur einige Tausend Personen betragen. Demgegenüber sollen in der letzten Zeit sich die Fälle von Hungertod beträchtlich vermehrt haben und in den letzten Wochen etwa das Vierfache der Verluste durch Artilleriebeschuss ausmachen. So wurde beispielsweise am 17. Dezember von einer Person auf der Statschekstrasse, zwischen Narwa-Tor und Stadtrand, also auf einer Strecke von 5 Kilometer beobachtet, dass allein 6 Personen entkräftet zusammenbrachen und liegenblieben. Diese Fälle häufen sich bereits derart, dass sich niemand mehr um die liegengebliebenen Personen kümmert, zumal bei der allgemeinen Entkräftung auch die Wenigsten in der Lage sind, tatkräftige Hilfe zu leisten. [...]
My translation:
[...]Reconnaissance Petersburg,
Population:
The people of Leningrad has in the meantime become so used to the constant artillery bombardment that hardly anybody goes to the shelters. [...] The losses among the civilian population have thus greatly increased. Nevertheless the losses from the effect of artillery and bombs should, according to coincident estimates, be low on the whole and amount to only several thousand persons. On the other hand the cases of death by starvation are said to have increased considerably in the last time and to have made up about four times the losses from artillery fire in the past weeks. So for instance on 17 December a person in the Statshek Street, between the Narva Gate and the city limits, saw 6 persons collapsing from exhaustion and lying where they fell over a distance of 5 kilometers. These cases are already increasing to such an extent that no one any longer takes care of the persons lying on the street, especially as due to the general exhaustion only very few are in conditions to provide effective help. [...]

13. Operational Situation Report (Ereignismeldung) UdSSR No. 170 of 18.2.1942 (Bundesarchiv, R 58/220)
[...]Schon im Dezember wiesen große Teile der Zivilbevölkerung Leningrads Hungerschwellungen auf. Es passierte immer wieder, daß Personen auf den Strassen zusammenbrachen und tot liegen blieben. Im Laufe des Januar begann nun unter der Zivilbevölkerung ein regelrechtes Massensterben. Namentlich in den Abendstunden werden die Leichen auf Handschlitten aus den Häusern nach den Kirchhöfen gefahren, wo sie, wegen der Unmöglichkeit, den hartgefrorenen Boden aufzugraben, einfach in den Schnee geworfen werden. In der letzten Zeit sparen sich die Angehörigen meist die Mühe des Weges bis zum Friedhof und laden die Leichen schon unterwegs am Strassenrand ab. Ein Überläufer machte sich Ende Januar die Mühe, an einer verkehrsreichen Strasse in Leningrad am Nachmittag die vorübergeführten Handschlitten mit Leichen zu zählen und kam im Verlauf einer Stunde auf eine Zahl von 100. Vielfach werden Leichen auch schon in den Höfen und auf umfriedeten freien Plätzen gestapelt. Ein im Hof eines zerstörten Wohnblocks angelegter Leichenstapel war etwa 2 m hoch und 20 m lang. Vielfach werden die Leichen aber gar nicht erst aus den Wohnungen abtransportiert, sondern bloß in ungeheizte Räume gestellt. In den Luftschutzräumen findet man häufig Tote, für deren Abtransport nichts geschieht. Auch beispielsweise im Alexanderowskaja-Krankenhaus sind in den ungeheizten Räumen, Gängen und im Hofe 1 200 Leichen abgestellt. Schon Anfang Januar wurde die Zahl der täglichen Todesopfer des Hungers und der Kälte mit 2 - 3 000 angegeben. Ende Januar ging in Leningrad das Gerücht, daß täglich bereits an die 15 000 Menschen sterben und im Laufe der letzten 3 Monate bereits 200 000 Menschen Hungers gestorben seien. Auch diese Zahl ist im Verhältnis zur Gesamtbevölkerung nicht allzu hoch. Es ist aber zu berücksichtigen, daß sich die Todesopfer mit jeder Woche ungeheuer steigern werden, wenn die jetzigen Verhältnisse - Hunger und Kälte - bestehen bleiben. Die eingesparten Lebensmittelrationen auf die einzelnen verteilt sind jedoch ohne Bedeutung. In besonderem Maße sollen Kinder Opfer des Hungers werden, namentlich Kleinkinder, für die es keine Nahrung gibt. In der letzten Zeit soll zudem noch eine Pockenepidemie ausgebrochen sein, die außerdem noch unter den Kindern zahlreich Opfer fordert.[...]
My translation:
[...]Already in December a great part of the population showed hunger swellings. It happened again and again that persons broke down on the streets and lay there dead. In the course of January now there commenced a veritable mass dying among the population. Namely in the evening hours the corpses were drawn on hand sleds from the houses to the cemeteries, where due to impossibility of digging up the frozen ground they were simply thrown into the snow. Lately the relatives save themselves the effort of going to the cemetery and already unload the corpses on the way at the edge of the road. A defector undertook at the end of January to count the passing hand sleds with corpses on a traffic-rich street of Leningrad in the afternoon and counted 100 within an hour. In many cases the corpses were piled up in yards and on fenced-in free squares. A pile of corpses in the yard of a destroyed apartment block was about 2 meters high and 20 meters long. In many cases, however, the bodies are not even taken out of the apartments but only placed in unheated rooms. In the air raid shelters one often finds dead for whose removal nothing is done. Also for example in the Alexanderowskaja hospital there are about 1,200 corpses placed in the unheated rooms, aisles and in the yard. Already at the beginning of January the number of daily victims of starvation and cold was given at 2 – 3,000. At the end of January the rumor ran in Leningrad that already 15,000 people were dying every day and in the last 3 months 200,000 people had died of hunger. This number is not all too high in relation to the total population. It must be taken into account, however, that the number of dead will increase greatly with every week if the present conditions - hunger and cold – are maintained. The food rations saved and distributed to individuals have no influence.
Especially children are said to become victims of the hunger, namely small children for whom there is no food. Lately also a smallpox epidemic is said to have broken out, which additionally claimed many victims among the children.[...]

14. Operational Situation Report (Ereignismeldung) UdSSR No. 191 of 10.4.1942 (Bundesarchiv, R 58/221)
[...] In gesteigertem Masse wurde die Verbindungsstrasse über das Eis des Ladoga-Sees von den Leningrader Behörden auch weiterhin nicht nur zur Heranschaffung von Kriegsmaterial und Lebensmitteln, sondern in gesteigerten Masse auch zur Evakuierung eines Teils der Bevölkerung nach dem Innern der Sowjetunion benutzt.[...]
Umfangmässig weit bedeutender als der Abzug über den Ladogasee ist die Verminderung der Leningrader Bevölkerung durch das unverändert anhaltende Massensterben. Die angegebenen Zahlen der täglichen Todesfälle schwanken, liegen aber durchweg über 8 000. Die Todesursachen sind Hunger, Erschöpfung, Herzschwäche und Darmkrankheiten.[...]
My translation:
[...] The road across the ice of Lake Ladoga continues to be used by the Leningrad authorities not only to bring in war material and food, but increasingly also to evacuate a part of the population to the inner Soviet Union.[...]
Much more important in terms of numbers than the evacuation across Lake Ladoga is the reduction of the population of Leningrad due to the mass dying that continues to occur without a change. The indicated numbers of daily deaths vary, but always lie above 8,000. The causes of death are hunger, exhaustion, heart failure and intestine diseases.[...]

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Re: Slighly Off-Topic but Germane, IMHO...

#154

Post by atkif » 05 Sep 2002, 22:48

Scott Smith wrote:
In spite of your desperate posturing, it still doesn't change the fact that no surrender offer was made to the Germans At Leningrad. Therefore, your whole Genocide-thesis is hogwash.
No it is not.Read carefully the documents provided .Read ..
What the Nazis prepared for Leningrad is plain Genocide.
Your pathetic attempts to deny
the facts could be really called "hogwash".

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#155

Post by Scott Smith » 05 Sep 2002, 23:36

Sorry, atkif, but your rendering of siege-warfare as being in any way unusual or uniquely Genocidal is just paranoid fantasy. Roberto's carefully-culled documents prove nothing. Without a surrender offer made, and rejected, presumably so that the killing could continue apace, there is no merit whatever to your arguments.

I doubt if you are going to ever realize this. But your attempts at character-assassination are not really arguments in your favor. It is perfectly okay not to agree with me; the important thing is that you agree-to-disagree with me. If you cannot do that then you are a hateful, prejudiced man. I hope not.
:)

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#156

Post by atkif » 06 Sep 2002, 00:29

Yes it would be perfect to lead the discussion in the "agree to disagree
manner ".The problems however begin when the opponent don't want to admitt the obvious facts.
Milk is white and coal is black.If "to agree to disagree" about this the discussion lose any sense.
There shoud be some rationality in the argumentations.
Stubbornly denying is not "agree to disagree"
approach .
This is just simple trickery.
That is the reason why I was mentioning Machiavelli.

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Historiography 101

#157

Post by Scott Smith » 06 Sep 2002, 00:41

atkif wrote:Stubbornly denying is not "agree to disagree" approach.
Am I denying you or are you denying me? :wink:
There should be some rationality in the argumentations.
My arguments are perfectly rational; they just differ from your interpretations.
This is just simple trickery. That is the reason why I was mentioning Machiavelli.
Your word "trickery" implies something nefarious and dishonest--an attempt at character-assassination.
Milk is white and coal is black. If "to agree to disagree" about this the discussion lose any sense.
With History, things are seldom truly black-and-white, however much we might like them to be.
:)
Marc Bloch wrote: "Unfortunately the habit of passing judgments leads to a loss of taste for explanations. When the passions of the past blend with the prejudices of the present, human reality is reduced to a picture in black and white."

(French Historiographer and Martyr, 1886-1944)

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Re: Historiography 101

#158

Post by atkif » 06 Sep 2002, 06:57

Scott Smith wrote
atkif wrote:
There should be some rationality in the argumentations.
My arguments are perfectly rational; they just differ from your interpretations.
No way they are "perfectly rational''.What kind of rationality is it -denying
the absolutely obvious fact ?
To

Army Group North

According to directives of the Supreme Command the following is ordered:
1.) The city of Leningrad is to be sealed of by a ring to be taken as close as possible to the city in order to save forces. A capitulation is not to be required
Is this what you call rational argumentation. ?
What about this extract ?
It is to be deprived of its life and defense capacity by crushing the enemy air defense and fighter planes and destroying waterworks, stores and sources of light and pow
Scott wrote
With History, things are seldom truly black-and-white, however much we might like them to be.
No sir.Killing is killing.Crime is crime.No ambiguity about it when there is the documented evidence
The intentions to murder are criminal .
Denying this fact is indicative of some bias or flaws of the denier.

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#159

Post by Roberto » 06 Sep 2002, 10:42

Scott Smith wrote:Sorry, atkif, but your rendering of siege-warfare as being in any way unusual or uniquely Genocidal is just paranoid fantasy.
Siege warfare is not "unusual or uniquely genocidal" per se, as a matter of fact.

It only acquires those qualities when not being dictated by a military necessity, which is what we have here.

The siege of Leningrad was aimed not at forcing the surrender of an enemy stronghold - a legitimate military objective - , but at obliterating a city of millions and getting rid of its inhabitants.

By any means necessary, as Malcolm X would have said.

That makes it an exception to the rule.

That makes it genocidal.
Scott Smith wrote:Roberto's carefully-culled documents
Bullshit makes the grass grow green.

Just what "culling" is supposed to have been done by whom, and what indication can Smith show us that such "culling" in any way constitutes a misrepresentation of the documentary evidence?
Scott Smith wrote:prove nothing.
Except that Smith's beloved Nazis would rather cause the entire population of Leningrad to die than have it on their hands and that they implemented siege warfare knowing very well that this was the likeliest of desired outcomes.

That's nothing, really.
Scott Smith wrote:Without a surrender offer made, and rejected, presumably so that the killing could continue apace, there is no merit whatever to your arguments.
The bull I might have shot if it had been my duty to defend Jodl or Halder as an attorney in court, but bull nevertheless.

The criminal nature of a "no prisoners" - order, which is basically what we got here, does not depend on whether those targeted by it die fighting or actually make an effort to surrender.

Smith also conveniently overlooks that the interdiction to accept surrender is but one indicator of the besiegers' genocidal intentions that led them to implement siege warfare.

What becomes apparent from the documentary evidence shown is that they were not interested in gaining control of Leningrad by even the easiest means if that meant having a large urban population on their hands to feed and accomodate, and that they thus chose siege warfare instead of other possible alternatives (taking the city with tanks and infantry like they had taken others before or demanding its capitulation) not in order to bring about the capture of the city, but in order to get rid of its population.

Even if that meant all of the city's inhabitants dying of starvation, which except for progagandistic and troop morale considerations leading to half-hearted moderations of this murder plan was clearly the outcome the besiegers preferred.
Scott Smith wrote:I doubt if you are going to ever realize this.
I also doubt that anyone other than Smith and fellow "Revisionists" will ever realize that two plus two makes five.
Scott Smith wrote:But your attempts at character-assassination are not really arguments in your favor.
Since when is calling propaganda bullshit by it's proper name and it's proponent an ideologically motivated propagandist "character-assassination" (whatever that is supposed to mean) Mr. Smith?

I'd say it's an honest statement of fact based on empirical observation.
Scott Smith wrote:It is perfectly okay not to agree with me; the important thing is that you agree-to-disagree with me.
Agreement to disagree requires arguable arguments on both sides. I haven't seen any such from Smith so far.
Scott Smith wrote:If you cannot do that then you are a hateful, prejudiced man. :)
Dear wrong, Mr. Smith.

It doesn't take hate to realize that there is nothing coming from you worth an "agreement to disagree".

It takes nothing other than elementary common sense and absence of gullibility and ideological bias.

The willingness to look at the naked facts, in other words.

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#160

Post by atkif » 06 Sep 2002, 12:07

Scott
There is a Russian sayng: "chewed up and put in your mouth ".
That's what Roberto did for you.
You are of course aware that your " case'' is lost..Roberto elaborated the meanings of the documents to the extend it would not be understood only
by a hedgehog.
You are not a hedgehog ( I hope ) so you understand what's right.
So the conclusion can be made that you pretend not to comprehend
the documents's meaning.And this is not because I am "prejudice and hateful man".This is because such a conclusion is
begging to be made.
Regards

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#161

Post by Roberto » 06 Sep 2002, 12:38

atkif wrote:Scott
There is a Russian sayng: "chewed up and put in your mouth ".
That's what Roberto did for you.
You are of course aware that your " case'' is lost..Roberto elaborated the meanings of the documents to the extend it would not be understood only
by a hedgehog.
You are not a hedgehog ( I hope ) so you understand what's right.
So the conclusion can be made that you pretend not to comprehend
the documents's meaning.And this is not because I am "prejudice and hateful man".This is because such a conclusion is
begging to be made.
Regards
atkif,

please stop tormenting the poor guy. :wink:

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#162

Post by atkif » 06 Sep 2002, 12:51

:oops: 8)

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#163

Post by Roberto » 06 Sep 2002, 12:54

The following quotes are from:

Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days. The Siege of Leningrad. Avon Books, New York, 1970

Page 383
[…]Hitler insisted that von Leeb draw the tightest kind of circle around Leningrad. Secretly, the Führer instructed von Leeb that the city’s capitulation was not to be accepted. The population was to die with the doomed city. Random shelling of civilian objectives was authorized. If the populace tried to escape the iron ring, they were to be shot down.
No hint of this brutal decision was made public.[…]


Pages 468 and following
On December 8 [1941] Meretskov’s Fourth Army fought into Tikhvin. By December 9 the city was firmly in Soviet hands again. It had been held by the Germans precisely one month. Its recapture on the seventieth day of the siege was the first real sign that the lines around Leningrad could be held, that the second ring could not be fastened about the northern capital, that the Nazi dream of striking to the east of Vologda and cutting off Moscow from the rear, from Siberia, from America, would be thwarted.
It coincided with a directive signed by Hitler December 8, No. 59, in which he ordered Army Group North to strengthen its control of the railroad and highway from Tikhvin and Volkhov to Kolchanovo in order to secure the possibility of joining hands with the Finns in Karelia.
Tikhvin was a real victory. Whether it would save Leningrad and its millions of people, now entering the skeletal world of starvation, of life without heat, without light, without transport, no one knew for certain.
[…]
The Germans did not think so. Colonel General Halder, the diarist of the Wehrmacht, jotted down under the date of December 13: “The Commander of the army group is inclined to the view – after the failure of all attempts by the enemy to liquidate our foothold on the Neva – that we may expect the complete starvation of Leningrad.”
Pages 483 and following
To give the starving, freezing people hope to help them to survive the New Year and the recapture of Mga, hundreds of meetings were held throughout the city – in the ice-festooned factories (hardly a plant was operating now – on December 19, 184 plants had been put on a one-, two- or three-day week); in the windowless government offices; in the apartment houses where burned small burzhuiki –makeshift stoves. The word was passed on to all: by January 1 Leningrad will be liberated; the circle will be broken; Mga will be retaken.
But Mga was not retaken. Even before New Year’s Day it was suddenly plain to Zhdanov that his Christmas optimism had been ill-founded. The terrible truth was that the Soviet troops had neither the physical strength nor the munitions to dislodge the Nazis.
The Red Army men were weak and sick. A report as of January 10 showed 45 percent of the units of the Leningrad front and 63 percent of the Fifty-fifth Army units understrength. There were 32 divisions on the front. Of these, 14 were only up to 30 percent of strength. Some infantry regiments were only at 17 to 21 percent of authorized manpower.
Now was there any way to bolster their ranks. […]
These replacements hardly matched the Red Army’s losses. From October, 1941 to April, 1942, 353,424 troops reported sick or wounded, an average of 50,000 a month or 1,700 a day. Half of these were ill, largely of dystrophy and other starvation ailments. More than 62,000 troops came down with dystrophy from November, 1941, to the end of spring. The number ill with scurvy reached 20,000 in April, 1942. Deaths due to starvation diseases were 12,416, nearly 20 percent of troops on sick call, in the winter of 1942.
Pages 555 and following
[…]On Nakhimson Prospekt Luknitsky found his sled colliding with those of others passing him with corpses. One was a sled on which there were two corpses, the body of a woman with long hair trailing in the snow and that of a small girl, probably ten years old. He passed carefully in order to avoid tangling the whitish-yellow hair of the corpse with the runner of his sled.
On the Volodarsky near the Liteiny Bridge he encountered a five-ton truck with a mountain of bodies. Farther on he met two old women who were conveying their corpses to the cemetery in style. They had hitched their sleds to an army sledge which was slowly pulled through the streets by a pair of starving horses. There he met the shadow of a man who carried nestled to his breast and incredibly thin dog – one of the rarest of city sights. The eyes of both the man and the dog were filled with hunger and terror, the dog’s terror, no doubt, because he sensed his fate and the man’s, perhaps, because he feared someone might rob him of the dog and he would not have the strength to defend his possession.
So Luknitsky walked through the city, passing hundreds of people, struggling to survive, pulling the corpses of their relatives towards hospitals and cemeteries, pulling their little sleds bearing pails of water.
Among the hundreds he met another kind as well – a man with a fat, self-satisfied face, well-fed, with greedy eyes. Who was this man? Possibly, a store worker, a speculator, an apartment house manager who stole the ration cards of the tenants as they died and with the aid of his mistress exchanged the miserable bread rations in the Haymarket for gold watches, for rich silks, for diamonds or old silver and golden rubles. The conversation of this man and his mistress would not be of survival, of how to live through their terrible times. On such things this man would merely spit. Was he a speculator? A murderer? A cannibal? There was little difference; each was trading on the lives of starving, dying people, each was living on the flesh of his fellows.
For such persons there was only one recourse. They must be shot.
Luknitsky met Red Army men, too. They were as thin and weak as the civilians. He passed two soldiers, half-carrying a third. Most of them, despite their weakness, tried to walk with a bold step.[…]
Pages 590 and following
On Aril 15 [1942] Leningrad marked the 248th day of siege. The city had survived. But the cost had no equal in modern times. In March the Leningrad Funeral Trust buried 89,968 persons. In April the total rose to 102,497. Some of these burials were due to clean-up, but the death rate was probably higher in April than in any other month of the blockade.
There now remained in Leningrad, with evacuation at an end, 1,100,000 persons. The total of ration cards was 800,000 less than in January. When Leningrad’s supply resources - the 58 days of flour, the 140 days of meat and fish - were calculated, it was on the basis of a population on April 15 only one-third of what it had been when the blockade began August 30 with the loss of Mga.
More people had died in the Leningrad blockade than had ever died in a modern city - anywhere - anytime: more than ten times the number who died in Hiroshima.
(Footnote: Deaths at Hiroshima August 6, 1945, were 78,150, with 13,983 missing and 37,426 wounded. In another tragedy of World War II, the Warsaw uprising, between 56,000 and 60,000 died.)
By comparison with the great sieges of the past Leningrad was unique. The siege of Paris had lasted only 121 days, from September 19, 1870 to January 27, 1871. The total population, military and civilian, was on the order of one million. Noncombatant deaths from all causes in Paris during November, December and three weeks of January were only 30,236, about 16,000 higher than in the comparable period of the preceding year. The Parisians ate horses, mules, cats, dogs and possibly rats. There was a raid on the Paris zoo and a rhinoceros was killed and butchered. There were no authenticated instances of cannibalism. Food was scarce, but whine was plentiful.
In the great American siege, that of Vicksburg between May 18 and July 4, 1863, only 4,000 civilians were involved, although the Confederate military force was upwards of 30,000. About 2,500 persons were killed in the siege, including 119 women and children. No known deaths from starvation occurred. Horses, mules, dogs and kittens were eaten and possibly rats.
Leningrad exceeded the total Paris civil casualties on any two or three winter days. The Vicksburg casualties, military and civil, were exceeded in Leningrad by starvation deaths on any January, February, March or April day.
How many people died in the Leningrad blockade? Even with careful calculation the total may be inexact by several hundred thousand.
The most honest declaration was an official Soviet response to a Swedish official inquiry published in Red Star, the Soviet Army newspaper, June 28, 1964, which said: “No one knows exactly how many people died in Leningrad and the Leningrad area.”
The official figure announced by the Soviet government of deaths by starvation - civilian deaths by hunger in the city of Leningrad alone - was 632,253. An additional 16,747 persons were listed as killed by bombs and shells, providing a total of Leningrad civilian deaths of 649,000. To this were added deaths in nearby Pushkin and Peterhof, bringing the total of starvation deaths to 641,803 and of deaths from all war causes to 671,635. These figures were attested to by the Leningrad City Commission to Investigate Nazi Atrocities and were submitted at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946.
The Commission figures are incomplete in many respects. They do not cover many Leningrad areas, including Oranienburg, Sestroretsk and the suburban parts of the blockade zone. Soviet sources no longer regard the Commission totals, which apparently were drawn up in May, 1944, as authoritative, although they were prepared by an elaborate apparatus of City and Regional Party officials, headed by Party Secretary Kuznetsov. A total of 6,445 local commissions carried out the task, and more than 31,000 persons took part. Individual lists of deaths were made up for each region. The regional lists carried 440,826 names, and a general city-wide list added 191,427 names, providing the basic Commission-reported total of 632,253.
Impressive evidence has been compiled by Soviet scholars to demonstrate the incompleteness of the Commission’s total. All official Leningrad statistics are necessarily inaccurate because of the terrible conditions of the winter of 1941-42. The official report of deaths for December, 53,000, may be fairly complete, but for January and February the figures are admittedly poor. Estimates of daily deaths in these months run from 3,500 to 4,000 a day to 8,000. The only total available gives deaths for the period as 199,187. This is offered by Dimitri Pavlov. It represents deaths officially reported to authorities (probably in connection with the turning in of ration cards of the deceased). The number of unregistered deaths is known to be much higher. The Funeral Trust buried 89,968 bodies in March (it has no records for January and February), 102,497 in April and 53,562 in May. It continued to bury 4,000 to 5,000 bodies a month through the autumn of 1942, although by this time Leningrad’s population had been cut by more than 75 percent. Thus mortality as a result of the blockade and starvation continued at a high rate through the whole year.
The Funeral Trust buried 460,000 bodies from November, 1941, to the end of 1942. In addition, it is estimated that private individuals, work teams of soldiers and others transported 228,263 bodies from morgues to cemeteries from December, 1941 through December, 1942.
No exact accounting of bodies delivered to cemeteries was possible in Leningrad during the winter months, when thousands of corpses lay in the streets and were picked up like cordwood, transported to Piskarevsky, Volkov, Tatar, Bolshaya Okhta, Serafimov, and Bogoslovsky cemeteries and to the larger squares at Vesely Poselok (Jolly Village) and the Glinozemsky Zavod for burial in mass graves, dynamited in the frozen earth by miliary miners.
Leningrad had a civilian population of about 2,280,000 in January, 1942. By the close of evacuation via the ice road in April, 1942, the population was estimated at 1,100,000 - a reduction of 1,180,000, of whom 440,000 had been evacuated via the ice road. Another 120,000 went to the front or were evacuated in May and June. This would indicate a minimum of deaths within the city of about 620,000 in the first half of 1942. Official statistics show that about 1,093,695 persons were buried and about 110,000 cremated from July, 1941, through July, 1942.
To take another approach, Leningrad had about 2,500,000 residents at the start of the blockade, including about 100,000 refugees. At the end of 1943 as the 900 days were drawing to a close, Leningrad had a population of about 600,000 - less than a quarter the number of residents at the time Mga fell August 30, 1941.
The most careful calculation suggests that about 1,000,000 Leningraders were evacuated during the blockade: 33,479 by water across Ladoga in the fall of 1941; 35,114 by plane in November-December, 1941; 36,118 by the Ladoga ice road in December, 1941, and up to January 22, 1942; 440,000 by Ladoga from January 22 to April 15; 448,694 by Ladoga water transport from May to November, 1942; 15,000 during 1943. In addition, perhaps 100,000 Lenigraders went to the front with the armed forces.
This suggests that not less than 800,000 persons died of starvation within Leningrad during the blockade.
But the 800,000 total does not include the thousands who died in the suburban regions and during evacuation. These totals were very large. For instance, at the tiny little station of Borisova Griva on Ladoga 2,200 persons died from January to April 15, 1942. The Leningrad Encyclopedia estimates deaths during evacuation at “tens of thousands”.
What is the actual death total for Leningrad? Mikhail Dudin, a Leningrad poet who fought at Hangö and spent the whole of the siege within the lines of Leningrad, suggests that it was a minimum of 1,100,000. He offers this simple figure on the basis of 800,000 bodies estimated buried in mass graves at Piskarevsky Cementery and 300,000 at Serafimov cemetery. There is more than a little truth in the observation of the Leningrad poet, Sergei Davydov, regarding Piskarevsky: “Here lies half the city.”
No official calculation includes a total for military deaths, and no official figures on these have been published. It is known, however, that 12,416 military deaths attributed to hunger diseases occurred in the winter of 1941-42. Overall military deaths are likely to have ranged between 100,000 and 200,000 - possibly more.
One of the most careful Soviet specialists estimates the Leningrad starvation toll at “not less than a million”, a conclusion shared by the Leningrad Party leaders. Pravda on the twentieth anniversary of the lifting of the blockade declared that “the world has never known a similar mass extermination of a civilian population, such depths of human suffering and deprivation as fell to the lots of Leningraders.
Estimates of the Leningrad death toll as high as 2,000,000 have been made by some foreign students. These estimates are too high. A total for Leningrad and vicinity of something over 1,000,000 deaths attributable to hunger, and an overall total of deaths, civilian and military, on the order of 1,300,000 to 1,500,000 seems reasonable.
It is germane, perhaps, to note that the Leningrad survivors of the blockade thought in January, 1944, that the starvation toll might be 2,000,000.
The Soviet censors in 1944 refused to pass estimates stating the Leningrad death toll as 1,000,000 or 2,000,000. For nearly twenty years after the blockade they insisted the total was 632,253 - not more, not less. Even today Dimitri V. Pavlov insists that new estimates, made by Soviet and foreign students, are incorrect. In a third edition of his magnificent Leningrad v Blokade, the best single source for many details of the siege, he incorporates an attack on the new totals. It is possible, he asserts, to remain silent in the face in the face of the assertion that a million or more people died in Leningrad. “Believe it or not”, he insists, “there is no foundation for such serious conclusions.” He insists that calculations based on the movement of Leningraders in and out of the city are unsound. He contends that the new estimates understate the number of Leningraders who entered military units (he puts the figure at not less than 200,000 rather than the 100,000 which Soviet authorities now use). He insists that the 632,253 calculation was accurate (he says it was completed in May, 1943, although the document is dated May, 1944, and other Soviet authorities contend it was not submitted until May, 1945).
Pavlov concludes that “the life of the Leningraders was so grim that there is no need for historians or writers dealing with these events to strengthen the colors or deepen the shadows.”
In this Pavlov is right. But the truth is that the Soviet Government from the beginning made a deliberate effort to lighten the shadows of the Leningrad blockade.
The death toll was minimized for political and security reasons. The Soviet Government for years deliberately understated the military and civilian death toll of World War II. The real totals were of such magnitude that Stalin, obviously, felt they would produce political repercussions inside the country. To the outside world a realistic statement of Soviet losses (total population losses are now estimated at well above 25 million lives) would have revealed the true weakness of Russia at the end of the war.
The Leningrad death toll had implications both for Stalin and for the Leningrad leadership, headed by Zhdanov. It raised the question of whether the key decisions were the right ones, whether all had been done that could have been done to spare the city this incredible trial. In these decisions the personal and political fortunes of all the Soviet leaders were intermingled.
Zhdanov declared in June, 1942, that there had been no line between the front and the rear in Leningrad, that everyone “lived with a single spirit - to do everything possible to defeat the enemy. Each Leningrader, man or woman, found his place in the struggle and with honor fulfilled his duty as a Soviet patriot.”
This was not quite true, and it begged the question of whether the siege had to be endured, whether it could have been lifted, whether it could have been avoided. These were the questions for which the leadership might have to answer.
Whether Zhdanov was certain of the correctness of these decisions is not clear. Not long before he died on August 31, 1948, he is said to have questioned himself and his acts, acknowledging that “people died like flies” as a result of his decisions, but insisting that “history would not have forgiven me had I given up Leningrad.”
Pavlov asked himself the same questions: Why did Leningrad remain in blockade for so long, and was everything done that could have been done to break the blockade? His conclusion was that the Soviet Command simply did not have the strength to do more than was done.
Meanwhile, “history” was corrected the Soviet way. The sacrifice of Leningrad was understated, the death toll was minimized; the chance of political repercussions was reduced at least for the time being.
Not until many years later was the inscription carved on the wall of the memorial at Piskarevsky Cemetery:

Let no one forget; let nothing be forgotten!

For some years, at any rate, a determined effort was made to forget a very great deal that had happened during the siege of Leningrad.

michael mills
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#164

Post by michael mills » 06 Sep 2002, 16:08

The documents quoted by Roberto, in particular Jol's order of 7 October 1941, show that the principle was established that the civilian population of Leningrad was to be permitted to leave to the east, that is, into Soviet-held territory, through "unguarded gaps toward the interior of Russia".

The order to fire on civilians trying to break out related only to those trying to cross over the German lines, into German-held territory. The reason for that order is obvious; if large numbers of civilians were taken into German-held territory (as in fact happened in the case of some localities on the outskirts of Leningrad, as shown by the documents), they would very likely starve as means to feed them were not available.

The intention of the German Government, in preventing the civilian population of Leningrad from leaving the city in the direction of the German lines, but in permitting them to leave into Soviet-held territory, was to ensure that their feeding and maintenance would be a burden on the Soviet authorities, and thereby hinder the Soviet war effort. Presumably the German Government would not have wept any tears if large numbers of the evacuated civilians had died in Soviet-held territory (as in fact happened to large numbers evacuated from other Soviet cities, due to food shortages in the areas under Soviet control), but that would have been a problem for the Soviet Government.

What is clear that there was no intention on the part of the German Government to commit genocide on the population of Leningrad. That is shown by the fact that, although the option of shutting up the population in the city and letting it starve was considered, the options of letting the civilians cross into German-held territory or be evacuated to the Soviet lines were given equal weight. If the aim had been genocide, then the options of letting the civilian population depart would not have been considered at all.

Even though the option of letting the entire population starve was considered, the documents show that the German authorities were well aware of the disadvantages of doing so. One of these was that elements of the population considered "innocent" in German eyes, ie the ethnic German and Finnish elements, as well as the "harmless" Russians, would die along with the "guilty" Communists. That demonstrates that the German Government did not conceive of the entire population of Leningrad as one that "deserved" to die for ideological reasons. If the total starvation option was considered, it was because of the objective reality of the situation, and not because of some racially-based ideological imperative.

Finally, there is nothing to show that the option of total starvation was ever definitively adopted as German Government policy, precluding all other options. It needs to be realised that all the options under discussion were predicated on the assumption that the entire city would be surrounded and totally sealed off. In that case, the option of allowing no movement in or out, like an enclosed ghetto in a Polish town, would have existed; but the documents show that the German High Command planned to allow the civilian population to exit to Soviet-held territory through unguarded gaps in the German lines.

In summary, the collection of documents does not demonstrate an intention of the German Government to commit genocide on the population of Leningrad by starvation. It shows that the starvation that did occur was the result of a number of factors, firstly that the city was under siege, a common occurrence during war, and obviously the besieging force would not allow supplies into the besieged objective that would bolster its resistance, and secondly that the Soviet Government made a political decision to keep the civilian population in the city to provide a work-force and also to maintain the image of a "revolutionary city", rather than evacuating as many as possible before it was too late.

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Scott Smith
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Ivan the not-so Terrible

#165

Post by Scott Smith » 06 Sep 2002, 16:25

Atkif, it is obvious that you cannot be reasoned with. Go ahead being Roberto's amen-corner. I wouldn't have even weighed-in on this thread at all but Rob's Genocide accusation was becoming more and more absurd. :aliengray

Anyway, I like Russian people very much but I wonder, if they are so great, inventors of the airplane and sliced-bread and all things holy, why it is that folks like you are are emigrants now?

Who won the Cold War, after all? When I was in the Army every pop-up target had the name "Ivan" stencilled on it. I wonder how much easier that long-victory from 1946-1991 was because the Germans had already fought you guys so bitterly from 1914-1945? Hard to say. :|

Best Regards,
Scott

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