The temperature was dropping. It was 15 below on November 11 and 20 below on the fourteenth. Luknitsky was sure the cold would beat the Germans. He did not realize it was likely to kill starving Leningrad first.
“November was the most alarming month of the whole blockade,” the official historians of Leningrad concluded, “not only because of the difficulties but because of the uncertainties. War is war. And it was difficult to predict how events would develop around Leningrad. The Fascist command might again mount an offensive toward Svirstroi or toward Vologda. Such a possibility could not be excluded.”
Vera Inber wrote in her diary for November 28:
The future of Leningrad is alarming. Not long ago Professor Z told me: “My daughter spent the whole evening in the cellar, looking for a cat.” I was ready to congratulate her on such love for a cat when Z explained: “We eat them.” Another time Z, a passionate hunter, said: “My life is finished when I have killed my last partridge. And it seems to me I have killed it.”
As the plight of Leningrad worsened, the rumors flew. Toward the end of November everyone heard rumors that on the first of December no more bread would be issued. On that date adults would begin to receive cottonseed cake. Children would get hardtack. This was more than torn nerves could stand. Hundreds of people stormed the few food stores. On November 25 more than 2,000 persons pushed into the Vasilevsky Island department store. An enormous line appeared outside Milk Store No. 2 in the Smolny region, where soya milk was being issued. The queue did not disperse when air-raid sirens sounded. People patiently waited. Whatever they got would be better than what they could get after December 1.
“I’ve waited since 4 A.M.,” one said. “I’ve not eaten all day.” “I can’t go home,” another said. “My children are starving.”
Shells fell in their midst. Some fell, killed and wounded. Others ran in terror. But half an hour later the survivors were back in line, waiting for the saleswomen, wrapped up like snow maidens, their fingers trembling with weakness and cold, to tear off the coupon and give them a husk of bread.
On December first, walking down Wolf Street, Vera Inber saw something she had never before seen—a corpse on a child’s sled. Instead of being placed in a coffin the body had been tightly wrapped in a sheet, the knees and breast clearly outlined in the white swaddling cloth. A strange sight, like something out of the Bible or ancient Egypt. She did not know it would soon become a sight so common as not to attract a passing glance.
On December first the siege of Leningrad entered its ninety-second day. Ninety-one days had passed since the fall of Mga. Seven men knew the secret of Leningrad’s destiny. It was so terrible they themselves could not believe the future which the black figures foretold.
* * *
1 By comparison, the autumn shelling of the city killed 681, wounded 2,269; bombing in September killed 566, wounded 3,853; in October killed 304, wounded 1,843; in November killed 522, wounded 2,505. The total of killed and wounded in three months’ bombing and shelling was 12,533.
2 In December, 1943, for the first time since the start of the blockade the birth rate exceeded the death rate. (N.Z., p. 584.)
3 Some Leningrad sources, including the authoritative N.Z., give the figure of food shipments into Leningrad as 45,000 tons. This, D. V. Pavlov explains, is a figure which includes all shipments from September 1 through December 7. It includes freight re-shipped from Shlisselburg after the arrival of the Nazis on the Neva at Ivanovskoye on August 29. Shipments into Leningrad included, in addition to food, 6,600 tons of gasoline, 508,000 shells and mines, 114,000 hand grenades and 3,000,000 bullets. (N.Z., p. 207; Pavlov, op. cit., 3rd edition, p. 124.) By airlift Leningrad received, from October 10 to December 25, 6,186 tons of high-priority freight and 47.3 tons of mail. The planes evacuated 50,099 persons and carried out 47.2 tons of mail and 1,016.7 tons of freight. (Leningrad v VOV, p. 225.)
PART IV
The Longest Winter
There are three of us in the room, but two
No longer breathe. They are dead.
I understand it all,
But why do I break the bread
In three pieces?
37 ♦ “When Will the Blockade Be Lifted?”
INCREDIBLE AS IT SEEMED TO ADMIRAL PANTELEYEV, throughout October and into November the people of Leningrad assumed that almost any day the blockade would end. Even when the ration was cut, cut again and then again, friends said to Panteleyev: “Tell me, please, Yuri Aleksandrovich, when do they plan to lift the blockade?” With them there was no question of can the blockade be lifted; just a matter of timing, as though, Panteleyev thought, they were asking when the Red Arrow express was due to arrive from Moscow.
Panteleyev assured his friends that the siege would be broken very soon. But he knew that the truth was far different, that week by week the situation was growing worse, not better, and that, in fact, each effort to break the blockade had only deepened the plight of the city.
The first serious attempt to smash the German ring had been a desperate gamble in late September by Marshal Zhukov. He threw two divisions and a brigade of marines across the Neva River at a place called Nevskaya Dubrovka, northwest of Mga. The troops managed to win a toehold on the south side of the river but nothing more. Marshal Zhukov tried several other long shots, including amphibious landings around the Peterhof Palace. None worked. The Peterhof marines were wiped out almost to the last man.
But Moscow and Leningrad both knew that something had to be done. Stalin telegraphed Leningrad October 12 ordering a counteroffensive, and on October 15 Marshal N. N. Voronov arrived on the scene to make sure that the orders were carried out.
Voronov had been absent from his native city only about two weeks— just long enough to become involved in a dangerous row with Stalin’s police chief, Lavrenti P. Beria. The dispute arose when Stalin questioned Voronov about an allocation of 50,000 rifles for Beria’s police troops. Voronov said he didn’t know why they were needed. Beria, a Georgian like Stalin, started making an explanation in Georgian. But Stalin was angry. He shut off Beria and cut the figure to 10,000 rifles. Beria blamed Voronov. “Just you wait,” he said. “We’ll tie your guts into knots!” On that note Voronov was delighted to go back to Leningrad, taking with him a small envelope in which, written on thin cigarette paper, were the Stavka plans for breaking the Leningrad blockade.
When Marshal Voronov arrived with the Stavka orders, General Ivan I. Fedyuninsky convened his Leningrad Military Council and decided to launch the offensive almost immediately—on October 20—with a simultaneous push by the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth armies and the Neva Operating Group, a task force on the Neva River front. The High Command specified that almost all the mobile resources of the Leningrad front be thrown into the operation—eight rifle divisions, not less than 100 60-ton KV tanks, large-caliber artillery, all available rocket weapons or “Katyushas” and such air strength as could be assembled, including remnants of the Baltic Fleet air arm.
Actually, Fedyuninsky could mobilize only 63,000 men, 475 guns and 97 tanks (including 59 KV’s). The Germans, he estimated, had a force of 54,000 men and 450 cannon.
Presumably for morale purposes, the Leningrad Command ordered all political commissars to take every possible step to “halt empty and harmful gossip” about the imminent arrival of new armies from the east which would liberate the city. “The city of Lenin is capable of liberating itself. We have everything we need: weapons and men.”
This was brave but foolish talk.
The “liberating” attack was doomed from the start. Four days before the date set for the Red Army offensive the Nazis launched their own attack. General Rudolf Schmidt, commander of the 39th Motorized Corps, supported by the German 1st Army Corps, hit at the hinge of the Soviet Fourth and Fifty-second armies. Soon the Russians were reeling back in confusion. Within days they were fighting desperately to prevent the Germans from tightening the siege by forging a second circle around the city.
The
Soviet Fourth and Fifty-second armies stood east and slightly south of Leningrad, guarding the rail line which approached Leningrad from the east through the junction point of Tikhvin. If General Schmidt captured Tikhvin, he would breach the only route by which the Russians could now bring food, fuel and ammunition to Lake Ladoga for transshipment to Leningrad. The capture of Tikhvin would seal the fate of Leningrad. The only alternative supply route would involve the 220-mile haul over primitive forest tracks to the Lake Ladoga ports. It was not credible, even by Russian standards, that sufficient supplies could be brought in by such means to maintain a city which still contained roughly three million persons, civilian and military.
The old rule of war that when one thing goes badly everything goes badly was striking Leningrad.
The promised Soviet offensive never really got going. The Germans had caught the Russians off balance, and the Soviet margin of superiority was too thin to produce a breakthrough.
There were, inevitably, other problems. General Fedyuninsky, new to the Leningrad Command and junior to several of his subordinate army commanders, asked Marshal A. M. Vasilevsky, Chief of Staff in Moscow, to be relieved. He pointed out that General Khozin, commander of the Fifty-fourth Army, was a lieutenant general whereas he was only a major general. Fedyuninsky had served under Khozin as a battalion commander when Khozin commanded a division.
Leningrad Party Secretary Zhdanov sought to persuade Marshal Voronov to take Fedyuninsky’s job. Zhdanov had worked clÖsely with Voronov, a Leningrader and a man of great military prestige and experience. Voronov, however, was wary. He knew the difficulties and dangers. He temporized. He pointed out that he was a Deputy Commissar of Defense, Chief of Red Army Artillery and the special representative of the High Command in Leningrad. If he asked for the Leningrad Command, Moscow might think he was trying to evade his responsibilities. It wasn’t a convincing argument, but Zhdanov had to leave the decision up to Moscow. Moscow did the obvious. It sent Fedyuninsky to take over the Fifty-fourth Army and brought in Khozin, the Fifty-fourth Army chief, to take Fedyuninsky’s job.
Voronov’s role in these days was equivocal, to say the least.
“Never before in history,” he wrote in his memoirs, “had Leningrad been in such a dangerous position. The honor of our generation depended on our saving her.”
Yet he refused the Leningrad Command, and his principal efforts were directed not at saving the city from strangulation by the Germans but at shipping out of Leningrad guns, munitions and supplies for use on other fronts, particularly the Moscow front.
In his first conversation with Voronov on his arrival October 15, Zhdanov asked for more matériel and more munitions. Voronov replied that there were large quantities of military supplies in Leningrad and suggested the city should be able to boost its production to not less than a million shells of all calibers in November and even more in December. Meanwhile, he proposed to organize the shipment out of Leningrad of items needed elsewhere and in return would see about delivering powder and other products which Leningrad might need for shell production.
Under the influence of Voronov, Leningrad set a production quota of 1,722,000 shells and mines for December. (It was not, of course, fulfilled. By mid-December shell production dropped to zero.) Voronov actually shipped out of Leningrad 452 76-mm field guns, 120-mm mortars and 82-mm guns and 560 50-caliber machine guns. He advised Supreme Headquarters that he had on hand 50,000 shell casings for 76-mm armored shells and could send them out at the rate of 350 to 370 per plane. (He was using DC-3’s for the most part or TB-3’s.)1 Moscow couldn’t believe the figures at first. Later, they began to ask, “Can’t you send more from Leningrad? Load up the planes quickly.” He shipped 30,000 shell casings by mid-December.
Voronov’s real task seems to have been to extract from Leningrad every last resource before final catastrophe befell the northern capital. Behind Voronov’s assignment lay grim logic. The ring about Leningrad was tightening inexorably. Leningrad had won the great battle in September. But it well might perish in the smaller struggle of November.
In fact, one more Soviet army was now falling apart under the hammer of the Germans. The Fourth Army, commanded by Lieutenant General V. F. Yakovlev, was stationed in the dismal marshes along the Volkhov River, protecting the approaches to Budogoshch and Tikhvin on the lone rail link to Lake Ladoga. Neither Yakovlev nor his commanders had experience in fighting under such conditions. The roads were boggy tracks over porous soil. The weather was increasingly cold, with rain turning to sleet and snow. The troops were wet all day and wet all night.
Yakovlev gave ground slowly, but soon his forces were threatened with encirclement. He yielded Budogoshch on October 23 in the hope of saving Tikhvin, but General Schmidt outmaneuvered him.
The alarmed Supreme Command in Moscow ordered the 191st and 44th divisions airlifted from inside Leningrad to protect the approaches to Tikhvin.
But General Yakovlev fed his reserves into battle, one by one, without waiting to build up his strength. It was a fatal error. By November 6 the situation was hopeless. The Fourth Army had been cut into three segments. The central group, still under General Yakovlev’s direct command, comprised the 44th and 191st divisions. They were falling back on Tikhvin.
There could be no thought among the bitter, weary Soviet troops of celebration of the November 7 holiday. Brief meetings were held in some units. Most were too busy fighting or trying to retreat through the endless marshes. On the morning of November 7 General G. Ye. Degtyarev, chief artillery officer, got a telephone call from General Yakovlev. “Obviously,” Degtyarev commented, “it was not any holiday greetings.”
The Nazis were breaking through the crumbling Soviet lines, directly threatening Tikhvin. The 44th Division had been cut in two. General Yakovlev encountered officers of the division, fleeing in confusion. He ordered them back to the lines and forbade any retreat. Then he personally set out to try and find some troops which might reinforce the front.
It was futile. That night the Military Council of the Fourth Army met at Berezovik, a village just north of Tikhvin. No longer could there be any doubt that the junction point would fall. General Degtyarev and a few others went into Tikhvin by the swampy back roads late at night in order to direct the removal of supplies. The oil depots already were burning, and the sound of detonations as sappers blew up the dumps was continuous. On November 8 General Schmidt’s forces entered Tikhvin and the last rail link to Lake Ladoga was cut. All day on the ninth the Berlin radio blasted: “Achtung! Achtung! Tikhvin has fallen!”
A second chain of encirclement was taking shape around Leningrad. The Germans were so close to Gostinopolye, the transshipment base for Ladoga supplies, that they were able to bring the warehouses under artillery fire. The supplies caught fire, the shipping chief and his aide were killed, and the workers began to flee. They were halted at gunpoint by one of their fellows, a middle-aged soldier named Aleksei Fedorenko from Astrakhan. Fedorenko had fled with his companions but suddenly realized what he was doing. He got a grip on himself, pointed his gun at the others and terrorized them into going back and continuing to load food for Leningrad.
The peril caused Party Secretary Zhdanov to send one of his most trusted associates to the Tikhvin front—Terenti F. Shtykov, a Party secretary specializing in military and security matters. Shtykov was a native Leningrader. He was too young to have participated in the Revolution but had been a Young Communist and an ambitious factory worker in the Proletarian factory in Leningrad. He went to night school and in 1936 at the age of twenty-nine started to climb the Party ladder. Two years later he became a Leningrad regional Party secretary. From the start of the war he had been occupied with military questions. After the war he was to acquire a special distinction—the only close associate of Party Secretary Zhdanov, the only member of the Leningrad City and Party hierarchy, to survive the dreadful “Leningrad Affair,” one of the most bloody of the special purges of the late Stalin era.
Now in these criti
cal days he had been sent to assess the Tikhvin situation. It did not take him long to act. It was apparent that General Yakovlev had Tost control of the situation. Shtykov went immediately to Sviritsa, the headquarters of General Meretskov who commanded the Seventh Special Army, defending the Svir River directly north and east of Tikhvin. The fall of Tikhvin threatened Meretskov’s position. The two got in touch with Moscow on November 7 and talked first with Marshal A. M. Vasilevsky and then with Stalin. Stalin said he had no reserves at his disposal. He proposed that the command of the Fourth Army units adjacent to Meretskov’s front be turned over to Meretskov. The command change was dated November 9, the day after the fall of Tikhvin. Meretskov immediately ordered his reserves forward toward the broken Fourth Army lines. He himself took a light plane and flew to Bolshoi Dvor, just east of Tikhvin where Fourth Army headquarters was said to be located. His plane came down at dusk, whirling up clouds of snow as it halted. At first glance the field appeared to be deserted. One of Meretskov’s companions said, “Haven’t our troops abandoned this field? I don’t see either planes or people.” Another added, “On what airfield have we landed?”
Meretskov was relieved to see an air force major approach his plane. The major said that he had been ordered to destroy the airfield and get out.
Meretskov gathered such troops as were present into a log hut on the edge of the field and gave them a pep talk. In a few days, he said, the Germans would be thrown out of Tikhvin. He saw some doubtful grimaces. The mood of the men was low. After the long retreat, the unsuccessful battles, the heavy casualties, they had lost hope of victory. He talked to the officers. Most of them had fallen back through Tikhvin. They could not explain why it had surrendered so quickly, and they did not know why it had not been defended. The explanation, Meretskov later became convinced, was the usual one. The divisions had been bled white. Most of them numbered no more than a thousand men. They had been cut off. They were out of ammunition. They had lost their arms. And General Yakovlev had lost control of them.
The 900 Days Page 58