To besiege a city: Leningrad 1941-42

REVIEW BY CALUM HENDERSON Leningrad – today known as St Petersburg – was a key military and industrial target in the early years of the Second World War. But the city also held a psychological attraction for the invading armies of the Third Reich in the summer of 1941. Leningrad had been the ‘cradle’ of the Russian Revolution in 1917; the birthplace of Bolshevism itself. Its capture, so Hitler believed, would therefore crush the morale of the Soviet people. Stalin himself never much cared for the northern port city on the banks of the river Neva, built by Peter the Great at a time when the Russian empire was looking to expand its influence in Western Europe. He considered it to