}The Nazi siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1943, during which time the city was cut off from the rest of the world, was one of the most gruesome episodes of World War II. In scale, the tragedy of Leningrad dwarfs even the Warsaw ghetto or Hiroshima. Nearly three million people endured it; just under half of them died, starving or freezing to death, most in the six months from October 1941 to April 1942 when the temperature often stayed at 30 degrees below zero. For twenty-five years the distinguished journalist and ...
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}The Nazi siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1943, during which time the city was cut off from the rest of the world, was one of the most gruesome episodes of World War II. In scale, the tragedy of Leningrad dwarfs even the Warsaw ghetto or Hiroshima. Nearly three million people endured it; just under half of them died, starving or freezing to death, most in the six months from October 1941 to April 1942 when the temperature often stayed at 30 degrees below zero. For twenty-five years the distinguished journalist and historian Harrison Salisbury has assembled material for this story. He has interviewed survivors, sifted through the Russian archives, and drawn on his vast experience as a correspondent in the Soviet Union. What he has discovered and imparted in The 900 Days is an epic narrative of villainy and survival, in which the city had as much to fear from Stalin as from Hitler. He concludes his story with the culminating disaster of the Leningrad Affair, a plot hatched by Stalin three years after the war had ended. Almost every official who had been instrumental in the citys survival was implicated, convicted, and executed. Harrison Salisbury has told this overwhelming story boldly, unforgettably, and definitively. }
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Seller's Description:
Good. Some outer edges have minor scuffs. Cover has light scratches/marks. Textblock has shelf wear/marks. Reading content is in very good condition. Despatched within 24 hours. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 456 p. Contains: Illustrations.
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Seller's Description:
VG. Trade softcover in black, white and red wraps with b/w photo to front, 8vo. xvii + 635pp. + ads. Reprints 1969 edition with new introduction. Index, bibliography, source notes. B/W plates on paper. VG+ to NF. Mild wear/curl to tips of corners of wraps front and back and just along extreme lower edge and fore edge front wrap; mild rubbing/faint clouding to black background of wraps. Binding tight and square with no reader's crease to spine. Pages bright and unmarked. Neither remainder nor ex-lib.
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Good. Good condition. A copy that has been read but remains intact. May contain markings such as bookplates, stamps, limited notes and highlighting, or a few light stains.
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Good. 635, wraps, illus., maps, source notes, bibliography, index, some wear to cover edges, ink name inside front cover Reprint of the edition originally published by Harper & Row, New York, in 1969. Contains a new Introduction by the author.
This book was first published in 1969 at a time when the Eastern Front in World War 2 got very little coverage in the UK. I first read it in about 1975 and it had a great impact on me. The scale and duration of the suffering and the number of deaths involved in the Siege of Leningrad are truly horrifying.
This book gives a very good account of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Its core, for me, is the descriptions of the hardships experienced by both the civilian and the military populations of Leningrad. It is a book everyone should read, I think.
Inevitably, I suppose, it is now showing its age a bit. There was a brief, now largely ended, opening up of Soviet archives after Glasnost and the fall of the Iron Curtain. More recent accounts of this siege, like Michael Jones' Siege of Leningrad, have had access to more documents and present a clearer account of some of the military incompetence of the Red Army in the first months of the war. They also give a clearer picture of the corruption and special privileges available to the select few in senior Communist Party positions throughout the siege.
But for the detail of life for the civilian population of Leningrad, particularly during the starvation winter of 1941-2, when probably well over a million people died of starvation, Salisbury's account is very hard to beat.
This is a very harrowing book but one that I thoroughly recommend. No-one who reads it will ever forget it, I believe. I have given it 4 stars rather than 5 because of the availability of later information and, occasionally, some repetitiveness in the text. But this wasn't an easy decision and when I first read it, I would certainly have classed it as excellent. It is a true classic, I believe.
GregH
Nov 4, 2010
Great Book
This is a thorough and fast moving story of the seige of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) Russia by the Nazis. If you don't let youself get too tied up with the names of military units and individual players you will get a tremendous feel for the times.
Reader70
Jul 8, 2010
Hell on Earth
This documents in frightening detail the horrors of the siege.
LENSTP
Jan 1, 2009
Excellent Book
Very informative book concerning the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) Russia during World War II. Just the right amount of troop movement versus civilian accounts. Makes you appreciate the life we have today. Book is very well written and more than adequately referenced.
