Summary of Anna Reid's Leningrad

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 On the morning of 22 June 1941, Dmitri Likhachev, a scholar of medieval Russian literature, was sunbathing with his wife and daughters on the sand martin-busy banks of the River Oredezh. They overheard snatches of a terrifying conversation about Kronshtadt being bombed.

#2 The Leningraders were better prepared for the Second World War than other Soviet citizens, because they had seen its prequel in 1939. The Soviet Union had occupied not only eastern Poland, but also the Baltic states to Leningrad’s west and the lake-fretted southern marches of Finland, directly to its north.

#3 The war with Finland in particular provided a foretaste of the difficulties that lay ahead for the Soviet Union. The Russians expected the war to be very short, but it ended up being a humiliation.

#4 The first twenty-two months of the Second World War seemed distant to Leningraders, as they were caught up in the street-corner loudspeakers, the notice board wall newspapers, and the agitators at the endless workplace meetings that told them that the capitalists were tearing each other apart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822514744

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Insights on Anna Reid's Leningrad

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 21

Insights from Chapter 22

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

On the morning of 22 June 1941, Dmitri Likhachev, a scholar of medieval Russian literature, was sunbathing with his wife and daughters on the sand martin-busy banks of the River Oredezh. They overheard snatches of a terrifying conversation about Kronshtadt being bombed.

#2

The Leningraders were better prepared for the Second World War than other Soviet citizens, because they had seen its prequel in 1939. The Soviet Union had occupied not only eastern Poland, but also the Baltic states to Leningrad’s west and the lake-fretted southern marches of Finland, directly to its north.

#3

The war with Finland in particular provided a foretaste of the difficulties that lay ahead for the Soviet Union. The Russians expected the war to be very short, but it ended up being a humiliation.

#4

The first twenty-two months of the Second World War seemed distant to Leningraders, as they were caught up in the street-corner loudspeakers, the notice board wall newspapers, and the agitators at the endless workplace meetings that told them that the capitalists were tearing each other apart.

#5

Stalin and Zhdanov were so sure that an attack from Germany was imminent that they left Moscow for a six-week vacation at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The Lithuanian and German deserters who crossed the border to Soviet lines that night told interrogators of the orders that had just been read out to their units. The attack would begin at 0400.

#6

Hitler’s aims were not conventional geopolitics. He wanted to wipe out a culture and an ideology, if necessary a race. His vision for the newly conquered territories was of a thousand-mile-wide Reich stretching from Berlin to Archangel on the White Sea.

#7

The plan to conquer the Soviet Union was not a daydream for the Nazi leadership. It was real, and it was planned out in detail. It was not just a matter of taking over a country and destroying it. The millions of settlers and troops needed to hold half a continent in permanent slavery.

#8

The Barbarossa plan was to be conducted with unprecedented harshness against the Russian people. The army did not object to this policy at all, and the Red Army was to be quickly defeated.

#9

Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union had rational justifications: it was to bring Germany agricultural land and oil wells, and eliminate an inimical regime. But it was also about race: a Vernichtungskrieg, a war of extermination.

Insights