World War: Leningrad the Labyrinth

Bursting into this gigantic city the [enemy] will come into a stone labyrinth, where every house will be for them either a riddle, or a threat, or a mortal danger. Whence can they expect a blow? From the window? From the attic? From the cellar? From around the corner? Everywhere. At our disposition are rifles, machine guns, hand grenades. We can cover some streets with barbed-wire entanglements, leave others open and turn them into traps. It is only necessary that some thousands of men should firmly decide not to give tip. . . .

Leon Trotsky wrote these words about the defense of Leningrad in October 1919, when the Whites were pressing the Seventh Red Army northward into the city. But the words echoed like a great roar in the labyrinth last week.

After five weeks of siege, the defenders were still firm in their decision. Wherever the German wave seemed to lick too close, the Russians scooped it back a little. They used a new armored train as a battering ram for their attacks, and inside the city workers labored day and night toward the completion of two more such trains. One Russian lunge drove back the German right wing, restoring the line to its position in early September. The Reds sneaked across Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland in small boats to harass the German flanks. The Germans seemed to be digging in almost defensively—with half-buried tanks as pillboxes.

It looked as if the Germans, unless they waited for the city to be starved out, would be unable to crack Leningrad without a major offensive. At this stage of the Battle of Russia they seem unable to mount more than one offensive at a time. This week’s was not aimed at Leningrad.