The 900 Days

by Harrison Salisbury

  In the early morning hours of September 18 Bychevsky was laboring on the Circle Railroad, transforming it into the inner defense line. Every fifty to a hundred yards he was installing gun positions, using equipment that had been salvaged from the ruins of the Gatchina and Vyborg fortified regions and thrown together in the Leningrad factories in the past few days. Artillerymen were calculating fields of fire. Ammunition was being brought up. There was no communications system thus far.

  He had stationed sappers’ groups at the big destruction points where mines had been planted under the intersections of the major highways, at the car barns at Kotlyarov, at the Port Station and Shosseinaya. Special commands were set up to deal with German tanks which broke through the city.

  At 4 A.M. Zhukov’s adjutant appeared and ordered him immediately to Smolny. As Bychevsky entered the reception room, he saw General Fedyu-ninsky and his Corps Commissar, N. N. Klementyev. Judging from their faces they had had a rough time.

  Wet, covered with mud, tired, Bychevsky shuffled into Zhukov’s office. The General was sitting with Zhdanov, leaning over a map.

  “So,” said Zhukov. “Here at last. Where have you been gadding about that we have to hunt you all night—snoozing*..I suppose?”

  Bychevsky said he’d been working on the fortification system.

  “Does the commander of the Forty-second Army know about this system?”

  “In the morning I’ll give a map of it to General Berezinsky, his Chief of Staff. General Fedyuninsky himself will be with his troops.”

  Zhukov smashed his heavy fist on the table.

  “I didn’t ask you about drawing maps. I asked you whether the commander has been advised about the system. Can’t you understand the Russian language?”

  Bychevsky pointed out that Fedyuninsky was just outside in the reception room.

  Zhukov flared up again.

  “Do you ever think before you speak?” he said. “I don’t need you to tell me he’s here. Do you understand that if Antonov’s division doesn’t go into the defense lines along the Circle Railroad this very night, the Germans may break into the city?

  “And if they do, I’ll have you shot in front of Smolny as a traitor.”

  Zhdanov seemed uncomfortable. This was not his way of dealing with people. He never used rough language. Now he intervened.

  “Comrade Bychevsky, how could you have failed to go to Fedyuninsky himself! He has just taken over the army. And Antonov’s division, which must occupy the line, has just been formed. If the division moves up in daylight, it will be bombed. Do you understand what this is all about?”

  The reason for the urgency finally dawned on Bychevsky. The Antonov division, the 6th People’s Volunteers, had to get into position before daylight. He had not even known that the 6th Volunteers had been assigned to the Forty-second Army nor that they had been ordered into the lines behind Pulkovo before dawn.

  Bychevsky asked to be permitted to show Fedyuninsky the new lines.

  “Light dawns!” snapped Zhukov. “You better get your thinking cap on. If that division is not in position by 9 A.M., I’ll have you shot.”

  Bychevsky made a hurried escape and met Fedyuninsky in the next room.

  “Having trouble, Engineer?” Fedyuninsky said.

  Bychevsky was in no mood for chaffing.

  “Just a bit, Comrade General,” he snapped. “The commander has promised to have me shot if the 6th Division is not in the Circle Railroad lines by morning. Let’s go.”

  “Don’t be angry, Engineer,” Fedyuninsky smiled. “We’ve just been with Georgi Konstantinovich and we’ve got some promises, too.”

  The 6th Division got into place. But without much time to spare.

  Aleksandr Rozen was with Fedyuninsky at his command post on the Pulkovo Heights. It had been an incredible time. All day long on the eighteenth the Germans had attacked. Now dusk was falling. The weak sun sank toward the west in a sea of clouds. A little rain began to fall, and the ground grew slippery. Fedyuninsky and his staff began to move toward a broken communications trench when the General suddenly halted and looked fixedly into the distance. It was growing dark, but he kept peering into the distance. A shell exploded. Some stretcher bearers came by. The Germans were bombing Leningrad through the clouds. Rozen edged up to Fedyuninsky in time to hear him say: “The 6th Division of Volunteers have occupied their defense lines on the Circle Railroad. That’s the last line.”

  Zhukov demanded attacks, counterattacks, counteroffensives, from all the armies under his command. The Eighth Army was cut off from Leningrad when the Germans drove through to the Gulf of Finland, winning control of a tongue of land running from the Peterhof Palace on the west through Strelna to the Ligovo sector on the Leningrad outskirts.

  Major General V. I. Shcherbakov, commander of the Eighth, was ordered by Zhukov to concentrate his forces, the 5 th Brigade of marines, the 191st and 281st rifle divisions and the 2nd People’s Volunteers, and carry out a counterattack on the Germans, centering on the village of Volodarsky in the direction of Krasnoye Selo. The idea was to hit the Germans from the rear while the 21st NKVD occupied them along the Pulkovo front. Zhukov transferred to Shcherbakov the 10th and nth rifle divisions and the remains of the 3rd People’s Volunteers from the Forty-second Army. He provided from the front reserves the 125th and 268th rifle divisions.

  But the effort was beyond Shcherbakov. The divisions were mere decimals of their battle strength. They had been bled white and fought until they could not fight again. They had hardly any artillery. They had no shells for the cannon, no bullets for their rifles and few mines or hand grenades. Shcherbakov was compelled to report to Zhukov that he could not carry out the order. He had no strength for a counterattack. It was all he could do to hold the fading lines around Oranienbaum. Indeed, without the constant pounding of the Baltic Fleet cannon, those located on ships and the powerful coastal batteries at Krasnaya Gorka and Kronstadt, he could not have hung on.

  Zhukov’s reaction was predictable. He removed Shcherbakov and the Eighth Army’s Military Council member I. F. Chukhnov. He put Major General T. I. Shevaldin in chargé of the army as of September 24.2

  General Dukhanov, the old veteran of the Leningrad front, was rushed into the Eighth Army place (Tarmes to take over the ioth Rifle Division, which was fighting near Strelna. He got his orders September 17 and had to go by boat to Oranienbaum and then back along the coast by car to reach his troops.

  He found a division in name only. Its biggest “regiment” numbered 180 men. This pitiful force was supposed to counterattack the German Panzers. Dukhanov managed to hold on, in part because the bridges at New Peterhof had been mined by Bychevsky’s men and he blew them up in the face of the advancing Nazi tanks.

  Then he was ordered by the new commander, General Shevaldin, to carry out a counteroffensive aimed at Strelna and Ligovo. An amphibious landing of marines was being attempted simultaneously. Dukhanov’s men (now the 19th Corps) attacked and suffered heavy losses. The Germans were well dug in and couldn’t be budged. Shevaldin—on Zhukov’s orders—called Dukhanov.

  “Not a step back!” said Shevaldin. “You must attack. All commanders, including division commanders, must lead the attack. All forward!”

  Dukhanov started to protest, then swallowed.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “I will tell the Chief of Staff to take over the corps and I will lead the attack.”

  “No,” snapped Shevaldin. “You must direct the troops and take responsibility for their actions. Carry out the order.”

  Dukhanov slammed the receiver down. His Corps Commissar V. P. Mzhavanadze3 said, “What’s going on?” Dukhanov told him.

  Mzhavanadze pulled on his greatcoat, grabbed his revolver and shouted, “Farewell.” He led the ioth Division into action.

  Dukhanov carried out his orders. Every commander, every political commissar went to the head of his unit and marched into battle. The attack halted the Germans, but did little more. The Russians didn’t have th
e muscle to budge the Nazis.

  “I could not then and I cannot today approve the measures for stiffening our troops which were taken by the Commander of the Eighth Army,” Dukhanov wrote years later. “The corps was threatened with complete loss of leadership and might have suffered a frightful disaster.”

  But this was Zhukov’s way: Attack. Attack. The commanders could carry out his orders. They could die in the attempt. Or be shot.

  Fedyuninsky was fond of quoting an infantryman named Promichev who is said to have told his fellow soldiers, “Our principle is this: If you retreat, I will kill you. If I retreat without orders, you kill me. And Leningrad will not be surrendered.” This was the Zhukov principle.

  Zhukov applied the principle to all the armies. The Fifty-fourth, for example. This army had been created August 23 and sent into the Volkhov region for the specific purpose of relieving pressure on the Leningrad front. It had been designed to prevent a whole series of events: It was to keep the Germans from enveloping Leningrad from the southeast. It was to protect the city from being cut off from Moscow. It was to hold open the routes to Lake Ladoga. It was to keep the Nazis from cutting through to Mga and Shlisselburg.

  It had done none of these things. In fact, it had done virtually nothing. It was led by G. I. Kulik, the police general and toady of the notorious Beria. Zhukov had him fired on September 25 and sent his reliable and ponderous Chief of Staff, General Khozin, to take over the Fifty-fourth. The Forty-eighth Army had virtually disappeared under the weak and unreliable direction of Lieutenant General M. A. Antonyuk. Zhukov simply absorbed the Forty-eighth into the Leningrad front. There was little left to absorb.

  Attack—or die.

  The grim slogan echoed throughout Leningrad. Vsevolod Vishnevsky took it up: Death to cowards. Death to panicmongers. Death to rumor spreaders. To the tribunal with them. Discipline. Courage. Firmness.4

  In the years to come there would be endless dispute over what stopped the Germans; and when they were halted.

  Von Leeb had been under enormous pressure from Hitler to complete his assignment, to encircle Leningrad, to join forces with the Finns, to wipe out the Baltic Fleet. His forces were needed and needed badly on the Moscow front, where the Germans were closing in for the kill. But how could Hitler’s grand strategy—the envelopment from the rear of Moscow, the enormous wheeling movement which was to carry Army Group Nord down behind the Russian lines at the very moment von Rundstedt attacked from the center—how could that be accomplished if von Leeb was still mired on the Leningrad front? It was a matter of timing, and time was running out. The nervous tension rose day by day. In the massive journal of Colonel General Haider the developments were noted as they were seen at the Führer’s headquarters—and by himself.

  Von Leeb had been instructed by Hitler September 5 to release his armor to the Moscow Group as quickly as possible. Because he was making good progress—or seemed to be—Haider with great reluctance let von Leeb keep the armor. He still had it on the twelfth. On the thirteenth Haider let him keep it “for the continuance of the drive.” The Germans then thought Leningrad was almost in their grasp. Just a day or two and it would fall. Two days later, September 15, Haider was still hopeful. The assault was making good progress.

  But two days later the Moscow front could wait no longer. The 6th Panzers were wheeled out of line. The shift of the main weight, the high-powered punch which had carried von Leeb up to the outskirts of Leningrad, to Klinovsky House, had begun. The whole 41st Panzer Corps, the Hoepp-ner group, had been ordered to the Moscow front.

  Zhukov had won. Leningrad had won. But no one knew this yet. Von Leeb was still trying frantically to grasp victory, to break into the city even though the parade of armor to the south was beginning. But success was doubtful.

  Haider was gloomy. On the eighteenth he wrote in his journal:

  The ring around Leningrad has not yet been drawn as tightly as might be desired, and further progress after the departure of the 1st Panzers and 36th Motorized Division from the front is doubtful.

  There will be continuing drain on our forces before Leningrad where the enemy has concentrated large forces and great quantities of material and the situation will remain tight until such a time when Hunger takes effect as our ally.

  That was the day the Berliner Borsenzeitung proclaimed: “The fate of Leningrad has been decided.”

  That was the day when von Leeb reported to the Supreme Command he had achieved a decisive breakthrough on the Leningrad front.

  That was the day correspondents from Berlin wrote that the fall of Leningrad was expected within two weeks.

  But already the pressure was beginning to lighten, although it did not seem that way at the front.5

  In the early morning hours of September 21 Bychevsky sought out his old friend and reliable counselor, General P. P. Yevstigneyev, chief of intelligence for the Leningrad front. What was the real situation at the front? Was the pressure easing? Was it building up?

  Late as was the hour and tense the moment, Bychevsky found Yevstigneyev quiet and peaceful. There was no shadow of concern on his face.

  “What do you think, Pyotr Petrovich?” Bychevsky asked. “Are the Germans finally getting played out?”

  Yevstigneyev considered the map on his desk for a moment. Then he raised his eyes.

  “For the third day I’ve had reports from one intelligence group near Pskov,” he said. “Lots of motorized infantry are moving from Leningrad toward Pskov. From there they are moving to Porkhov-Dno.”

  “Regrouping?”

  “Possibly. Possibly. I got some confirmation of these data last night.”

  Yevstigneyev fumbled through his papers. He looked like a scholar patiently studying some ancient Russian manuscript.

  “I’ve reported to Zhukov,” Yevstigneyev finally continued, “that all of this looks very much like a regrouping of troops away from Leningrad. From Gatchina the partisans also report that the Germans are loading tanks on railroad flatcars.”

  “That’s fine!” Bychevsky explained.

  “That’s what I think,” Yevstigneyev said. “I put together a report for Moscow. But Zhukov will have none of it. ‘Provocations,’ he says. ‘That’s what your agents are giving you. Find out who is behind this.’”

  Yevstigneyev said he had heard from the Eighth Army on the Oranien-baum sector that they had recovered dead and wounded from the 291st and 58th German divisions. Zhukov was much interested because two days before these units had been in the line at Pulkovo.

  Yevstigneyev concluded that the German frontal attack on Leningrad was, in fact, weakening.

  Bychevsky observed that this was why Yevstigneyev seemed more relaxed.

  “How can anyone relax at this time?” Yevstigneyev said. “It’s just my professional manner.”

  That was the twenty-first. On the evening of the twenty-third Zhukov called in Yevstigneyev and asked whether he had sent his intelligence evaluation on to Moscow. Yevstigneyev had. Zhukov was relieved. Moscow had just reported the appearance of the 4th German Panzer group on the Kalinin front north of Moscow and wanted to know if Zhukov could confirm its departure from the Leningrad front.

  The reports were true. The evidence from behind the lines and on the lines confirmed it. The Germans were beginning to pull troops out. Thank God, Colonel Bychevsky exclaimed to himself. Now he would not have to pull the plunger on the “hell machine,” the central detonating fuse that would blow into the skies the Kirov works, the railroad viaducts, the bridges and all the great buildings of Leningrad.

  A day or two later Yevstigneyev put together another report for Zhukov. He had information that the Germans had mobilized local residents to build permanent trenches and dugouts. In some instances the Russians were being shot after they had completed work on the installations. At Peterhof and other historic parks the Germans were chopping down the great pine and spruce groves for their command posts and heated quarters, installing stoves and moving in beds and good furniture.
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  “What is your conclusion?” Zhukov asked.

  “It is evident that the tempo of the Fascist offensive is slowing down,” Yevstigneyev said. “And even ... it may be expected that the German Army is getting ready to winter on the outskirts of Leningrad.”

  He stopped there, biting his tongue as it was evident that Zhukov was still reluctant to jump to optimistic conclusions.

  “The stupidest thing we can do,” Zhukov snapped, “is to let the enemy dig in on our front where he wants to. All my orders about active defense and local attacks remain in force. In other words, we’re the ones who will dig them into the earth. Is that clear?”

  It was clear enough. So was the evidence of digging in. The word flew about Leningrad. Admiral I. S. Isakov went back to his quarters at the Astoria Hotel after listening to the exchange between Zhukov and Yevstig-neyev. An elderly porter, long-bearded in traditional Russian style, asked, “Comrade Admiral, is it true what they say—that the Germans are digging in?”

  “Maybe,” the Admiral replied. “But if you want the truth, you’ll have to ask Hitler’s grandmother.”

  As he walked ahead, he heard the doorman saying to a policeman, “It’s all clear. He means they are digging in but it’s still a military secret.”

  But the evidence was almost too much for weary minds to comprehend.

  Aleksandr Rozen had finally found the 70th Artillery, the outfit he had been with before the retreat into Leningrad. It was stationed now to the left of the Pulkovo lines near Shushary. He was asleep in a dugout with the regimental commander, Sergei Pudlutsky, when an aide awakened them. “Come quickly to the command post.” The two men threw on their greatcoats and went out. It was very early in the morning—a smoky, foggy morning. The smell of wet leaves was in the air. As they ran toward the command post, the sun broke fitfully through the clouds. At the command post they found a crowd gathered around the stereoptical observation instrument. Finally Rozen had his turn at the eyepiece. There swam into view German soldiers, apparently so close he could have touched them. They were hard at work with shovels and hammers, building dugouts and permanent trenches.