In conclusion, the meeting came up with a three-stage scenario. First, the German government would ‘clearly establish before the world’ that since Stalin was treating Leningrad as a military objective, Germany was forced to do the same. It would also announce that once Leningrad had surrendered it would ‘allow the humanitarian Roosevelt, under the supervision of the Red Cross’ to transport civilians ‘to his own continent, under a guarantee of free shipping movement. (Such an offer cannot, self-evidently, be accepted — this is just for propaganda.)’ Meanwhile the city would be weakened by bombardment, then gaps opened in the siege lines to let civilians out. The remaining Leningraders would be ‘left to themselves over the winter. Early next year we enter the city (if the Finns do it first we do not object), lead those still alive into inner Russia or into captivity, wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth through demolitions, and hand the area north of the Neva to the Finns.’ This was not, the planners admitted, very satisfactory, and Army Group North still needed orders that could ‘actually be carried out when the time comes’.22
German naval chiefs had similar misgivings — again, on practical and propagandistic rather than humanitarian grounds. Writing to his admiral on 22 September, the day after High Command’s broad-brush planning meeting, a liaison officer attached to Army Group North said that he personally doubted that Leningrad could be destroyed without a single German soldier setting foot in it:
Four or five million people [sic] don’t let themselves get killed so easily. I saw this for myself in Kovno, where the Latvians shot 6,000 Jews, among them women and children. Even a people as brutal as the Latvians could no longer bear the sight of these murders by the end. The whole action then ran into the sand. How much harder this will be with a city of millions.
Besides, this would in my opinion let loose a worldwide storm of indignation, which we can’t afford politically.
Razing Leningrad, he also pointed out, meant denying the Kriegsmarine the use of its naval dockyards, which might come in useful given that the final fight with Britain and America was still to come. ‘After all, Leningrad can disappear at a later stage, when we have won the war at sea.’ Like the army planners, he came up with the surreal suggestion of inviting the Allies to take off civilians in ships. ‘If England and the USA refuse, world opinion will blame them for these people’s demise. If they accept, we’re rid of the problem and it will cost them considerable freight capacity.’23
Hitler — ‘the hardest man in Europe’ as he liked to call himself — was only irritated by this ‘sentimentality’. ‘I suppose’, he declared over supper on 25 September, ‘that some people are clutching their heads trying to answer the question — How can the Führer destroy a city like St Petersburg? Plainly I belong by nature to quite another species!’24 He reiterated his determination not to waver in a notorious directive to Army Group North four days later:
Subject: the future of the City of Petersburg
The Führer is determined to erase the city of Petersburg from the face of the earth. After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban centre. Finland has likewise shown no interest in the maintenance of the city immediately on its new border.
It is intended to encircle the city and level it to the ground by means of artillery bombardment using every calibre of shell, and continual bombing from the air.
Following the city’s encirclement, requests for surrender negotiations shall be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our very existence, we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population.25
The formal orders — no acceptance of surrender; the city to be worn down by bombing and artillery fire; civilians to be fired upon if they approached the German lines — were issued by Jodl on 7 October. They did not, however, quite close down the debate. ‘Today’, Army Group North commander von Leeb confided to his diary, ‘OKW’s [Armed Forces High Command’s] decision on Leningrad arrived, according to which a capitulation may not be accepted. [We] sent a letter to OKH [Army High Command] asking whether in this case Russian troops can be taken into captivity. If not, the Russians will keep up a desperate fight, which will demand sacrifices on our side, probably heavy ones.’26
