Seige of Leningrad 1941-1944

[Green_Elite_Cab]

I was just talking with a resident of Leningrad about two weeks ago at a WW2 and Airshow in Reading Pa. They has a small russian camp with real equipment.

As he explained it to me, Leningrad had it doubly bad, for not only were the germans trying to invade, but Stalin personally disliked the city and was suspicious of its residents. the city itself had become great before communism, which angered Stalin. As a result, he did not do very much to support the city.

In Leningrad, the citizens actually designed and manufactured their own weapons, from scratch. The PPS sub machine gun was supposedly one of the best ever designed, at the very least superior to most existing Soviet designs.

Apparently, they also wore wool-felt boots during the winters. As it turns out, it was SO dry that you could stand on the snow with what was essentially a thick boot liner, and your feet would not get wet because there was no liquid water around. only in the summer did they need rubber waterproof boots.

Also according to the russian, socks were "Capitalist wastes of energy", and so they just wrapped their feet in a 1 foot square piece of cloth. As he described it, "If you wear a hole in it, just take it off and wrap it around a different way!"

Fascinating stuff, you rarely hear the russian side of the story.