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Anna Reid
Leningrad
Hay Festival 2012,
On 8 September 1941, 11 weeks after Hitler launched his brutal surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, Leningrad was surrounded. During the 872 days of siege, blockade and bombardment as many as 2,000,000 Soviet lives would be lost. Had the city fallen, the history of the Second World War - and of the C20th - would have been very different.