Leningrad

“The Fuehrer has decided to wipe the city of St Petersburg from the face of the earth. We have no interest in the preservation of even a part of the population of that city.”

– Excerpt from the instructions of Hitler’s high command, September 29, 1941.

If I live to understand what possesses a person to write something like this, let alone try to carry it out, it will have been a life well spent.