W
ith his mind set on defeating the Red Army and his pledge
to “erase St. Petersburg [Leningrad] from the face of the
Earth,” in June 94 Adolf Hitler ordered his forces to
cross Poland and invade the Soviet Union. By early September, with
the city all but surrounded by German and Finnish troops, he launched
a calculated plan to bomb and starve its residents into submission.
For more than three years, the battle for the city dragged on at a
cost of .6– million Soviet lives. While tens of thousands of civilians
died from enemy fire, most of the 800,000 who perished succumbed to
starvation and disease.^3 Among the civilian dead was a small group of
scientists whose bodies were surrounded by bags of wheat, barley, beans,
peas, and potatoes. They had chosen to preserve the seeds over saving
their own lives.
For Hitler, conquering St. Petersburg, a city of immense wealth and
strategic importance, would hasten the surrender of the Soviet Union
and weaken the resolve of its allies. Among the most prized spoils of war
would be the Hermitage Museum, home to one of the world’s oldest
and largest collections of history and culture.
Chapter 7
Becoming a Market Society
Today, the logic of buying and selling no longer applies to material goods alone
but increasingly governs the whole of life.
— Michael J. SandelKevin D. Walker, The Grand Food Bargain: And the Mindless Drive for More,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-948-7_7, © 2019 Kevin D. Walker.