The deadly Siege of Leningrad

Before the war began, Hitler had already expressed a desire to eliminate Leningrad.

In his ideological vision, the city held no future under German occupation. He saw it as a centre of Bolshevism and Jewish intellectualism that needed to be erased.

Nazi war aims also included the complete removal of the Slavic population in the region to make way for German settlers.

Leningrad’s destruction was intended to help achieve this wider plan of racial conquest and land acquisition in the east, outlined in Hitler’s Mein Kampf and reiterated in Nazi military planning.

Generalplan Ost, the Nazi plan for the colonisation of Eastern Europe, planned the total destruction of the city and its people.

On 22 September 1941, German military directives and propaganda supported Hitler’s demand that the city should be destroyed and left to starve, though no formal written order with the exact wording "the city of Petersburg must be erased from the face of the Earth" has been verified. 

From a strategic perspective, Leningrad was also essential. It was the headquarters of the Soviet Baltic Fleet and housed vital arms factories.

Its fall would isolate Soviet forces in the north and secure Germany’s right flank.

Army Group North, under Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb, was tasked with capturing the city.

However, when Soviet resistance delayed the German advance, Hitler abandoned the idea of direct assault.

Instead, he ordered the city to be surrounded and starved into submission. 

By late August 1941, German forces had cut off most land routes to Leningrad from the south and west.

Finnish troops aligned with Germany moved down from the north. They cut the final rail links but they did not advance further.

On 8 September 1941, a German bombing raid destroyed the city’s main food warehouse at Badajevski, which had contained approximately 3,000 tonnes of provisions.

The loss caused panic among civilians and government officials. That same day marked the official beginning of the siege. 

Rather than storm the city, Hitler ordered a complete encirclement. German troops established a blockade that stretched from the south of Lake Ladoga to the Gulf of Finland.

This blockade formed a ring roughly 200 kilometres in circumference. The Luftwaffe launched hundreds of air raids, and artillery batteries pounded civilian districts.

Stalin refused to evacuate the population, declaring that the city would be defended at all costs.

The people of Leningrad would have to endure under siege conditions, cut off from supply lines and surrounded by hostile forces. 

Throughout the winter of 1941–42, conditions in Leningrad deteriorated rapidly.

Temperatures dropped as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius. Food rations fell to just 125 grams of bread per person per day, and that bread was often made with sawdust or cellulose to stretch the supply.

People ate wallpaper paste, pets, and eventually human flesh. Cases of cannibalism were officially recorded and severely punished by the authorities.

The NKVD reported hundreds of arrests for such crimes. Reports mention warning notices against cannibalism. 

Public services broke down. Electricity failed, water pipes froze, and transportation halted.

Trams stood motionless in the snow, and corpses piled up in apartment blocks.

Citizens resorted to pulling sleds with the bodies of relatives to mass graves.

During the winter of 1941–42 alone, over 600,000 civilians perished. The Soviet government organised minimal relief efforts and enforced strict censorship.

Yet cultural life persisted in small ways. On 9 August 1942, the Leningrad Philharmonic performed Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony in the besieged city under conductor Karl Eliasberg.

The performance was broadcast through loudspeakers across the German lines as a form of psychological resistance. 

From the first days of the siege, the Red Army launched repeated offensives to break the encirclement.

Soviet forces struck from the east and south in late 1941 and early 1942, but were repelled by entrenched German defenders.

The only supply route that remained was across the frozen Lake Ladoga. Known as the "Road of Life," this path allowed trucks to bring in limited food and ammunition during the winter, though the ice was often shelled and bombed.

Thousands of drivers and evacuees died trying to cross it. By the end of the first winter, over 360,000 tonnes of supplies had been delivered, and ferries and amphibious vehicles were later used during warmer months. 

By early 1943, Soviet High Command planned a more coordinated operation. On 12 January 1943, Operation Iskra (“Spark”) began with an assault by the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts.

After a week of heavy fighting, they succeeded in breaking through the German lines south of Lake Ladoga, creating a narrow land corridor.

Engineers quickly built a railway, which restored more reliable supply lines into the city.

It was not a full relief, but it eased the crisis and allowed better coordination with Soviet forces outside the blockade. 

The final stage of the siege happened in early 1944. The Red Army had recovered from the disasters of 1941 and 1942 and had begun to push west across a wide front.

In January 1944, the Soviets launched the Leningrad to Novgorod Offensive.

Soviet troops under General Leonid Govorov, which included the 2nd Shock Army and 42nd Army, struck south and west of the city and drove back German forces, freeing the surrounding areas.

The Wehrmacht, weakened and spread too thin, was forced into a rapid retreat. Army Group North suffered over 30,000 losses during the offensive. 

By 27 January 1944, the siege officially ended. After 872 days, Leningrad was no longer surrounded.

The German Army had failed to capture the city or force its surrender. Soviet soldiers took back nearby towns and railways, reopening connections with the rest of the country.

The end of the siege was celebrated with 24 rounds fired by 324 artillery guns.

Survivors emerged from their basements and shelters to begin the slow and painful process of recovery.

The city was severely damaged, but it had held on. 

The Siege of Leningrad resulted in over one million civilian deaths, a figure that exceeded military casualties.

It was one of the most lethal events of the Second World War and demonstrated the horrific effect of a long siege on city residents.

The Nazi strategy of starvation as a weapon failed to break the city, but it inflicted lasting trauma on its people.

The suffering and survival of Leningrad became a central part of Soviet public messages during the war and memory after the war. 

From a military perspective, the failure to take Leningrad weakened the entire German campaign in the east.

Army Group North stayed tied down by siege operations for two years, which used troops and supplies that could have supported the offensives at Moscow or Stalingrad.

The Soviet victory at Leningrad helped secure the northern front and helped bring about a larger change in the push that began in 1943.

The end of the siege in 1944 became a turning point in the local battle and in the wider war against Nazi Germany.

In 1945, Leningrad was officially honoured as a "Hero City" of the Soviet Union. Nearly 500,000 of those killed were buried in mass graves at Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery.

The siege led to poetry by Anna Akhmatova and personal accounts by survivors such as Daniil Granin, and it led to the creation of the Leningrad Blockade Museum to preserve its memory.