94 GERMANY TRIUMPHANT 1939–1941
The German army advanced on Leningrad in August 1941, two months
after their invasion of the USSR. By September 8, the Germans in the
south and the Finns in the north began closing in on the city. They
severed all rail routes and land routes, cutting the city’s supply lines.
In late September, Hitler changed tactics and issued orders to
besiege Leningrad, to bombard and starve the people rather than
accept surrender, and to raze the city to the ground. For over two
years, heavy artillery fire and aerial bombing destroyed Leningrad’s
infrastructure, and an estimated 650,000 people died from artillery
attacks, air raids, starvation, disease, and hypothermia.Survival against the odds
Cut off from its major supply routes, Leningrad’s survival depended
entirely on Lake Ladoga to the northeast, the only means by which
supplies could reach the city from elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Each
summer, barges carried food, fuel, and munitions across the lake to
the city. Each winter, when the lake froze over, provisions were driven
across it on narrow and dangerous ice roads. Known as the “Road of
Life,” the route was also the main evacuation route for over one million
civilians escaping the starving city. Soviet antiaircraft artillery and
fighter planes protected the road against attack, but as the Germans
regularly attacked convoys, travel was still dangerous.
Soviet forces made several attempts to break the blockade. An
advance by the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts in August–October
1942 ended in stalemate, but in Operation Iskra (“Spark”) in January
1943 the Soviets broke through German lines to create a corridor to
the city on the southern shore of Lake Ladoga. A railway was built in
the corridor, providing faster
transport than the Lake
Lagoda routes. In January
1944, the Soviets finally broke
the blockade. They drove out
the Germans and recaptured
the Moscow–Leningrad
railway on January 27, ending
the 872-day siege. In 1945, the
city was awarded the Order
of Lenin and in 1965 it was
given the title the Hero City
of the Soviet Union.THE SIEGE
OF LENINGRAD
One of the most grueling blockades in history, the siege of
Leningrad saw hundreds of thousands of civilians perish as
the Germans and their Finnish allies encircled the city,
bombarding and starving its people for 872 days.
◁ Attacking the city
Soldiers of the Wehrmacht observe
German attacks on Leningrad’s defensive
line in late 1941.US_094-095_The_Siege_of_Leningrad.indd 94 19/03/19 5:39 PM