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On This Day in History: The Lifting of the Siege at Leningrad

On the 75th anniversary of the battle that lifted the Siege of Leningrad in World War 2, people walk in snowfall to the Motherland monument to place flowers at the Piskaryovskoye Cemetery where the victims were buried, St. Petersburg, Russia, January 26, 2019.

An epochal anniversary from the annals of modern history remains a living memory for the Russian people. The Siege of Leningrad, arguably the most gruesome episode of the Second World War, which lasted for 872 days, was finally broken by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1944, 80 years ago to be exact.

The siege endured by more than three million people, of whom nearly one half died, most of them in the first six months when the temperature fell to 30° below zero. It was an apocalyptic event. Civilians died from starvation, disease and cold. Yet it was a heroic victory. Leningraders never tried to surrender even though food rations were reduced to a few slices of bread mixed with sawdust, and the inhabitants ate glue, rats — and even each other — while the city went without water, electricity, fuel or transportation, and was being shelled daily.

The onslaught

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German armies had by early September approached Leningrad from the west and south while their Finnish allies approached to the north down the Karelian Isthmus. Leningrad’s entire able-bodied population was mobilized to build antitank fortifications along the city’s perimeter in support of the city’s 200,000 Red Army defenders. Leningrad’s defenses soon stabilized, but by early November it had been almost completely encircled, with all its vital rail and other supply lines to the Soviet interior cut off.

German Pressure was Relentless on the Luga Defenses

The ensuing German blockade and siege claimed 650,000 Leningrader lives in 1942 alone, mostly from starvation, exposure, disease, and shelling from distant German artillery. Sparse food and fuel supplies reached the city by barge in the summer and by truck and ice-borne sled in winter across Lake Ladoga. These supplies kept the city’s arms factories operating and its two million inhabitants barely alive in 1942, while one million more of its children, sick, and elderly were being evacuated. Starvation-level food rationing was eased by new vegetable gardens that covered most open ground in the city by 1943.

Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb with Erich Hoepner in September 1941

SS Polizei troops of the 4th division during operations on the Leningrad Front.

Map showing the Axis encirclement of Leningrad

German soldiers in front of burning houses and a church, near Leningrad in 1941

Worker Battalions Armed with Rifles, Machine Guns, Pistols, Swords, and Pikes

Stories of SS atrocities had already filtered through from the west, and General Zhdanov had no doubt what awaited the population if the Germans broke into the city. He solemnly announced to a gathering of the party leadership that Leningrad would be defended, street by street, house by house. The people, he said, were to be prepared for a last-ditch battle within the city walls.

Peoples Militia volunteers moving steadily to the front. Many of the volunteers were factory workers.

Two Soviet soldiers, one armed with a DP machine gun, in the trenches of the Leningrad Front on 1 September 1941

While one million civilians were put to work creating two concentric defensive perimeters around the city, internally Leningrad was divided into 150 small sectors, each to be defended by worker battalions armed with rifles, machine guns, pistols, swords, and pikes. Frenzied activity saw dragon’s teeth sown to block the passage of tanks, railway tracks were lifted and crisscrossed to form an iron jungle on the city outskirts, and pillboxes and gun emplacements sprang up in the southern suburbs. Stalin himself was now taking a keen interest in the city’s defense measures. His secret police confirmed that not all would view German occupation as a disaster, and he suspected Leningrad might be turned over to the Germans without a further fight.

Nurses helping wounded people during a German bombardment on 10 September 1941

On the eve of the looming battle, and perhaps fueled by Stalin’s paranoia, a special commission arrived to provide advice and aid to Zhdanov and his military command. It was rumored that their real aim was to gauge the mood of the people and determine whether to defend Leningrad at all or divert forces to help deal with the increasing military threat to Moscow. In the wake of this commission, however, Zhdanov believed the city still had Stalin’s support and he redoubled his efforts. Hundreds of miles of antitank barriers, barbed wire barricades, and trench systems were constructed. Large poles were erected in parks and open areas to wreck any attempted airborne landings and Molotov cocktails were mass-produced.

Two teen girls assemble PPD-40 submachine guns during the siege of Leningrad in 1943

The Lake Lagoda lifeline

To sustain the defence of the city, it was vitally important for the Red Army to establish a route for bringing a constant flow of supplies into Leningrad. This route, which became known as the Road of Life, was effected over the southern part of Lake Ladoga and the corridor of land which remained unoccupied by Axis forces between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad. Transport across Lake Ladoga was achieved by means of watercraft during the warmer months and land vehicles driven over thick ice in winter (hence the route becoming known as "The Ice Road"). The security of the supply route was ensured by the Ladoga Flotilla, the Leningrad PVO Corps, and route security troops. Vital food supplies were thus transported to the village of Osinovets, from where they were transferred and transported over 45 km (28 mi) via a small suburban railway to Leningrad. The route had to be used also to evacuate civilians, since no evacuation plans had been executed in the chaos of the first winter of the war, and the city was completely isolated until November 20, when the ice road over Lake Ladoga became operational. Vehicles risked becoming stuck in the snow or sinking through broken ice caused by constant German bombardments, but the road brought necessary military and food supplies in and took civilians and wounded soldiers out, allowing the city to continue resisting the enemy.

Supply trucks move across a frozen Lake Lagoda on a cold winter’s night.

Unimaginable suffering

Three men burying victims of Leningrad's siege in 1942

Soviet civilians leaving destroyed houses after a German bombardment during the Siege, 10 December 1942

Citizens flee as shells explode on Leningrad’s main street Nevsky Prospekt.

Suffering knew no boundaries in besieged Leningrad. Many civilians, including children, perished as the cities supply lines were strangled.

Leningrad battles on

The fire of anti-aircraft guns deployed in the neighborhood of St. Isaac's cathedral during the defense of Leningrad (now called St. Petersburg, its pre-Soviet name) in 1941.

Soviet ski troops by the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad

Surviving the Terrible Famine

The Germans tried to interdict the flow of supplies across the ice road with merciless air and artillery strikes, but failed. By February, Shirov’s ruthless determination had the ice road at last functioning efficiently. Supplies of food and medicines were coming in ever-increasing numbers and evacuees were leaving in ever-increasing numbers, which collectively eased the strain on those who remained. Incredibly, people started to recover. Warmth was restored to their homes, food was available, and spirits lifted. They had survived and perhaps the worst was behind them. As winter drew to a close, the German blockade was still in place, but the ice road was now permanently entrenched. It had, in the end, been the salvation of Leningrad.

A victim of starvation in besieged Leningrad suffering from muscle atrophy in 1941

Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance photo of a section of the Ice Road, 60 km east of Leningrad

Road of life in November–December 1941

Power was restored and ties with the outside world were reestablished. By April, only 1.1 million people remained, but they would never again endure the privations experienced during the dreadful winter of 1941-1942. The city had indeed survived the terrible famine, and steps were taken to get Leningrad back on its feet. The first task was to remove the thousands of corpses and more than one million tons of rubbish to avoid the risk of epidemics.

“No Harder Nails in the World”

By 1944, Army Group North, bled white in battle and harassed by ceaseless partisan operations, was in no condition to withstand a major attack. The Red Army had seized the strategic initiative and in January launched its winter offensive to drive the Germans from Leningrad. After days of heavy combat, Soviet troops finally succeeded in breaking the German stranglehold on the city. On January 27, 1944, after almost 900 days, the siege was lifted. The nightmare was over.

“A battle in the outskirts”. Soviet machine-gunners firing at the enemy near the old train station Detskoe Selo in Pushkin near Leningrad.

After three years of war, Leningrad bore little resemblance to the grandiose city of prewar 1941. Historic buildings had been destroyed, the streets were piled with rubble, and over 15 million square feet of housing lay in ruins. The human cost had been appalling. Yet, an exact figure is unknown. Western scholars believe it approached nearly 1.5 million, while Red Army losses were estimated to be in excess of 3.4 million.

Soviet gains, mid-1943 to end of 1944

Liberation for some brought temporary relief from scars that would never heal. Others felt elation and a rekindled love of life, but many were left harboring an unbearable sadness. They had lost everything that really mattered—their wives, their husbands, their children.

Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad in Ploschad' Pobedy (Victory Square), southern entrance to the city, 1981

Despite Joseph Stalin’s attempts to downplay the city’s role in the Great Patriotic War, the devastating Battle of Leningrad stands as a lasting testament to the spirit, self-sacrifice, and heroism of the Leningraders themselves and the pivotal role they played in the war’s final outcome. No city in modern times had ever suffered more, and never had a city’s population risen in triumph over such overwhelming odds. “If you make nails of these people,” one Leningrader wrote, “there will be no harder nails in the world.”

Personnel from the 154th Preobrazhensky Independent Commandant's Regiment on Palace Square, 27 January 2019