History of Saint Petersburg - Siege of Leningrad

Siege of Leningrad

During World War II, Leningrad was surrounded and besieged by the German Wehrmacht from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944, a total of 29 months. By Hitler's order the Wehrmacht constantly shelled and bombed the city and systematically isolated it from any supplies, causing death of more than 1 million civilians in 3 years; 650 thousand died in 1942 alone The secret instruction from 23 September 1941 said: "the Führer is determined to eliminate the city of Petersburg from the face of earth. There is no reason whatsoever for subsequent existence of this large-scale city after the neutralization of the Soviet Russia." Starting in early 1942, Ingria was included into the Generalplan Ost annexation plans as the "German settlement area". This implied the genocide of 3 million Leningrad residents, who had no place in Hitler's "New East European Order".

Hitler ordered preparations for victory celebrations at the Tsar's Palaces. The Germans looted art from museums and palaces, as well as from private homes. All looted treasures, such as the Amber Room, gold statues of the Peterhof Palace, paintings and other valuable art were taken to Germany. Hitler also prepared a party to celebrate his victory at the hotel Astoria. A printed invitation to Hitler's reception ball at the Hotel Astoria is now on display at the City Museum of St. Petersburg.

During the siege of 1941 – 1944, the only ways to supply the city and suburbs, inhabited by several millions, were by aircraft or by cars crossing the frozen Lake Ladoga. The German military systematically shelled this route, called the Road of Life, so thousands of cars with people and food supplies had sank in the lake. The situation in the city was especially horrible in the winter of 1941 – 1942. The German bombing raids destroyed most of the food reserves. Daily food ration was cut in October to 400 grams of bread for a worker and 200 grams for a woman or child. On 20 November 1941, the rations were reduced to 250 and 125 grams respectively. Those grams of bread were the bulk of a daily meal for a person in the city. The water supply was destroyed. The situation further worsened in winter due to lack of heating fuel. In December 1941 alone some 53,000 people in Leningrad died of starvation, many corpses were scattered in the streets all over the city.

"Savichevs died. Everyone died. Only Tanya is left," wrote 11-year-old Leningrad girl Tanya Savicheva in her diary. It became one of the symbols of the blockade tragedy and was shown as one of many documents at the Nuremberg trials.

The city suffered severe destruction – the Wehrmacht fired about 150,000 shells at Leningrad and the Luftwaffe dropped about 100,000 air bombs. Many houses, schools, hospitals and other buildings were leveled, and those in the occupied territory were plundered by German troops.

As a result of the siege, about 1,2 million of 3 million Leningrad civilians lost their lives because of bombardment, starvation, infections and stress. Hundreds of thousands of unregistered civilians, who lived in Leningrad prior to WWII, had perished in the siege without any record at all. About 1 million civilians escaped with evacuation, mainly by foot. After two years of the siege, Leningrad became an empty "ghost-city" with thousands of ruined and abandoned homes.

For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the siege, Leningrad became the first to receive the Hero City title, as awarded in 1945.