On this day in military history…
The siege of Leningrad, one of the most harrowing and prolonged military blockades in history, began on September 8, 1941, and lasted until January 27, 1944. Spanning nearly 900 days, it was part of Adolf Hitler's broader campaign to dominate the Soviet Union during World War II. The siege was not merely a military maneuver but a calculated effort to starve a major city into submission, destroy its cultural significance, and annihilate its population. The consequences were catastrophic, with over a million civilians perishing, primarily from starvation, bombardments, and the unforgiving Russian winter.
The idea for the siege was rooted in Hitler's strategic goals outlined in Operation Barbarossa, the massive invasion of the Soviet Union launched in June 1941. Hitler viewed Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, as symbolically and strategically important. The city was the cradle of the Bolshevik Revolution and held immense ideological significance for the Soviet regime. Militarily, its location made it a key port and industrial center. Hitler wanted the city erased from the map, both as a blow to Soviet morale and to eliminate any potential for its resurgence as a political or military threat.
The German plan for Leningrad, largely orchestrated by the Wehrmacht’s Army Group North under Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, was not to storm and capture the city through direct assault. Instead, Hitler ordered the city to be encircled and cut off from all supply lines, with the intention of starving its population and defenders into surrender or death. The Germans also hoped to avoid the heavy losses a street-by-street battle might entail, as had been experienced in previous urban warfare scenarios.
Joining the Germans in the siege were Finnish forces advancing from the north, though the Finns did not directly participate in the assault on the city itself. Stalin’s Soviet Union, caught off guard by the speed and coordination of the German advance, scrambled to mount a defense. The Red Army, along with thousands of civilians pressed into service, constructed defensive rings around the city. Despite their efforts, Leningrad was effectively sealed off from the rest of the country by early September 1941.
The human toll was immense. As German and Finnish forces tightened the noose, supply routes were severed, and the city’s food reserves quickly dwindled. By the winter of 1941–42, daily rations for civilians had dropped to as low as 125 grams of bread per day, much of it mixed with sawdust or other fillers. Thousands died daily from starvation, disease, and exposure. Public transport ceased, heating failed, and people resorted to eating pets, wallpaper paste, and in some tragic cases, other humans. The infamous winter was so severe that bodies often lay frozen in the streets for days before they could be removed. Yet the city did not fall.
One critical lifeline for the besieged city was the so-called Road of Life, a route across the frozen Lake Ladoga that allowed limited supplies to reach Leningrad and enabled some civilians, particularly children, to be evacuated. Soviet forces mounted repeated offensives to break the blockade, but for much of the siege, they achieved only partial and temporary gains. It was not until January 1943 that a narrow land corridor was re-established during Operation Iskra. Full liberation did not come until a year later, in January 1944, when Soviet forces launched a massive offensive and finally drove the Germans away from the outskirts of the city.
The siege of Leningrad ultimately failed in its primary objectives. The city did not surrender. Its industrial output, though severely diminished, never ceased entirely. The population resisted with extraordinary resilience, and the cultural institutions—museums, libraries, and theaters—continued to function where possible, serving as a source of morale and identity. The Germans expended enormous resources maintaining the siege and suffered significant losses in the surrounding battles. Far from crippling Soviet morale, the siege became a symbol of Soviet endurance and was immortalized in countless memoirs, artworks, and official narratives.
When it ended, Leningrad emerged physically scarred and emotionally devastated. The toll included over a million civilian deaths, widespread malnutrition, and psychological trauma that would linger for decades. But it also emerged as a symbol of unyielding resistance, a city that refused to be conquered. The siege of Leningrad remains one of the darkest yet most remarkable chapters in World War II, illustrating both the depths of human suffering and the astonishing resilience of those determined to survive.
