According to plans for Operation Barbarossa, Army Group North under the command of Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb was meant to take Leningrad while also securing the Baltic states and protecting Army Group Center’s northern flank. By July, the army group had advanced around 270 miles (450 kilometers) into the Soviet Union, meeting stubborn but ultimately unsuccessful Soviet resistance. There was a huge opening in the Northwestern Front under General Fyodor Kuznetsov, and most of his divisions were understrength. The Soviet leadership soon realized that their priority would have to be the defense of Leningrad, both a key industrial center as well as the symbolic capital of the Russian Revolution. Joseph Stalin appointed Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, a political ally, as overall commander of the Northern and Northwestern fronts. Voroshilov at once made the fortification of Leningrad and shoring up Leningrad’s defenses his priority.

Although German panzers penetrated deep into the Soviet rear, with elements of Fourth Panzer Group coming within 66 miles of Leningrad by July 13, a series of Soviet counterstrikes left some German divisions encircled while their supporting units caught up with them. None of these Soviet attacks succeeded in pushing back the enemy, but they did delay the German advance by critical weeks. Hitler responded by transferring Third Panzer Group, under General Hermann Hoth, from Army Group Center to Army Group North and then gave Leeb orders to quickly encircle Leningrad and join with Finnish forces. The Germans did not anticipate that General Nikolai Vatutin, the new chief of staff of the Northwestern Front, had planned for an August counteroffensive that broke German lines and contributed to yet another substantial delay of the Leningrad assault. Voroshilov, however, was unable to stop Leningrad from becoming surrounded by late August; Stalin replaced him with Marshal Georgy Zhukov in early September. Despite facing tougher obstacles than expected, the German high command claimed that “the iron ring around Leningrad has been closed.” This was the start of the infamous siege of Leningrad, which would kill more Soviets than the entire losses suffered by the United States and the United Kingdom in the entire war.

The German siege was so destructive because the city was completely surrounded by land; resupply was only possible by crossing Lake Ladoga or through air drops, neither of which were feasible with German air and naval superiority. German bombing and shelling, however, was incessant. Before his replacement, Voroshilov was planning to demolish the city rather than surrender it; Zhukov canceled these plans upon his appointment and issued orders against any retreat. By the end of September, he had achieved the “Miracle on the Neva,” not only defending the city but also inflicting 60,000 casualties on Army Group North. These came at an incredibly high cost: the Leningrad Front alone suffered over 100,000 casualties. The more the Soviets fought harder to hold on to what they had, the more intense combat became. Tension was high because at any moment the city could fall.

On September 22, 1941, the German high command issued a directive stating that Hitler had ordered the removal of Leningrad “from the face of the earth.” Hitler said: “I have no interest in the further existence of this large city after the defeat of Soviet Russia… We propose to blockade the city tightly and erase it from the earth by means of artillery fire and continuous bombardment from the air.” He was more interested in finishing off Moscow and Kiev, and even transferred Fourth Panzer Group to Army Group Center toward that end. Berlin encouraged Finland to advance on Leningrad from the north, but after restoring the Finnish-Soviet border pre-Winter War, the Finnish government showed little to no interest in sacrificing Finnish lives to bring the city under German control.

Between June 1941 and March 1943, most of the residents of Leningrad evacuated the city. The city had a population of around three million before the war, but had received a huge influx of refugees fleeing east after Operation Barbarossa began. In the spring and summer, those people still in Leningrad would be ferried across Lake Ladoga, or along the “The Road of Life” that ran between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad in the winter months. (The road today is part of a World Heritage Site.) Through these highly dangerous means, the Soviet armed forces kept the defenders of Leningrad supplied – if only barely. After almost thirty months of continuous siege, over one million Soviet citizens died from starvation, shock, exposure, or from German bombing. A city of three million would be reduced to around 700,000. Due to the destruction of all the primary food warehouses, food was scarce; by the winter of 1941-1942 there were already reports of cannibalism, as people turned on the corpses of their loved ones just to survive. More typically, however, people preyed on one another for their ration cards. It is important to remember that this was a deliberate policy of starvation employed by the German high command. At no point was the morality of such a high civilian death toll considered; this was a war of extermination.

Sources

Barber, John, and Andrei Rostislavovich Dzeniskevich. Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad, 1941-44. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005.

Glantz, David M. The Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1944: 900 Days of Terror. London: Cassell Military Paperbacks, 2004.

Glantz, David M., and Jonathan M. House. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2015.

Kirschenbaum, Lisa A. The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.