15 - Siege of Leningrad

Context

One of the original goals of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was capture of the old imperial capital city of Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg). The marvelous city was built on the shores of the Baltic Sea on west and the vast Lake Lagoda on the east. Hitler had planned for his Finnish allies to attack from the north while his massive Army Group North assaulted the city from the south. The citizens of Leningrad, therefore, would be caught in a deathtrap between water and steel. Stalin, however, would make sure that the city bearing Lenin’s namesake would be defended to the last man and ready for a bloody street-to-street battle. Hitler, on the other hand, had a siege in mind.

The Event

Beginning on September 4, 1941, German bombarded the city with artillery from the ground and bombers from the skies for nonstop for the next two months. They specifically targeted the city’s food stores. The situation became so bleak such that by the end of November, manual workers were receiving just 250 grams of bread per day—the equivalent to just over a half of a pound of bread! Hitler was determined to starve Leningrad into submission.

As the hunger grew, cattle and horse feed were issued to humans; the countryside was scoured for stinging nettles, which made a nourishing soup. People laid traps for dogs and cats, crows and rats. One woman’s diary recorded that she was existing on bread, salt water, and cooked glue. Another’s described the nightmare of starvation: “It was so horrible and—and above all—disgusting: to die…not from a shell fragment, not from a bomb, but from hunger.” As conditions worsened, there were reports of cannibalism, of murder to provide food. Finally, after rumors of children disappearing, parents kept their youngsters off the streets. Tens of thousands would starve to death, and with the coming of the bitter Russian winter, the suffering intensified.

Yet, it was this bitter cold that would save Leningrad. By the December of 1941, the water of Lake Lagoda was frozen solidly enough such that you could drive fully-loaded trucks across the lake! Soon enough, the Soviets were bringing 400 three-ton trucks across the ice and into the city, each fully loaded with flour and food. By the end of January 1942, the workers were receiving 400 grams of bread per day. The worst part of the Nazi siege of Leningrad was over.

Sadly, the siege of Leningrad would last until 1944. While the actual numbers are difficult to determine, many historians estimate that as many as one million people died during the siege of starvation alone in addition to the hundreds of thousand that lost their lives to German shells and bombs. By contrast, the United States and Great Britain together suffered fewer than 800,000 deaths during all of World War II.

"We went on with this blueprint work right through the winter 1941-2. . . It was a blessing for us architects. The best medicine that could have been given us during the famine. The moral effect is when a hungry man knows he's got a useful job of work to do. . But there's no doubt about it: a worker stands up better to hardships than an intellectual."

A lot of our people stopped shaving - the first sign man going to pieces. . . Most of these people pulled themselves together when they were given work. But on the whole men collapsed more easily than women, and at first the death-rate was highest among men. However, those who survived the worst period of the famine finally survived. The women felt the after-effects more seriously than the men. Many died in the spring, when the worst was already over. The famine had peculiar physical effects on people. Women were so run down that they stopped menstruating..."

So many people died we had to bury them without coffins. People had their feelings blunted and never seemed to weep at the burials...It was all done in complete silence, without any display of emotion. When things began to improve the first signs were that women began to put rouge and lipstick on pale, skinny faces. Yes, we lived through hell right enough; but you should have been here the day the blockade was broken - people in the street wept for joy, and strangers fell round each others' necks. Now life is almost normal. There is this shelling, of course, and people get killed, but life has become valuable again."

(Members of the staff of the Architects Institute)

Source(s): Encyclopedia Britannica