The siege of Leningrad is a key episode in the Second World War on Soviet territory. Lasting 900 days between September 1941 and January 1944, the siege of Leningrad claimed the lives of 800,000 of the city’s inhabitants, mainly through cold and hunger.
Leningrad, formerly St. Petersburg, capital of the Russian Empire, was one of the initial targets of the German invasion of June 1941. By the end of July, German forces had cut the Moscow-Leningrad railway and were penetrating the outer belt of the fortifications around Leningrad.
The siege began officially on September 8, 1941. German armies approached Leningrad from the west and south while their Finnish allies approached to the north down the Karelian Isthmus.
The people of Leningrad began building antitank fortifications and succeeded in creating a stable defense of the city, but as a result were cut off from all access to vital resources in the Soviet interior, Moscow specifically. B y early November it had been almost completely encircled, with all its vital rail and other supply lines to the Soviet interior cut off.
According to official data, some 2.8 million people, including 400,000 children, were trapped in the city at the outset of the Siege. On January 27, 1944, Soviet forces permanently break the Leningrad siege line, ending the almost 900-day German-enforced containment of the city, which cost hundreds of thousands of Russian lives.
The siege of Leningrad
