Above: KIROVSK, RUSSIA, 23 February 2013: Memorial stone with the inscription: "Glory and eternal memory of defenders of Leningrad" at Nevsky Pyatachok Memorial, Kirovsk, Russia. Photograph licensed to War History Network.

Left: Leningrad, Soviet Union. Leningraders starved and died in the streets and in their homes during the Siege of Leningrad. Cannibalism was commonplace--pets were eaten first. Photo in the Public Domain.

The city of Leningrad, Hitler’s initial primary objective, was the northern target in 1941’s Operation Barbarossa. His strategy was to clear his Baltic flank and link up with Finnish troops—while downplaying the importance of Moscow, much to the chagrin of his Army Command. Army Group North’s goal at the start of Barbarossa was encirclement (but not capture) and blockade, starvation, and final destruction and leveling of the city. Hitler later ordered the city’s capture on 5 April 1942.

Books and Suggested Reading
Leningrad: Siege and Symphony: The Story of the Great City Terrorized by Stalin, Starved by Hitler, Immortalized by Shostakovich, written by Brian Moynahan. Published in 2013 by Atlantic Monthly Press. In 1969, Harrison E. Salisbury had his classic The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad published. Da Capo Press had its second printing in 2003. This work remains one of the best on Leningrad's siege.

Anna Reid brought her enthralling Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 to the literature. Her work was published in 2011 by Walker & Company. The Battle for Leningrad: 1941-1944, by David M. Glantz, was published in 2002 by University Press of Kansas. Glantz' work focuses more on military strategy and tactics. Finally, the most recent contribution to the literature is The War Within: Diaries From the Siege of Leningrad, by Alexis Peri. Her moving book was published in 2017 by Harvard University Press.

Left: Residents of Leningrad queueing up for water. People in besieged Leningrad taking water from shell-holes. Location: Nevsky Prospect, between Gostiny Dvor (the long building on the left) and Ostrovsky Square.

Nearly one million Leningraders within the city died during the blockade—many during the winter’s epic cold of 1941-42. To include those Red Army soldiers who died in battles surrounding the city during the 872-day blockade is even more staggering —the total estimate between 1.6 and 2.0 million Soviet citizens. Richard Bidlack and Nikita Lomagin place the former statistic into historical perspective: “The lowest range of this estimate exceeds the total number of Americans, both military personnel and civilians, who have perished in all armed conflicts from 1776 through the current war in Afghanistan.” Putting the event in qualitative perspective, Bidlack and Lomagin suggest that after the Holocaust, the 872-day siege at Leningrad was the second-worst genocidal episode in history.

Left: St. Petersburg, Russia, 9 May 2018. Monument "Heroic defenders of Leningrad" on Victory Square - a monument to the feat of citizens in the tragic days of the siege of 1941-1944.

The Battle for Leningrad was not the most decisive battle of the war on the Eastern Front—that distinction could be given to Stalingrad, Kursk or Moscow. Lifting of the siege however, represented an extraordinary victory for the Red Army and the city’s surviving civilians, given the duress from famine and extreme winters. In no other city, in any theater, did citizens join forces with their military to successfully repel and defeat an invader as they had at Leningrad. Militarily, the triumph in driving the Eighteenth and Sixteenth Armies back during the Leningrad-Novgorod Strategic Offensive Operation boosted the morale for the Soviet Union at a critical stage in their war. This victory along the northwestern-third of the three Soviet axes was essential in the Soviet campaign to Berlin.

Multimedia: Video, Web, Photo, and Discussion
Website: Saint-Petersburg.com: History of St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) during World War II