Siege of Leningrad
| Siege of Leningrad | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Eastern Front of World War II | |||||||||
Soviet anti-aircraft battery in Leningrad near Saint Isaac's Cathedral, 1941 | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
|
Germany Finland Naval support: Italy | Soviet Union | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| Initial: 725,000 | Initial: 930,000 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Unknown |
3,473,066 casualties
| ||||||||
Soviet civilians: 1,042,000
| |||||||||
The siege of Leningrad was a military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front of World War II from 1941 to 1944. Leningrad, the country's second largest city, was besieged by Germany and Finland for 872 days, but never captured. The siege was the most destructive in history and possibly the most deadly, causing an estimated 1.5 million deaths, from a prewar population of 3.2 million. It was not classified as a war crime at the time, but some historians have since classified it as a genocide due to the intentional destruction of the city and the systematic starvation of its civilian population.
In August 1941, Germany's Army Group North reached the suburbs of Leningrad as Finnish forces moved to encircle the city from the north. Land routes from Leningrad to the rest of the Soviet Union were cut on 8 September 1941, beginning the siege. The Germans decided to bomb the city and starve its inhabitants rather than attempt to capture it; many residents starved during the winter of 1941–1942. Supplies were delivered to city by air, by ship over Lake Ladoga, or over the Road of Life, a highway built on the lake when it was frozen. A Red Army offensive opened a narrow land corridor to Leningrad on 18 January 1943, but the siege was not fully broken until 27 January 1944.