SIEGE OF LENINGRAD Flashcards
Siege of Leningrad - 8th Sep 1941 - Jan 27th 1944.
872 days long!!
Short summary?
Key points: (no order)
1) Leningrad surrounded. Cut off from rest of USSR - disaster.
2) Lake Lagoda freezes.
3) 3 million people in LG: 1/3 of population die.
4) Evacuations / fleeing.
Leningrad = one of main targets in Operation Barbarossa. It was…
“expected to fall like a leaf” - Hitler
What did the Nazis do?
Nazis cut off supplies - warships around LG stopped supplies entering city. Supply lines - air & river - under constant attack. Power stations = out of action, no electricity. Food shortages.
LG cut off from the rest of Russia by any form of land communication.
Bombarded from the air / by artillery on the ground. Hitler’s mistake: believed the resolve of the city to continue to fight would disappear.
German bombers dropped propaganda leaflets on the city, claiming that the pop would starve to death if they did not surrender.
Nazi allies in siege?
Finland!
In 1939, USSR had attacked Finland, failed. (The Winter War, Nov 1939).
Finland allied w Nazis to form a military blockade!!
How many children evacuated?
400,000 children evacuated!
Who governed the city?
Lieutenant - General Popov, commander of city’s garrison.
Zhdanov - head of local party committee.
Famous words?
“The enemy is at the gate. It is a question of life and death.”
“put your Bolshevik qualities to work.”
THE SIEGE HARDENS
the area under the city’s authorities’ control produced just:
- 1/3 of needed grain & coal
- 1 /2 of needed meat
- 1/12 of needed sugar
Bodies pulled around on sledges, death normalised.
RATIONING AND HUNGER
- Rationing: people only got 10% of the required daily calorific intake - despite labour intensive work!!
Daily rations = 2 thin slices of poor quality bread! - No. of shops handling food drastically cut to allow for better control - but longer queues
- Black market thrived
- Extreme measures! Reports of cannibalism - freshly buried bodies dug up in the night! Dogs & cats = food.
Where people died in the street, scramble for their ration card!
Gangs of people braved German guns to dig up potatoes in fields outside the city. Potatoes handed to authorities, then distributed equally.
IT WAS FREEZING!
- Lack of fuel - use of electricity in homes was banned. Industry & military took priority. Kerosene for oil lamps = unobtainable
- Wood = major source of heat in homes, furniture & floorboards burned
THE ROAD OF LIFE:
Lake Lagoda froze, thousands of citizens built a 200 mile long road across the ice, in 27 days. But ice often too thin / steep / too much snow for lorries to cross - needed to be 200mm thick to carry their weight. Only this thick in Nov 26th when 8 trucks managed to cross the lake, brought back 33 tons of food. Great achievement, but city needed 1000 tons per day to function. Later managed to get 100 tons per day.
SHOSTAKOVICH
AUGUST 9th 1942!! AUGUST 9th 1942!! August 9th 1942!! August 9th 1942!!! August 9th 1942!!
Composed first 3 movements of his Seventh Symphony. A protest against all tyranny and totalitarianism (both German and Russian).
Most memorable performance - Aug 9th 1942. As bombs fell nearby, an orchestra played to a packed concert hall of starving people. Performance aired across the city on loudspeakers, directed to German lines, an act of cultural resistance to atrocity.
THE END OF THE SIEGE! 27th Jan 1944
Part of German retreat
After siege lifted, those who led the city were arrested by the KGB!
Crime - failed to contact Moscow frequently enough during siege. Leaders - gulags.
Stalin paranoid - had the leaders made pacts with the nazis to survive?
SUBSTITUTE FOOD:
- Baker’s bread contained only 50% normal amount of rye flour. Boost the loaf - oats, usually fed horses. Even cellulose & cottonseed tried. Little nutritional value
- People drank oil & grease from bearings in factory machines!!!
- Cats’ & sheep intestines were stewed. Seaweed made into broth.
How many people starved to death on Christmas day 1941?
At least 4000 people!
