872 days from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944
The siege of Leningrad was a military blockade of 872 days from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944 by Germany and Finland against the city of Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union. Russia’s second largest city, Leningrad, was besieged for two years, four months, and nineteen days, but the city was never captured.
The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of a major city in modern history, causing an estimated 1.5 million deaths. The siege isolated Leningrad from food supplies, except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, which could not make it through until the lake froze.
More than one million civilians were killed, mainly from starvation. There were incidents of cannibalism, with around 2,000 residents arrested for eating other people. Many others escaped or were evacuated, so the city became largely depopulated.
During World War II, German forces besieged Leningrad following the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days, almost two and a half years, from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944.
The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of a major city in modern history. The siege isolated the city from food supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga, which could not make it through until the lake froze.
More than one million civilians were killed, mainly from starvation. There were incidents of cannibalism, with around 2,000 residents arrested for eating other people. Many others escaped or wer
The siege 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.
During World War II, German forces besieged Leningrad following the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The siege lasted 872 days, almost two and a half years, from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944.
In August 1941, German Army Group North reached the suburbs of Leningrad and Finnish forces encircled the city from the north. Land routes from Leningrad to the rest of the Soviet Union were cut off on September 8, 1941, beginning the siege.
The German High Command ordered the Luftwaffe to bomb Leningrad to starve its people into submission, rather than attempt to capture it. Many thousands of Russian families and individuals died of starvation during the winter of 1941–1942.
Supplies were delivered to the city by air, and by ship over Lake Ladoga, when it was free of ice, and over the Road of Life that was built on the lake when it was frozen. A Red Army offensive opened a narrow land corridor to Leningrad on January 18, 1943, but the siege was not fully broken until January 27, 1944.
On May 1, 1945 Joseph Stalin, in his Supreme Commander Order No. 20, named Leningrad, Stalingrad, Sevastopol, and Odesa, hero cities of the war.
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR named Leningrad as a Hero City, and awarded the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal to Leningrad “for the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege.”
A law acknowledging the honorary title of “Hero City” passed on May 8, 1965 (the 20th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War), during the Brezhnev era. The Hero-City Obelisk bearing the Gold Star sign was installed in April 1985.