On January 27, 1944, one of the longest and most destructive sieges in the history of the war ended in Leningrad, Soviet Union. During the siege, more than 1 million of the city's inhabitants died of starvation, hypothermia and cannibalism, as well as enemy bombardment and shelling.
Nazi Germany envisioned Operation Barbarossa, which invaded the Soviet Union, as a war of annihilation aimed at destroying civilians. Adolf Hitler's regime designated the Slavic people (known as "Ostvölker"), especially the Soviets, as "non-human". In Mein Kampf, Hitler outlines his grand plan to conquer the eastern territories to achieve German domination.
The city of Leningrad was regarded as the "window of the West" by the Soviet ruler Peter the Great and remained a jewel in the Crown of the Soviet Union in the 18th and 19th centuries. Known as St. Petersburg during the Imperial Era, it was a melting pot of cultures, rich in neoclassical architecture, and a center for many educational and government agencies.
In 1941, German troops attacked a Soviet bunker in Leningrad.
For the Nazis, however, the city became synonymous with negative Soviet stereotypes — it was named after the communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. As a Soviet and Communist, Lenin was hated by Nazi extremists. Hitler was bent on destroying the city as a symbolic act of the so-called German "sense of superiority."
Nazi Germany planned early on the horrors that starved Leningrad. Documents show that SS and German military leaders made detailed plans to systematically kill the Soviet population by starvation long before the siege began. On May 2, 1941, the ministers of the Third Reich convened a meeting equivalent to the official meeting of the Eastern Economic Command and recorded the following chilling memorandum: "The war can continue only if the entire Wehrmacht is supported by the Soviet Union ... In this way, if you squeeze what you need from the land, you will undoubtedly starve tens of millions of people. ”
On May 16, Hitler was briefed on the Barbarossa Plan at his private residence in Upper Salzburg. According to historian Alex J. Kay, he and other Nazi leaders, including SS leaders Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goering, approved German troops to confiscate about 25 to 30 million tons of grain from Soviet territory each year.
In 1941, German soldiers smiled at their positions outside Leningrad. The winter of 1941 was the most devastating for the Soviets, as the death toll from acute starvation peaked. German soldiers were ordered to confiscate all food from the Soviets or face the death penalty.
"The participants declared in an unbelievable and factual manner that if Germany were to win the war, tens of millions of people would have to starve to death in the territories of the Soviet Union, which was about to be occupied," described in Chapter 4 of The Policy of the Nazi East Front, 1941. Himmler told SS Marshal Erich von Dembach-Zelevsky: "The purpose of the Soviet campaign was to eliminate the Slavs by 30 million. ”
On May 23, 1941, the Third Reich issued the official guidelines for the "policy of starvation" carried out by the army: "The population of these territories, especially the population of the cities, will have to face the most terrible famine ... Tens of millions of people in this territory will become redundant and will have to die or migrate to Siberia. ”
During the Siege of Leningrad in 1941, German soldiers smoked around looted furniture and churches and houses burned down.
On June 1, Herbert Backe, the Imperial Secretary of State, issued guidelines known as the 12 Gebotes, containing instructions for starving Soviets based on racist assertions: "For centuries, Soviets have endured poverty, starvation, and frugality. His stomach was elastic, and therefore there was no false sympathy. Do not try to apply German standards of living. In July 1941, Franz Alfred, commander of the Moscow Advance Commando of EinsatzG B, summed up the "policy of starvation": "Hitler intended to extend the eastern border of the Empire to the Baku-Stalingrad-Moscow-Leningrad line. On the east side of this line... There will be a 'blazing zone' where all life will be erased," he told German military officials. "Its aim was to wipe out the approximately 30 million Soviets living in the strip by removing all foodstuffs." He said Leningrad would be "razed to the ground". He also threatened: "All those involved in this operation were forbidden to give even a slice of bread to the Soviets and had to die." ”
The inhabitants of Leningrad, besieged around 1941, starved to death and froze to death under bombing, but refused to surrender to the Germans.
In September 1941, German troops blockaded Leningrad, successfully capturing 500,000 Soviet troops, most of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, and about 3 million civilians inside and outside the city, which was bombed day and night. It is impossible to describe the horrors endured by urban populations during the slow and painful process of starvation. Populations are like walking skeletons. Many were too tired to move. Some resort to murder and cannibalism in order to survive. Others died of emaciation and obscurity. As German bombing turned houses and stately buildings into rubble and ashes, corpses filled the streets of this once beautiful imperial city.
The Nazi leaders were well aware of the ordeals facing the Soviets and were not affected. At a conference in Berlin in November 1941, Goering told Italian Count Galeazzo Ciano that "some people must be slaughtered" and coldly estimated that some 20 to 30 million Soviet citizens would starve to death by the end of the year.
Despite their terrible ordeal and despite leaflets urging surrender dropped from German planes, the city's residents refused to give up. The Soviets managed to establish a "guerrilla zone" from where they launched attacks on the German army. Others drove trucks through the thin ice of Lake Ladoga, smuggling food and supplies to the city via a route that came to be known as the "Path of Life." To fight hunger, citizens extract vitamins from pine needles and eat sap to nourish themselves.
The Soviets risked their lives to drive through the frozen Lake Ladoga to deliver supplies and food to the city
Despite the danger of melting ice, the Soviets continued to drive the frozen lake to supply Leningrad in warm weather
After 872 days of siege, the Germans were finally repulsed by the Red Army. More than 1 million residents died. Contrary to Hitler's plans, however, many of the inhabitants of Leningrad are still alive and the city is still standing.