Leningrad blockade

Leningrad blockade

Part of: Second World War , war against the Soviet Union 1941–1945

Defensive fire near St. Isaac's Cathedral during an air raid on Leningrad, 1941

date	September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944
location	Leningrad , Soviet Union
exit	Victory of the Soviet Union

Parties to the conflict
German Empire Finland	Soviet Union
Commander
Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb (until January 16, 1942) Georg von Küchler (January 17, 1942– January 29, 1944) CGE Mannerheim (Finland)	Kliment Voroshilov Georgi Zhukov
Troop strength
725,000 soldiers	930,000 soldiers
losses
unknown	16,470 civilians from bombing and around 1,000,000 civilians from malnutrition

Front line around Leningrad (May 1942 to January 1943)

The Leningrad Blockade ( Russian блокада Ленинграда blokada Leningrada ) is the name given to the siege of Leningrad by the German Army Group North and Spanish troops ( Blue Division ) during the Second World War . It lasted from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944, i.e. about 28 months.

It is estimated that around 1.1 million civilian residents of the city lost their lives as a result of the blockade. Most of these victims starved to death. The encirclement of the city by German troops with the aim of systematically starving the Leningrad population is considered one of the most blatant war crimes committed by the German armed forces during the war against the Soviet Union .

On the 75th anniversary of the end of the blockade on January 27, 2019, the German Federal Government announced through the Foreign Office that it would support the surviving victims of the blockade and projects for German-Russian understanding with around twelve million euros. The projects are to be implemented together with the Society for International Cooperation (GIZ).

German offensive

Soviet machine gunmen in a trench in front of Leningrad, September 1941

The Eastern Front at the beginning of the siege of Leningrad

After the troops of the Soviet Northwest Front (8th, 11th and 27th Army) were defeated by the Wehrmacht in the Battle of the Baltic States at the end of June 1941, Panzer Group 4 of the Wehrmacht, which was advancing at the top, forced the way to Pskow and Ostrow ; both cities could be captured by July 10th. The slower following German 18th Army , meanwhile, pushed the Soviet 8th Army back to Estonia via Riga (which fell on June 29th) and stood on August 7th on the Gulf of Finland near Kunda . That from July 22, the Army High Command 18 supplied XXXXII. Army Corps fought in the western part of Estonia, conquered Tallinn by August 28 and the large Baltic islands by mid-October. In mid-August, the 18th Army attacked Narva , the XXVI. Army Corps reached the Luga sector at Kingissepp on August 17th . The German 18th Army advanced on Leningrad from the southwest, while Panzer Group 4 and 16th Army advanced north and south of Lake Ilmen to cut off Leningrad from the east and to join the Finnish troops on the east bank of Lake Ladoga . Artillery bombardment began on September 4th. On September 8th, the Wehrmacht captured Shlisselburg on the shores of Lake Ladoga and interrupted the land connection to Leningrad.

Soviet defense

On June 27, 1941, the Leningrad Soviet decided to mobilize thousands of people to build fortifications. Several defensive positions were built. One of these defenses ran from the mouth of the Luga via Chudowo , Gatchina , Uritsk , Pulkowo to the Neva . A second ran from Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkowo, Kolpino and Koltuschi . A third position against the Finns was built in the northern suburbs of Leningrad. A total of 190 kilometers of beam barriers, 635 kilometers of barbed wire barriers, 700 kilometers of armored trenches , 5,000 earth-wood positions and reinforced concrete artillery positions as well as 25,000 kilometers of trenches were laid by civilians. A gun from the cruiser Aurora was installed on the Pulkovsky Heights south of Leningrad.

The supreme chairmanship of the "Commission for the Defense of Leningrad" was transferred to the Political Commissar Andrei Zhdanov on July 1, 1941 , who also served as a member of the War Council of the Leningrad Front . The party cadres Alexei Kuznetsov and Pyotr Popkov were responsible for the organization of civil life and the distribution of food within the city. They ordered the construction of temporary access roads to the west bank of Lake Ladoga .

Defenders of Leningrad (marines and workers of the Kirov plant) in April 1942

On September 14th, Army General Georgi Zhukov, at the behest of Stalin, assumed supreme command of the Leningrad Front, to which the 8th, 23rd, 42nd and 55th Armies were subordinate. On October 10, 1941, however, Zhukov was replaced by General Ivan Fedjuninsky and on October 27th by Lieutenant General Mikhail Chosin . Zhukov was entrusted with the decisive defense of Moscow, where strong German armored forces were also withdrawn from the Leningrad area.

Finnish location

In August, at the beginning of the Continuation War , the Finns had recaptured the isthmus of Karelia and advanced east of Lake Ladoga through Karelia , threatening Leningrad in the west and north. However, the Finnish troops stopped at the old Finnish-Russian border from 1939. The Finnish headquarters rejected German requests for air strikes against Leningrad and did not advance further south across the Swir (160 kilometers northeast of Leningrad) into occupied East Karelia. The German advance, on the other hand, was very rapid and in September the German troops enclosed Leningrad.

On September 4th, the chief of the Wehrmacht command staff , General Jodl , traveled to the Finnish headquarters to persuade the commanding officer, Mannerheim, to continue the Finnish offensive. Mannerheim refused this request.

After the war, the former Finnish President Ryti stated: “On August 24, 1941, I visited Marshal Mannerheim's headquarters . The Germans asked us to cross the old border and continue the offensive against Leningrad. I said that conquering Leningrad was not our goal and we shouldn't take part in it. Mannerheim and the Minister of War, Walden , agreed with me and turned down the Germans' offers. The result was a paradoxical situation: the Germans were unable to approach Leningrad from the north ... "

siege

Grocery menu for bread in Leningrad, 25 gram rations, December 1941

With the closure of the blockade ring on September 8th, all supply lines for the metropolis were cut off and the supply was only possible via Lake Ladoga . However, this route was not developed for the requirements of the city, as there was no landing stage and no access roads. The 8th Army (General Cherbakov), 42nd Army (General Ivanov) and 55th Army (General Lazarev) were involved in the defense of the Leningrad Front .

On September 8, the general attack by the German 18th Army and Panzer Group 4 (Colonel General Erich Hoepner ) began. The main attack was carried out by the XXXXI. Army Corps ( 1st and 6th Panzer Division and 36th Infantry Division ) in cooperation with the XXXVIII. Army Corps ( 1st and 291st Infantry Division ), which was deployed from the west via Krasnoye Selo and the Dudenhofer Heights to the north. In the south from the Gatchina area and in the east from the area Mga the divisions of the L. and XXVIII. Army corps used to attack the southern belt of fortifications.

On September 16, 1941, the XXXVIII. Army corps with the 58th and 254th Infantry Divisions coming from the south near Uritzk in the Gulf of Finland and cut off strong Soviet forces from the main power in Leningrad. In the area on both sides of Peterhof , the bulk of the cut-off 8th Army in the resulting bridgehead at Oranienbaum and on the island of Kotlin (with the Kronstadt fortress ) was able to hold out successfully. In mid-September the situation of Army Group North became critical because the X and II Army Corps of the 16th Army between Kholm and Staraya Russa, south of Lake Ilmen, were exposed to strong counter-attacks from the Soviet northwestern front.

At the beginning of October the Germans renounced another attack on the city in favor of the attack on Moscow . In the directive No. 37 of October 10, 1941, it says: “After the bulk of the Soviet Russian armed forces in the main theater of war has been crushed or destroyed, there is no longer any compelling reason to tie up Russian forces in Finland by attacking them. To take before winter Murmansk ... or ... cut the Murmansk railway, the strength and attack power of the available units and the advanced season no longer sufficient. "In December 1941 succeeded the Red Army during the Battle of Tikhvin , the scheduled Advance of the German XXXIX. Stop Panzer Corps to the east. In addition, the newly established Soviet Volkhov Front under Army General Merezkow in the area east of Leningrad was able to throw the Germans back over the River Volkhov and capture some bridgeheads on the left bank.

The continuation of the German attack on Leningrad was planned for the spring of 1942, but was repeatedly postponed due to logistical problems. In September 1942, Army Group North planned an attack under the code name “ Operation Northern Lights ” with the aim of capturing the city. Because of a relief attack by the Soviet army on the eastern siege ring in the Mga - Schluesselburg area ( First Ladoga battle ), the 11th Army under General Erich von Manstein had to be relocated there. In these battles the German troops suffered such heavy losses that it was not possible to carry out the planned operation soon in 1942. Further attacks with the aim of taking the city did not take place.

In the following years the Soviet Union tried to break the blockade of Leningrad in several battles (see section Soviet relief attacks ). During the siege, 1.6 to 2 million citizens of the Soviet Union were killed in the city and in the fighting around it.

Air strikes

Clear a road of thick ice and snow, March 1942

Leningrad residents leave their bombed-out houses, December 1942

From September 8, 1941, Leningrad was massively bombed. The Luftwaffe initially bombed the food depots, the waterworks and the electricity works, while schools, hospitals and maternity homes were set on fire by the German artillery. In the first bombings, 5,000 incendiary bombs fell on the Moskovsky district, 1,311 more on the Smolny district with the government building and 16 on the Krasnogwardejskij district. The bombing caused 178 fires in the city. From this point on, heavy attacks on the city took place on a daily basis. Entire residential areas were badly damaged (Avtowo, Moskovsky, Frunzensky).

Heavy attacks were directed against the Kirov factory , the largest plant in the city, which was only three kilometers away from the front. The Badayev warehouses, where a large part of the city's food supplies were stored, were targeted by the German air force . 3000 tons of flour and 2500 tons of sugar were burned. Weeks after the start of the severe famine , the sweet earth into which the melted sugar had run was sold at high prices on the black market.

By the end of 1941, the German Air Force had dropped 66,200 incendiary and 3,499 high-explosive bombs over Leningrad; during the entire period of the blockade there were 102,520 incendiary bombs and 4,653 high-explosive bombs. The destruction of numerous civil facilities, such as schools, was accepted as a result of the type of bombing. In total, at least 16,000 people were killed in air strikes and over 33,000 were injured.

The strategy of the complete destruction of Leningrad pursued with the air raids was expressed in a letter from the head of the SS security service Reinhard Heydrich to Heinrich Himmler on October 20, 1941 , in which he complained about the inefficiency of the German bombardment and addressed the Reichsführer SS reminded one of Adolf Hitler's instructions to "extinguish" the city:

"I obediently ask you to be able to point out that the strict instructions that have been issued with regard to the cities of Petersburg and Moscow cannot be implemented again unless brutal action is taken from the start. The chief of Einsatzgruppe A, SS-Brif. Dr. Stahlecker, reports to me, for example. B. that appointed shop stewards who cross the line have returned from Petersburg and tell that the destruction in the city is still quite insignificant. The example of the former Polish capital has also shown that even the most intense bombardment cannot cause the destruction that was expected. In my opinion, incendiary and high-explosive bombs must be used en masse in such cases. I therefore obediently ask you to suggest that you point out to the Fiihrer again that - unless absolutely clear and strict orders are given to the Wehrmacht, the two cities can hardly be wiped out. "

hunger

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Leningrad is seen as a prominent example of German hunger policy in this war. On September 2, 1941, the food rations were reduced. On September 8th, a large amount of grain, flour and sugar was also destroyed by German air raids, which further aggravated the food situation.

On September 12, it was calculated that the rations for the army and civilian population would be sufficient for the following time:

• Cereals and flour - for 35 days;
• Groats and macaroni - for 30 days;
• Meat (including livestock) - for 33 days;
• Fats - for 45 days;
• Sugar and confectionery - for 60 days.

Patient with dystrophy, 1941, from an exhibition in the Leningrad Museum.

The goods were sold off very quickly as people stocked up on supplies. Restaurants and delicatessens continued to sell without tickets. Not least because of this, the supplies were drawing to a close. Twelve percent of all fats and ten percent of all meat consumed in the city were consumed in this way.

On November 20, the rations were reduced again. Workers received 500 grams of bread, white-collar workers and children 300 grams, other family members 250 grams. The army and the Baltic fleet still had supplies of emergency rations, but these were insufficient. The Ladoga flotilla used to supply the city was poorly equipped and bombed by German planes. Several barges loaded with grain were sunk in this way in September. A large part of it could later be lifted by divers. This moist grain was later used to bake bread. After the reserves of malt ran out, it was replaced by dissolved cellulose and cotton. The oats for the horses were also eaten while the horses were fed leaves.

Cutters transport food across Lake Ladoga to the besieged city, September 1942

After 2000 tons of sheep innards were found in the port, it was made into gelatine. Later the meat rations were replaced by this gelatine and veal skins. There were a total of five food reductions during the blockade.

Despite the addition of various substitutes to the bread (bran, cereal husks and cellulose), the stocks were insufficient and with the shortening of the bread ration on October 1, the famine began, workers received 400 grams at this time and everyone else received 200 grams. In mid-October already suffered a large part of the population is starving. In the winter of 1941/1942 people lost up to 45 percent of their body weight. The result was that the bodies began to burn muscle tissue and the heart and liver to shrink.

The dystrophy (malnutrition) was the main cause of death. The mass extinction began.

Civilian victims

The following table shows the number of monthly deaths during the first year of the siege.

year	1941				1942						total
months	June	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan.	Feb	March	Apr	May	June	in the period
Fatalities	3,273	6,199	9,183	39,073	96,751	96.015	not specified	64.294	49,794	33,668	approx. 470,000

Three men buried starving deaths in the Volkovo Cemetery in the days of mass extinction, October 1942

People focused all of their energy on foraging for food. Everything that was of organic origin was eaten, such as glue, grease and wallpaper paste. Leather goods were boiled and in November 1941 there were no cats or dogs, rats and crows in Leningrad. The need led to a dissolution of public order: Petr Popkow told the military reporter Tschakowski that he saw his main task in the fight against looters and marauders in addition to the food supply. The first cases of cannibalism appeared. A total of 1,025 cases had been reported to the NKVD by February 1942.

Children's sledges became the only means of transport. They were used to transport water, bread and corpses. Corpses lay in the streets; People collapsed on the street and just lay there. Death became normal. The people lived in the ice-cold apartments with their dead relatives who were not buried because the transport to the cemetery was too difficult for the exhausted people.

Special Komsomol brigades , mostly made up of young women, searched hundreds of apartments for orphans every day, but often nobody lived in the apartments.

The total number of victims of the blockade is still controversial. After the war, the Soviet government reported 670,000 deaths from early 1941 to January 1944, most of which were caused by malnutrition and hypothermia. Some independent estimates put much higher casualty numbers, ranging from 700,000 to 1,500,000. Most sources assume a number of around 1,100,000 deaths.

During the blockade, the writer and Oberiut Daniil Charms , who was imprisoned in a psychiatric ward, also died , presumably of malnutrition. Another civilian victim was the popular natural scientist Jakow Perelman .

Life in the besieged city

Getting water from a broken pipe, January 1942

Around 270 businesses and factories were closed by the winter of 1941/1942, but the huge Kirov and Ischorha works and the Admiralty shipyard continued to operate.

The universities and scientific institutes also remained open. 1000 university professors taught in the winter blockade and 2500 students completed their studies. 39 schools kept teaching going. 532 students finished the 10th grade. Even cultural life (concerts, theater performances, lectures, etc.) was continued, albeit to a lesser extent. For example, Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony was performed here in the summer of 1942 .

Electricity and energy

Due to a lack of electricity, many factories had to be closed and in November 1941 the operation of the trams and trolleybuses was stopped, in April 1942 the tram traffic of the most important lines was partially resumed. With the exception of the General Staff, the Smolnij, the district committees, the air defense positions and similar institutions, the use of electricity was prohibited everywhere. At the end of September all reserves of oil and coal were used up. The last option to generate energy was to cut down the remaining trees in the urban area. On October 8, the Leningrad Executive Committee (Ленгорисполком) and the Regional Executive Committee (облисполком) decided to start logging in the Pargolovo and Vsevolzhsky districts in the north of the city. However, there were neither tools nor accommodation for the groups of young people made up of lumberjacks, who for this reason could only deliver small amounts of wood.

The "road of life"

→ Main article : Road of Life

Play media file

US - propaganda film (English) on the road of life , 1943

In the chaos of the first winter of the war there was no evacuation plan, which is why the city and its suburbs starved in complete isolation from the end of the blockade ring on September 8, 1941 to November 20, 1941. At this point in time, an ice road was opened across the frozen Lake Ladoga (official name: "Military Road Number 101", unofficially: "Road of Life"). The food brought in from the street was nowhere near enough to supply all of the city's residents. At least a large number of civilians were able to be evacuated across the street. In the summer of 1942, the supply route was maintained with the help of ships. In the winter of 1942 the road was supplemented by a railway line across the ice. After the creation of a narrow land corridor on the southern bank of Lake Ladoga in January 1943 (see below), the importance of the route across the lake diminished, although it remained in use until the end of the siege in January 1944.

Soviet relief attacks

General Leonid Goworow with his Political Commissar Andrei Zhdanov

After the Soviet Union was able to stop the German advance in the Battle of Tikhvin at the end of 1941, the first counter-offensive to overcome the blockade was launched in January 1942 (→ Ljubaner Operation ). However, it failed at the outset due to poor planning by the Soviet commanders, the lack of camouflage for Soviet attack formations and a well-organized defense of the German Army Group North. After heavy attacks, the offensive was ended in April 1942. A German counterattack in June 1942 destroyed the Soviet 2nd shock army in a battle .

Soviet reconnaissance troops on the Pulkovo Heights south of Leningrad, March 1942

In June 1942 General Leonid A. Govorov took command of the Leningrad Front . From August 19 to October 10, 1942, the Red Army tried unsuccessfully to end the blockade with the First Battle of Ladogda .

The complete blockade lasted until the beginning of 1943. On January 12, Operation Iskra began another major attack by troops from the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts . After heavy fighting, Red Army units overcame the strong German fortifications south of Lake Ladoga and on January 18 the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts clashed.

The Red Army's "Iskra" offensive on January 12, 1943

A narrow land corridor into the city was thus opened, but it was still within the range of German artillery.

As part of Operation Polarstern , the Red Army tried in February and March 1943 to overturn the entire German front in the north, but only achieved local successes. The land corridor could only be expanded insignificantly.

In July 1943, the Red Army launched another offensive with the aim of completely ending the siege of the city. This attack, known in German military historiography as the “ Third Ladoga Battle ”, only resulted in minor gains in land for the Soviet army, which were bought with disproportionately high losses.

Awarded the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” , June 1944

The Krasnenkoe Cemetery

The dramatic situation of the German troops on other sections of the front led in autumn 1943 to a weakening of the German Army Group North, besieging Leningrad, which had to transfer units to other large formations and defend additional sections of the front. This reduction in German combat strength and a significantly improved attack plan by the Red Army led to the Germans withdrawing a little later.

In January 1944, the German siege ring was finally broken open during the Leningrad-Novgorod operation by a new major Soviet offensive. On January 12, the 2nd Baltic Front attacked the 16th Army on Novosokolniki in the south , and two days later the offensive of the 2nd Shock Army , which had been brought across from the Oranienbaum bridgehead, began . On January 15, the 42nd and 67th Armies of the Leningrad Front also entered, the following day the 59th Army of the Volkhov Front attacked on both sides of Novgorod . On January 17th, the first line of defense of the German 18th Army was breached and Pushkin was liberated. The breakthrough of the 2nd shock army from the Oranienbaum pocket in the direction of Krasnoye Selo threatened the rear connections of the German 18th Army. The Wehrmacht was forced to lift the siege, dismantle the heavy artillery and evacuate Krasnoye Selo, Ropscha and Uritsk . On January 27, the Soviet units cut off the railway line from Leningrad to Moscow, and Army Group North was threatened with enclosure. At the end of January to mid-February, the 18th Army had to retreat over the Luga and Pljussa sections to the isthmus at Narva and south of Lake Peipus on the Pleskau - Ostrow line.

Six months later, the Finns were finally thrown back to the other side of the Vyborg Bay and the Vuoksi River (→ Vyborg-Petrozavodsk Operation ).

Many victims of the blockade and participants in the defense of Leningrad, a total of around 470,000 people, are buried in the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery.

The cemetery in Krasnenkoe arranges the events in a larger context: Here everyone is remembered who perished between June 22, 1941 and May 8, 1945, i.e. during the entire German-Soviet war .

Involved units

Armed forces

• Army Group North :
  • 16th Army
  • 18th Army
  • Panzer Group 4 (Not part of the Wehrmacht, but the Waffen-SS , but the Panzer Group 4 in action as part of the LVI. The SS Police Division was subordinate to the Panzer Corps and the SS Totenkopf Division as part of the L. Army Corps .)

• Air fleet 1 :
  • I. Air Corps
  • VIII. Air Corps
  • Reconnaissance Group East

• Blue Division : Spanish volunteer division under the leadership of the Wehrmacht as the 250th Infantry Division

Red Army

• Fronts:
  • Northern front , later Leningrad front
  • Northwest Front

• Independent armies:
  • 8th Army
  • 11th Army
  • 27th Army
  • 34th Army
  • 42nd Army
  • 48th Army
  • 52nd Army
  • 54th Army
  • 55th Army

• Independent operation groups:
  • Luga Operations Group
  • Kopor operation group
  • Nevskaya Operations Group
  • Novogorod Operations Group

The Baltic Fleet and the Leningrad People's Militia were also involved.

Overview: sequence of military operations

The sequence of the Soviet military operations to liberate the encircled city and its people:

• 1941
  • September 8th: containment / completion of the blockade of Leningrad (capture of Shlisselburg )
  • On Sep 16 German troops of Army Group North reach the Gulf of Finland near Peterhof. The enduring Soviet bridgehead of Oranienbaum west of L.
  • Oct 16 - Dec 30: The advance of the German Army Group North is brought to a standstill in the battle for Tikhvin (instruction of OKW No. 37 of Oct. 10 states that no more attacks are aimed at the capture of L.)
  • Nov 20: The " Road of Life ", an ice road , opened across the frozen Lake Ladoga (official name: "Military road number 101"). It enables important replenishment deliveries.
• 1942
  • Jan 7th - Apr 30th: Battle of Volkhov , also Lyuban operation
  • Aug 19 - Oct 10: First Ladoga battle
• 1943
  • Jan 12-30: Second Ladoga battle (also Operation Iskra ) was an attack planned by Marshal K. Zhukov by the Leningrad and the Volkhov Fronts of the Red Army . An 8 to 11 kilometer wide corridor has been fought free, through which the direct land connection to Leningrad will be re-established.
  • Feb 10 - Apr 1: Unsuccessful Operation Polarstern (including evacuation of the Demyansk pocket by the Wehrmacht)
  • July 22nd - Sep 25th: Third Ladoga battle , first part: Mga operation, Sinyavino Heights. A broad land connection does not succeed.
• 1944
  • From January 12th: the (meanwhile weakened) German siege ring is finally broken open during the Leningrad-Novgorod operation . On January 12th, the 2nd Baltic Front attacked the 16th Army on Novosokolniki in the south, two days later the offensive of the 2nd Shock Army from the Oranienbaum bridgehead began two days later. On January 15, the 42nd and 67th Armies of the Leningrad Front attacked, the following day the 59th Army of the Volkhov Front attacked on both sides of Novgorod .
  • On Jan. 17, the first line of defense of the German 18th Army was breached and Pushkin was liberated. The breakthrough of the 2nd shock army from the Oranienbaum pocket in the direction of Krasnoye Selo threatens the rear connections of the German 18th Army. The Wehrmacht lifts the siege in order to withdraw the heavy artillery and to evacuate Krasnoye Selo, Ropscha and Urizk. On Jan. 27, the Soviet units cut off the railway line from Leningrad to Moscow, and Army Group North is now threatened with enclosure.
  • January 27th: the city blockade is permanently broken
  • From the end of January to mid-February, the 18th Army had to retreat over the Luga and Pljussa section to the isthmus at Narva and south of Lake Peipus on the Pleskau – Ostrow line.
  • June 10 - August 9: Vyborg-Petrozavodsk operation - major attack against the Finnish army in Karelia in the Continuation War . The operation consists of two sub-operations: the Vyborg Operation on the Karelian Isthmus and the Swir-Petrozavodsk Operation in East Karelia , north of Lake Ladoga. The Red Army advanced 110 to 250 km to the west on the 280 km wide front, conquering northern parts of the Leningrad area and large parts of the Karelo-Finnish SSR , which was newly founded after the winter war , including areas that had belonged to Finland before the winter war . The Soviet Union also regained control of the strategically important White Sea-Baltic Canal .

The Svir-Petrozavodsk operation is seen from the Soviet point of view as the final stage of the battle for Leningrad .

Representation of the blockage

Memorial on Nevsky Prospect . The white inscription on a blue background reads: “Citizens! This side of the street is most dangerous during the artillery bombardment. " May freshly painted.

Excerpt from the diary kept by Tanja Sawitschewa , exhibited in the museum in Petersburg. The diary was among the evidence presented by the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials .

After the end of the war, the Leningrad blockade quickly became the subject of a wide variety of cultural and scientific representations.

Western scientific literature

The attempt to work out and evaluate the German motives for the execution and type of the momentous siege of Leningrad has produced controversial results in German historical scholarship. The main controversial question is how the German approach is to be assessed morally and in terms of international law .

Above all, older (West) German research has often on the one hand, based in part on representations of Wehrmacht officers made after the war, assigned the main blame to Hitler personally. The dictator ordered the siege out of hatred and contempt for the traditional cultural center of tsarist Russia and for the cradle of the Bolshevik revolution. On the other hand, it is emphasized in these representations that the strategy of sieging cities was not unusual, rather it was used frequently in war history. In this sense, although the high number of victims in the case of Leningrad can be viewed as particularly tragic, there is no question of a break with current military practice and therefore not of a war crime that legitimizes a moral condemnation of the Wehrmacht . According to these interpretations, the main motive of the Germans to forego a military conquest of the city and instead to attempt to force it to surrender by starving it is the fear of the expected resistance from the Red Army and militants and of a consequent, bitter and embittered resistance been a loss-making street fight. Current tactical considerations and less long-term war objectives played an important role in the decision at the end of August and beginning of September 1941 .

In contrast, more recent German research places the siege of Leningrad more frequently in the context of a war of extermination carried out by the National Socialists in a deliberate break with the traditions of war and international law . Most senior Wehrmacht officers would have identified with its goals and practices. The specific decision in favor of the siege of Leningrad was not only made for tactical reasons. Rather, a strategic reorientation after the failure of the Blitzkrieg concept in the case of the Soviet Union, which soon became apparent, was responsible , which made it necessary to reduce its own operations and risks. As a result, a rhetoric quickly prevailed among the German military in which the complete annihilation of the city and its population was made the actual goal of the siege. The German historian Jörn Hasenclever counts Hitler's instruction to starve Leningrad under the criminal orders given to the Wehrmacht in the war against the Soviet Union. In a specialist study in 2005 , the historian Jörg Ganzenmüller described the blockade-related death of hundreds of thousands of Leningraders as a “ genocide ” deliberately brought about by the Germans , based on a “ racially motivated hunger policy ”. Even Joseph Goebbels speaks in his diary notes of the “most gruesome urban drama that is developing here”. The British historian Timothy Snyder describes the deliberate starvation of Leningrad as "the greatest German crime in the Russian Soviet Republic". The American historian Richard Bidlack describes the siege as "the largest genocidal operation in Europe during the Second World War".

In a lecture in 2014, international lawyer Christoph Safferling , on the other hand, took the view that in the early 1940s there was still no explicit international law provision against the use of hunger as a weapon against the civilian population. Such was only introduced in 1977 with an additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions . This is also the reason why the Leningrad blockade was not described as a war crime in the Nuremberg trials .

Another aspect for the interpretation of the siege strategy was provided by the evaluation and analysis of documents from the Wehrmacht and the Race and Settlement Main Office by authors such as Rolf-Dieter Müller . In 1940/41, high-ranking functionaries of the Wehrmacht, SS and the so-called Reichsgruppe Industrie developed plans to settle the "new German eastern region" after the expected successful conclusion of the Russian campaign. A new German colonial area from the Vistula to the Ural Mountains was sought, populated by German defense farmers . The area was to be largely de-industrialized and the “superfluous” urban population eliminated. Metropolises like Leningrad and Moscow were therefore to be destroyed.

Soviet literature

In the years that shortly followed the blockade, the cruel reality of the suffering of the Leningrad population was depicted in Soviet literature in an unvarnished and realistic manner. Gennadij Gor , Alexander Tschakowski , Olga Bergholz , Iwan Kratt and Wera Inber are among the authors of works about the Leningrad blockade known today. However, after Alexei Kuznetsov and Pyotr Popkov were arrested and executed during the Leningrad Affair in 1949 , the purging of Soviet literature about the blockade began. Books were confiscated or destroyed if they were accused of portraying the suffering of the Leningrad population in a far too "sincere and cruel" manner or which described the behavior of the Leningrad people in an "unpatriotic" and "non-ideological way". Because of this, the poems of Gennadij Gor (Blockade) were published much later (translated and edited by Peter Urban 2007). The censorship of all too realistic reports of the blockade continued in the Soviet Union into the 1980s. Instead, only patriotically inflated and party ideologically correct works were permitted. It was only after the end of the Soviet Union that serious descriptions of the blockade could be spread unhindered in Russia.

The student Tanja Sawitschewa kept a diary during the blockade and documented the deaths of family members. The diary became evidence in the Nuremberg trials . She died almost two years after she was evacuated in August 1942.

Post-Soviet reception

In 2019, the privately financed feature film Holiday by director Alexej Krasowski was branded as " blasphemous "; The focus of the film is the privileged provision of state officials during the blockade.

Also in 2019, the writer Jelena Tschischowa was attacked for her essay “The double memory” published in Switzerland. In the essay she took the view that in Soviet times the "truth about the blockade", which included wrong decisions by the authorities and privileges for the functionaries, had been concealed.

Influences on culture

The Siege of Leningrad was commemorated in the late 1950s by the Green Belt of Fame , a band of trees and monuments along the former front line. Leningrad was the first city in the Soviet Union to be awarded the title of City of Heroes .

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Seventh, the Leningrad Symphony .

"I dedicate my Seventh Symphony to our struggle against fascism, our inevitable victory over the enemy, and Leningrad, my hometown ..."

- Shostakovich : Article of March 19, 1942 in Pravda

The three-act fairy tale piece in parabolic form The Dragon was written in 1943 by the Russian author Yevgeny Lwowitsch Schwarz under the impression of the Leningrad blockade. After a preview of the play in Moscow in 1944, further performances of the production were banned. In the sixties after the author's death, the work achieved European success.

The Leningrad composer Alexander Knaifel , born in Tashkent on November 28, 1943, commemorates the blockade with his work Agnus Dei from 1985: “Agnus Dei” may have been created as repentance for my nonexistent fault of being born outside Leningrad .

In 1986 the youth book Oleg or The Besieged City by the Dutch writer Jaap ter Haar was published , which tells the siege from the point of view of a Soviet boy.

American singer Billy Joel's song Leningrad , released in 1987, deals in part with the life of a Russian named Viktor, who was born in 1944 and lost his father while being locked up.

In 2003 the US author Elise Blackwell published Hunger , a novel about the events on the verge of the siege.

In the book City of Thieves (2008) by the American author David Benioff , the events during the siege of the city are dealt with.

In 2012 the book Leningrad Waltz by the Russian writer Grigorij Demidowtzew was published .

In 2014 the band Ring of Fire released an album called Battle of Leningrad.

Movie

• In 2006 the 52 minute long documentary Blockade by the Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa was made . The film shows life in the city at the time of the blockade without dialogue.
• In 2009 the film Leningrad - The Blockade was made (with Armin Mueller-Stahl, among others ).
• 2017 was directed by Carsten Gutschmidt, Christian Frey: Leningrad Symphony, a city fights for survival. A 90-minute feature film with documentary scenes (NDR and arte).
• Holiday [ Prasdnik ], director: Alexej Krasowski (feature film, 2019)
• 2020: Children of the Blockade by Ina Rommee and Stefan Krauss (documentary).
• 2019: Escape from Leningrad by Aleksey Kozlov, who shows the escape of 1,500 civilians from Leningrad.

literature

• Richard Bidlack, Nikita Lomagin: The Leningrad Blockade, 1941–1944. A New Documentary History from the Soviet Archives . Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2012, ISBN 978-0-300-18330-6 .
• Jörg Ganzenmüller : The besieged Leningrad 1941 to 1944. The city in the strategies of attackers and defenders. 2nd edition, Schöningh, Paderborn 2007, ISBN 978-3-506-72889-0 (= War in History. Vol. 22nd Ed. By Stig Förster, Bernhard R. Kroener , Bernd Wegner with the support of the Military History Research Office Potsdam ) .
• David M. Glantz : The Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1944. 900 Days of Terror. Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2001, ISBN 0-304-36672-2 .
• Johannes Hürter : The Wehrmacht before Leningrad. War and occupation policy of the 18th Army in the autumn and winter of 1941/42. In: Quarterly Books for Contemporary History . 49 (2001) (PDF; 8.3 MB), pp. 377-440.
• Peter Jahn (ed.): Blockade of Leningrad - Блокада Ленинграда. Left, Berlin 2004.
• Antje Leetz, Barbara Wenner: Blockade, Leningrad 1941–1944 - Documents and essays by Russians and Germans. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1992.
• Dimitrij W. Pavlov: The blockade of Leningrad 1941. Huber, Frauenfeld / Stuttgart 1967.
• Anna Reid, Bernd Rullkötter (translator): Blokada. The Siege of Leningrad: 1941-1944. London, Berlin, 2011; Translation from English ISBN 978-3-8270-0713-1 . 587 pages.
• Harrison E. Salisbury : 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad. S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1970.
• Alexander Tschakowski : The blockade. Translated from the Russian by Harry Burck. Volk und Welt publishing house, Berlin 1975.
• Gennadij Gor : Blockade. Translated from Russian and edited by Peter Urban. Reto Ziegler publishing house, Vienna 2007.
• Daniil Alexandrowitsch Granin , Ales Adamowitsch : Блокадная книга. Chronicle of the Siege of Leningrad. 1977-1982.
  • German The Blockade Book . 1985–1987, Volk und Welt, Berlin 1987.
• Elena A. Scriabina : Leningrad Diary: Notes from the war years 1941–1945. Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden and others 1997, ISBN 3-8090-2227-6 .
• Lena Muchina : "Lena's diary". Leningrad 1941–1942 . Translated from Russian and with foreword and afterword as well as comments by Lena Gorelik and Gero Fedtke. Graf, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-86220-036-8 .
• Lidia Ginsburg : Notes of a blockade person. Translated from the Russian by Christiane Körner . With an afterword by Karl Schlögel . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-518-22482-3 .

Web links

Commons : Leningrad Blockade  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Article on the 60th anniversary of the breach of the blockade in the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit"
• Information about the tram during the blockade
• The Blockade of Leningrad - Facts and Myths of a Russian War Tragedy
• Death came in a quiet, mouse-silent speech by Daniil Granin , survivor of the siege of Leningrad by the fascists, in front of the German Bundestag on the occasion of the Holocaust Remembrance Day
• Museum of the Siege of Leningrad at Google Cultural Institute
• Time signal : 01/27/1944 - End of the Siege of Leningrad
• Andreas von Westphalen: Hitler: "We don't go into the Russian cities, they have to die completely" , Telepolis , January 27, 2019

Individual evidence

1. ^ Blockade of Leningrad: German government announces aid for Soviet war victims , Zeit Online , January 27, 2019.
2. ↑ N. Kislizyn, W. Subakow: Leningrad does not arise , Progress Publishers Moscow 1984, 34th
3. ↑ Hans-Adolf Jacobsen: The Second World War , Second Volume, Kurt Desch Verlag, Munich 1968, p. 90.
4. ↑ Christian Zentner: The Second World War. Unipart publishing house. Stuttgart 1986, p. 116.
5. ↑ Richard Bidlack and Nikita Lomagin: The Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1944. A New Documentary History from the Soviet Archives . Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2012, p. 1 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
6. ↑ Patrick Russell: Leningrad, Siege of (1941-1944). In: Alexander Mikaberidze (Ed.): Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes. To Encyclopedia. ABC Clio, Santa Barbara / Denver / London 2013, Vol. 1, p. 409.
7. ↑ Jörg Ganzenmüller: The besieged Leningrad 1941 to 1944. The city in the strategies of attackers and defenders. P. 66.
8. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy. Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 161.
9. ↑ P. Sparen: Long term mortality after severe starvation during the siege of Leningrad: prospective cohort study. In: BMJ. 328, 2004, pp. 11-0, doi: 10.1136 / bmj.37942.603970.9A . PMC 313894 (free full text)
10. ↑ AB Tschakowski: The blockade. P. 96.
11. ↑ Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader. The German commanders-in-chief in the war against the Soviet Union in 1941/42. Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-58341-0 , p. 500; Jörg Ganzenmüller: The besieged Leningrad 1941 to 1944. The city in the strategies of attackers and defenders. P. 1 and p. 254.
12. ↑ Marc von Lüpke: Blockade von Leningrad “We'll all die like flies” In: Spiegel Einestages , September 8th, 2016. Anna Reid describes the situation in her book “Blokada” from 2011 based on secret service documents. ISBN 978-3-8270-0713-1 .
13. ↑ ^{a b} See e.g. For example, the program “Calendar Sheet” on Deutschlandradio's January 27, 2014.
14. ^ David M. Glantz: Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War. Frank Cass Verlag (NY) 1989, ISBN 0-7146-3347-X , pp. 68-71.
15. ^ David M. Glantz : City Under Siege 1941-1944 , Rochester 2005, p. 212.
16. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 187.
17. ↑ Jörg Ganzenmüller: The besieged Leningrad 1941 to 1944. The city in the strategies of attackers and defenders. Pp. 13–82, quotations pp. 17 and 20. Similar the same: 60th anniversary: ​​A silent genocide . In: Die Zeit from January 15, 2004, accessed on January 28, 2019.
18. ↑ Timothy Snyder: Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin , CH Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62184-0 , p. 466.
19. ^ "[...] the greatest act of genocide in Europe during the Second World War", Richard Bidlack, Nikita Lomagin: The Leningrad Blockade, 1941-1944. A New Documentary History from the Soviet Archives . Yale University Press, New Haven / London 2012, p. 1 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
20. ^ Prof. Safferling: International criminal law 70 years after the Leningrad blockade. Lecture in Nuremberg on "Hunger as a method of warfare in modern international criminal law" (February 3, 2014), on the website of the Research and Documentation Center for War Crimes Trials at the Philipps University of Marburg , accessed on January 27, 2019.
21. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitler's Eastern War and the German Settlement Policy , Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 40 ff.
22. ↑ Arlen Bljum: The subject of the Leningrad blockade under the blockade of the censorship - from archival documents of the Glawlit of the USSR. Journal Newa No. 1 2004, pp. 238–245, online. ( Memento from December 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
23. ↑ Andrej Kolesnikov, Memory as a Weapon. The historical policy of the Putin regime , in: Eastern Europe , 6/2020, p. 24.
24. ↑ Elene Chizhova, The double-locked memory - the truth about the Leningrad blockade was a strictly guarded taboo in Russia for a long time , in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , May 6, 2019.
25. ↑ Andrej Kolesnikov, Memory as a Weapon. The history policy of the Putin regime , in: Eastern Europe , 6/2020, p. 25.
26. ↑ Samuela Nickel: From the Neva to Neukölln , new Germany, January 25, 2020.