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The siege of Leningrad in documents declassified by archaeologists
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the first days of the siege of Leningrad
On September 8, 1941, on the 79th day of the Great Patriotic War, a blockade ring closed around Leningrad
The Germans and their allies advancing on Leningrad had the categorical goal of its complete destruction. The headquarters of the Soviet command allowed for the possibility of surrendering the city and began the evacuation of valuables and industrial facilities in advance.
Residents of the city knew nothing about the plans of either side, and this made their situation especially alarming.
About the “war of tactics” on the Leningrad front and how it affected the besieged city - in the TASS material.
German plans: war of annihilation
Hitler's plans did not leave Leningrad any future: the German leadership and Hitler personally expressed intentions to raze the city to the ground. The same statements were made by the leadership of Finland, Germany’s ally and partner in the military operations for the siege of Leningrad.
In September 1941, Finnish President Risto Ryti directly stated to the German envoy in Helsinki: “If St. Petersburg no longer exists as large city, then the Neva would be the best border on the Karelian Isthmus... Leningrad must be liquidated as a large city."
Supreme Command ground forces The Wehrmacht (OKH), giving the order to encircle Leningrad on August 28, 1941, defined the tasks of Army Group North advancing on the city as the most dense encirclement. At the same time, an attack on the city by infantry forces was not envisaged.
Vera Inber, Soviet poet and prose writer
On September 10, the First Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD of the USSR, Vsevolod Merkulov, arrived in Leningrad on a special mission, who, together with Alexei Kuznetsov, the second secretary of the regional party committee, was supposed to prepare a set of measures in the event of the forced surrender of the city to the enemy.
“Without any sentimentality, the Soviet leadership understood that the struggle could develop even according to the most negative scenario,” the researcher is confident.
Historians believe that neither Stalin nor the command of the Leningrad Front knew about the Germans’ refusal to plan to storm the city and about the transfer of the most combat-ready units of the 4th tank army Gepner to the Moscow direction. Therefore, until the blockade was lifted, this plan of special measures to disable the most important strategic facilities in the city existed and was periodically checked.
"IN notebooks Zhdanova ( First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. - Approx. TASS) at the end of August - beginning of September there is a record that it is necessary to create illegal stations in Leningrad, keeping in mind that the possibility of continuing the fight against the Nazis and the occupiers can occur in conditions when the city is surrendered,” says Nikita Lomagin.
Leningraders: in the ring of ignorance
Leningraders followed the developments of events from the first days of the war, trying to predict the fate of their hometown. The Battle of Leningrad began on July 10, 1941, when Nazi troops crossed the then border Leningrad region. Siege diaries indicate that already on September 8, when the city was subjected to massive shelling, most of the townspeople realized that the enemy was nearby and tragedy could not be avoided. One of the dominant moods of these months was anxiety and fear.
“Most of the townspeople had a very poor idea of the situation in the city, around the city, at the front,” says Nikita Lomagin. “This uncertainty was characteristic of the mood of the townspeople for quite a long time.” In mid-September, Leningraders learned about the difficult situation at the front from military personnel who found themselves in the city for redeployment and other reasons.
Since the beginning of September, due to the very difficult food situation, the rules for the supply system began to change.
Leningraders said that not only the food disappeared from the stores, but even their smell, and now in trading floors it smelled empty. “The population began to think about some additional ways to find food, about new survival strategies,” explains the historian.
“During the blockade, there were a lot of proposals from below, from scientists, engineers, inventors, on how to solve the problems that the city faced: from the point of view of transport, from the point of view of various kinds of food substitutes, blood substitutes,” says Nikita Lomagin.
The fire at the Badayevsky warehouses on the first day of the siege, where 38 food warehouses and storerooms burned down, had a particular effect on the townspeople. The supply of food they had was small and could have lasted the city for a maximum of a week, but as rations tightened, Leningraders became increasingly confident that this fire was the cause of mass starvation in the city.
bread grain and flour - for 35 days;
cereals and pasta - for 30 days;
meat and meat products - for 33 days;
fats - for 45 days.
The norms for issuing bread at that time were:
workers - 800 g;
employees - 600 g;
dependents and children - 400 g.
The mood of the townspeople worsened as changes occurred at the front. In addition, the enemy actively carried out propaganda activities in the city, of which the so-called whisper propaganda was especially widespread, spreading rumors about the invincibility of the German army and the defeat of the USSR. Artillery terror also played a role - constant massive shelling to which the city was subjected from September 1941 until the blockade was lifted.
Historians say that the totality of tragic circumstances that disrupted the normal course of life of Leningraders reached its peak in December 1941, when food standards became minimal, most enterprises stopped working due to a lack of electricity, and water supply, transport, and other city infrastructure practically stopped working.
“This set of circumstances is what we call a blockade,” says Nikita Lomagin. “It’s not just the encirclement of the city, it’s the shortage of everything against the backdrop of hunger, cold and shelling, the cessation of the functioning of traditional connections for the metropolis between workers, engineers, enterprises, teachers, institutions, etc. The tearing of this fabric of life was an extremely severe psychological blow.”
The only link connecting the urban space during the blockade was the Leningrad radio, which, according to the researchers, united both the meaning of the struggle and the explanation of what was happening.
“People wanted to hear news, receive information, emotional support and not feel lonely,” says Lomagin.
From the end of September 1941, historians note, the townspeople began to expect an early lifting of the blockade. No one in the city could believe that it would last long. This belief was strengthened by the first attempts to liberate Leningrad, made in September-October 1941, and later by the success of the Red Army near Moscow, after which Leningraders expected that, following the capital, the Nazis would be driven back from the city on the Neva.
“No one in Leningrad believed that this would last for a long time until January 1943, when the blockade was broken,” says Irina Muravyova, a researcher at the State Memorial Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad. “Leningraders were constantly waiting for a breakthrough and the release of the blockade of the city.”
The front has stabilized: who won?
The front near Leningrad stabilized on September 12. The German offensive was stopped, but the Nazi command continued to insist that the blockade ring around the city shrink closer and demanded that the Finnish allies fulfill the conditions of the Barbarossa plan.
He assumed that the Finnish units, having gone around Lake Ladoga from the north, will meet with Army Group North in the area of the Svir River and thereby close the second ring around Leningrad.
“It was impossible to avoid the blockade of Leningrad under those conditions,” says Vyacheslav Mosunov.
“Up until the start of the Great Patriotic War, the defense of Leningrad was built primarily on the condition that the enemy would attack from the north and west,” notes the historian. “The Leningrad Military District, which had the most extensive territory, from the very beginning of hostilities was focused on the defense of the northern approaches to the city. This was a consequence of pre-war plans."
Alexander Werth, British journalist, 1943
The question of declaring Leningrad an open city could never arise, as it did, for example, with Paris in 1940. War fascist Germany against the USSR was a war of extermination, and the Germans never made a secret of this.
In addition, the local pride of Leningrad was of a peculiar nature - an ardent love for the city itself, for its historical past, for the wonderful literary traditions associated with it (this primarily concerned the intelligentsia) here was combined with the great proletarian and revolutionary traditions of the city’s working class. And nothing could have united these two sides of the Leningraders’ love for their city more tightly into one whole than the threat of destruction hanging over it.
In Leningrad, people could choose between a shameful death in German captivity and an honorable death (or, if they were lucky, life) in their own unconquered city. It would also be a mistake to try to distinguish between Russian patriotism, revolutionary impulse and Soviet organization, or to ask which of these three factors played a more important role in the salvation of Leningrad; all three factors were combined in that extraordinary phenomenon that can be called “Leningrad in the days of the war.”
“For the German command, the offensive turned into an actual military defeat,” notes Vyacheslav Mosunov. “Out of the 4th Panzer Group, only the 41st Motorized Corps was able to fully complete its task without additional help. It managed to break through the defenses of the 42nd Army and complete the task to capture the Dudergof Heights. However, the enemy was unable to use his success."