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Siege of Leningrad
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The Siege of Leningrad, also known as The Leningrad Blockade was an unsuccessful military operation by the Axis powers to capture Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) during World War II. The siege lasted from September 9 1941, to January 18 1943, when a narrow land corridor to the city was established by the Soviets. The total lifting of the siege occurred on January 27 1944. The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest and most destructive sieges of major cities in modern history and it was the most lethal.
Controversy over Finnish participationAlmost all historians regard the siege as a German operation and do not consider that the Finns effectively participated in the siege. Only Nikolai Baryshnikov has been a strong supporter of the view that active Finnish participation occurred.
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Timeline
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1941 World War II: Siege of Leningrad begins - German forces begin a siege against the Soviet Union's second-largest city, Leningrad. Stalin orders the Volga Deutsche deported to Siberia.
1943 World War II: Soviet officials announce they have broken the Wehrmacht's siege of Leningrad.
1944 The two year Siege of Leningrad is lifted.
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Encyclopedia
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as The Leningrad Blockade was an unsuccessful military operation by the Axis powers to capture Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) during World War II. The siege lasted from September 9 1941, to January 18 1943, when a narrow land corridor to the city was established by the Soviets. The total lifting of the siege occurred on January 27 1944. The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest and most destructive sieges of major cities in modern history and it was the most lethal.
Controversy over Finnish participationAlmost all historians regard the siege as a German operation and do not consider that the Finns effectively participated in the siege. Only Nikolai Baryshnikov has been a strong supporter of the view that active Finnish participation occurred. The main issues which counted in favour of the former view are (a) the Finns stayed at the pre-winter war border at the Karelian Isthmus, despite German wishes and requests, (b) they did not bombard the city from planes or with artillery and didn't even allow the Germans to bring their own land forces to Finnish lines, and (c) political convenience after the war - as all Finnish, Soviet and western historians wanted to distance themselves from Fenno-Soviet conflict.
Preparations German plans Army Group North under Field Marshal Leeb advanced to Leningrad, its primary objective. Leeb's plan called for capturing the city on the move, but owing to strong resistance from the Soviet forces, and also Hitler's recall of 4th Panzergruppe, he was forced to merely siege the city after reaching the shores of Lake Ladoga, and tried to complete the encirclement by reaching the Finnish Army under Mannerheim waiting at the Svir River, east of Leningrad.
Finnish military forces were located north of Leningrad while German forces occupied territories to the south. Both German and Finnish forces had the goal of encircling Leningrad and maintaining the blockade perimeter, so cutting off all communication with the city.
Leningrad fortified region On June 27, 1941 the Council of Deputies of the Leningrad administration organized "First response groups" of civilians. In the next days the entire civilian population of Leningrad was informed of the danger and over a million citizens were mobilized for the construction of fortifications. Several lines of defenses were built along the perimeter of the city, in order that enemies approaching from north and south would meet with civilian resistance.
One of the fortifications ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudovo, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo and then through the Neva River. The other defense passed through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino and Koltushy. Another defense line against the Finns, the Karelian Fortified Region, had been maintained in the northern suburbs of Leningrad since the 1930s, and it was now returned to service. In all, 190 km of timber barricades, 635 km of wire entanglements, 700 km of anti-tank ditches, 5,000 earth-and-timber emplacements and reinforced concrete weapon emplacements and 25,000 km of open trenches were constructed or excavated by civilians. Even the gun of the cruiser Aurora was mounted on the Pulkovskiye Heights to the south of Leningrad.
Establishing the siege The 4th Panzer Group from East Prussia took Pskov following a swift advance, and reached the neighborhood of Luga and Novgorod, within operational reach of Leningrad. But it was stopped by fierce resistance south of the city. However, the 18th Army with some 350,000 men lagged behind - forcing its way to Ostrov and Pskov after the Soviet troops of the Northwestern Front retreated towards Leningrad. On July 10 both Ostrov and Pskov were captured and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where advance toward Leningrad continued from the Luga River line. This had the effect of creating siege positions from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, with the eventual aim of isolating Leningrad from all directions. The Finnish Army was then expected to advance along the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga..
Orders of battle German order of battle Army Group North (von Leeb)
- 18th Army (von Küchler)
- XXXXII Corps (2 infantry divisions)
- XXVI Corps (3 inf divisions)
- 16th Army (Busch)
- XXVIII Corps (2 inf, 1 armored divisions)
- I Corps (2 inf divisions)
- X Corps (3 inf divisions)
- II Corps (3 inf divisions)
- (L Corps - Under 9. Army) (2 inf divisions)
- 4th Panzergruppe (Hoepner)
- XXXVIII Corps (1 inf division)
- XXXXI Motorized Corps (Reinhard) (1 inf, 1 motorized, 1 armored divisions)
- LVI Motorized Corps (von Manstain) (1 inf, 1 mot, 1 arm, 1 panzergrenadier divisions)
Finnish order of battle Finnish army HQ (Mannerheim)
- I Corps (2 infantry divisions)
- II Corps (2 inf divisions)
- IV Corps (3 inf divisions)
Soviet order of battleNorthern Front (Popov)
- 7th Army (2 rifle, 1 militia divisions, 1 marine brigade, 3 motorized rifle and 1 armored regiments)
- 8th Army
- X Rifle Corps (2 rifle divisions)
- XI Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions)
- Separate Units (3 rifle divisions)
- 14th Army
- XXXXII Rifle Corps (2 rifle divisions)
- Separate Units (2 rifle divisions, 1 Fortified area, 1 motorized rifle regiment)
- 23rd Army
- XIX Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions)
- Separate Units (2 rifle, 1 mot divisions, 2 Fortified areas, 1 rifle regiment)
- Luga Operation group
- XXXXI Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions)
- Separate Units (1 armored brigade, 1 rifle regiment)
- Kingisepp Operation Group
- Separate Units (2 rifle, 2 militia, 1 armored divisions, 1 Fortified area)
- Separate Units (3 rifle divisions, 4 guard militia divisions, 3 Fortified areas, 1 rifle brigade)
From these, 14th Army defended Murmansk and 7th Army defended Ladoga Karelia; thus they did not participate in the initial stages of the siege. 8th Army was initially part of the Northwestern Front and retreated through the Baltics. (8th army was transferred to Northern Front on July 14).
Severing lines of communication On August 6 Hitler repeated his order: "Leningrad first, Donetsk Basin second, Moscow third." From August 1941 through to January 1944 anything that happened between the Arctic Ocean and Lake Ilmen concerned the Wehrmacht's Leningrad siege operations. Arctic convoys delivered American, Canadian and British food and war material supplies to the Murmansk–Leningrad railroad, which was cut by the Finnish armies just north of Leningrad, and to several other locations in Lapland. After Britain and Canada declared war on Finland, Winston Churchill demanded that Mannerheim and the Finnish armies restore the Murmansk–Leningrad railroad for humanitarian reasons, to allow food supplies to reach Leningrad's civilian population.
Encirclement of Leningrad Finnish intelligence was particularly helpful for Hitler, as the Finns had broken some of the Soviet military codes and were able to read their low-level correspondence. He constantly requested intelligence information about Leningrad. Finland's role in Operation Barbarossa was laid out in Hitler's Directive 21, "The mass of the Finnish army will have the task, in accordance with the advance made by the northern wing of the German armies, of tying up maximum Russian strength by attacking to the west, or on both sides, of Lake Ladoga".
The last rail connection to Leningrad was severed on August 30, when Germans reached the Neva River. The shelling of Leningrad began on September 4. On September 8, the last land connection to the besieged city was severed when the Germans reached Lake Ladoga at Orekhovets. Bombing on September 8 caused 178 fires. Hitler's directive on October 7, signed by Alfred Jodl was a reminder not to accept capitulation. German shellings and bombings killed 5,723 and wounded 20,507 civilians in Leningrad during the siege.
Finland and Germany By August 1941, the Finns had advanced to within 20km of the northern suburbs of Leningrad, threatening the city from the north, and were also advancing through Karelia east of Lake Ladoga, threatening the city from the east. However, the Finnish forces halted their advance only kilometers from the suburbs of Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg) at Finland's old border in Karelian Isthmus. The Finnish headquarters rejected German pleas for aerial attacks against Leningrad and did not advance further south from the River Svir in the occupied East Karelia (160 kilometers north-east of Leningrad), which they reached on September 7. In the south-east, Germans captured Tikhvin on November 8, but failed to advance further north to complete the encirclement of Leningrad with the Finns at the Svir River. A month later on December 9 the counter-attack of the Volkhov Front forced the Wehrmacht to retreat from the Tikhvin positions to the River Volkhov line.
On 6th of September 1941 Mannerheim received the Order Of The Iron Cross for his command in the campaign. Germany's Chief of Staff Jodl brought the award to him with a personal letter from Hitler for the award ceremony held at Helsinki. Mannerheim was later photographed wearing the decoration while meeting Hitler. Jodl's main reason for coming to Helsinki was to persuade Mannerheim to continue the Finnish offensive. During 1941 Finnish President Ryti declared, in numerous speeches to the Finnish Parliament, his aim of fighting to gain more territories in the East to create a "Greater Finland" However, after the war, he stated: "On August 24 1941 I visited the headquarters of Marshal Mannerheim. The Germans aimed us at crossing the old border and continuing the offensive to Leningrad. I said that the capture of Leningrad was not our goal and that we should not take part in it. Mannerheim and the military minister Walden agreed with me and refused the offers of the Germans. The result was a paradoxical situation: the Germans were not able to approach Leningrad from the north…" Later it was asserted that there was no systematic shelling or bombing from of the Finnish positions.
Nevertheless the proximity of the Finnish army's positions - just 33-35 kilometers from the center of Leningrad - and the threat of a Finnish attack complicated the defense of the city. At one point the Front Commander Popov could not release reserves facing the Finnish Army for deployment against the Wehrmacht because they were needed to bolster the 23rd Army's defence on the Karelian Isthmus. On August 31 1941 Mannerheim ordered a stop to the offensive when the Finnish advance reached the 1939 border at the shores of the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, after which Finnish offensives only continued by way of reducing the salients of Beloostrov and Kirjasalo, which threatened Finnish positions at the coast of the Gulf of Finland and south of river Vuoksi respectively.
As the Finns reached the line during the first days of September, Popov experienced a reduction in pressure on Red Army forces, allowing him to transfer two divisions to the German sector on September 5. However, in November 1941, Finnish forces made another advance towards Leningrad and crossed the Sestra River, but were stopped again at the Sestroretsk and Beloostrov settlements 20-25 km north of Leningrad's outer suburbs. Finnish sources do not know of such an offensive and neither do Finnish casualty reports indicate any excess casualties at the time. On the other hand, Soviet forces captured the so called "Munakukkula" hill one kilometer west from Lake Lempaala in the evening of November 8, but Finns recaptured it next morning. Later, in the summer of 1942, a special Naval Detachment K was formed from Finnish, German and Italian naval units under Finnish operational command. Its purpose was to patrol the waters of Lake Ladoga, and it became involved in clashes against Leningrad supply route on southern Ladoga
Defensive operations Initial defence of Leningrad was undertaken by the troops of the Leningrad Front commanded by Kliment Voroshilov which included 23rd Army in the northern sector between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, and 48th Army occupying the western sector between Gulf of Finland and the Slutsk-Mga position. Also in the Front were the Leningrad Fortified Region, the Leningrad garrison, the Baltic Fleet forces, and the Koporsk, Southern and Slutsk-Kolpin operational groups.
The Siege By September 1941 when the link with the Volkhov Front (commanded by Kirill Meretskov) was severed, the defensive sectors were occupied by four Armies: 23rd Army in the northern sector, 42nd Army on the western sector, 55th Army on the southern sector, and the 67th Army on the eastern sector. The 8th Army of the Volkhov Front had responsibility for maintaining the logistic route to the city in coordination with the Ladoga flotilla. Air cover for the city was provided by the Leningrad military district PVO Corps and Baltic Fleet naval aviation units.
The defence operation to protect the 1,400,000 civilian evacuees was part of the Leningrad counter-siege operations, and was carried under the command of Andrei Zhdanov, Klim Voroshilov, and Aleksei Kuznetsov. Additional military operations were carried in coordination with the Baltic Fleet naval forces under the general command of Admiral Vladimir Tribuz. Major military involvement in helping evacuation of the civilians was carried by the Ladoga Flotilla under the command of V. Baranovsky, S.V. Zemlyanichenko, P.A. Traynin, and B.V. Khoroshikhin.
Supplying the defenders By September 8 the Germans had largely surrounded the city, cutting off all supply routes to Leningrad and its suburbs. Unable to press home their offensive, and facing defenses of the city organized by Marshal Zhukov, the German armies laid siege to the city for 872 days. To sustain the defense of the city it was vitally important for the Red Army to establish a route for bringing constant supplies into Leningrad. This route was effected over the southern part of Lake Ladoga, by means of watercraft during the warmer months and land vehicles driven over hard ice during the winter. The security of the supply route was ensured by the Ladoga flotilla, the Leningrad PVO Corps, and route security troops. The route would also be used to evacuate civilians from the besieged city. This was because no evacuation plan had been made available in the chaos of the first winter of the war, and the city literally starved in complete isolation until November 20 1941 when the ice road over Lake Ladoga became operational.
This road was named the Road of Life . As a road it was very dangerous. There was the risk of vehicles becoming stuck in the snow or sinking through broken ice caused by the constant German bombardment. Because of the high winter death toll the route also became known as the "Road of Death". However, the lifeline did bring military and food supplies in and take civilians out - allowing the city to continue resisting the enemy.
Soviet relief of the siege
Operation Iskra The encirclement was broken as a result of Operation Iskra - (English: spark) - which was a full-scale offensive by troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts. This offensive started in the morning of January 12 1943. After fierce battles the Red Army units overcame the powerful German fortifications to the south of Lake Ladoga, and on January 18 1943 the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts met, and so opened a 10-12km wide land corridor which could provide some relief to the besieged population of Leningrad.
Lifting the siege The siege nevertheless continued until January 27 1944, when the Soviet Oranienbaum Offensive expelled German forces from the southern outskirts of the city. This was a combined effort by the Leningrad Front, along with the Volkhov Front, the 1st Baltic Front and the 2nd Baltic Front. Later, in the summer of 1944, the Finns were pushed back to the other side of the Bay of Vyborg and the Vuoksi River.
Timeline of the Siege of Leningrad 1941 - April: Hitler intends to occupy and then destroy Leningrad, according to plan Barbarossa and Generalplan Ost
- June 22: Operation Barbarossa begins. The Axis powers' invasion of Soviet Union becomes a reality.
- June 23: Leningrad commander M. Popov, sends his second in command to reconnoiter defensive positions south of Leningrad.
- June 29: Soviets start building the Luga-line defense fortifications.
- July 19–23: First attack on Leningrad by Army Group North is stopped 100 km south of the city.
- July 27: Hitler visits Army Group North, expressing anger at the delay. He orders Wilhelm von Leeb to take Leningrad by December.
- July 31: Finns attack 23rd Army at Karelian Isthmus, eventually reaching northern pre-Winter War Finnish-Soviet border.
- August 20 – September 8: Artillery bombardments of Leningrad target industries, schools, hospitals, and civilian houses.
- August 21: Hitler's Directive No.34 orders "Encirclement of Leningrad in conjunction with the Finns."
- August 31: Finnish forces go on the defensive and straighten their front line.
- September 6: German High Command's Alfred Jodl fails to persuade Finns to continue offensive against Leningrad.
- September 2 - 9: Finns capture the salients of Beloostrov and Kirjasalo and start to prepare defences.
- September 8: Land encirclement of Leningrad is completed when the German forces reach the shores of Lake Ladoga.
- September 10: Joseph Stalin appoints General Zhukov to replace Voroshilov as Leningrad Front commander.
- September 12: The largest food depot in Leningrad, Badajevski General Store, is destroyed by German bomb.
- September 15: von Leeb has to remove 4th Panzergruppe from frontline to pass it to Army Group Center for a Moscow offensive.
- September 19: German troops are stopped 10 km from Leningrad. Citizens join fighting at the defense lines.
- September 22: Hitler directs that "Saint Petersburg must be erased from the face of the Earth".
- September 22: Hitler declares, "we have no interest in saving lives of the civilian population."
- November 8: Hitler states in a speech at Munich: "Leningrad must die of starvation."
- November 10: Soviet counter-attack begins, forcing Germans to retreat from Tikhvin back to the Volkhov river by December 30, which prevents them from joining Finnish forces waiting at Svir River east of Leningrad.
1943 - January–December: Increased artillery bombardments of Leningrad. In 1943 the Nazis fired 6 times as many shells and bombs as in 1942 on Leningrad. Total number of heavy artillery shells recorded at 147,000 explosions. Highly explosive Navy torpedos were frequently used for night bombings by the Luftwaffe.
- January–December: Baltic Fleet Navy aviation makes over 100,000 air missions to support the military operations during the siege of Leningrad..
- January 12 – January 30: Operation Iskra opens a narrow land corridor along the coast of Lake Ladoga to the city
- February: The railroad is temporarily restored, but soon destroyed again by enemy aircraft.
1944 - January 14 - March 1: Leningrad-Novgorod strategic offensive operation, first of the Ten Stalin’s punches:
- Krasnoye Selo-Ropshin offensive operation (January 14-January 30)
- Novgorod-Luga offensive operation (January 14-February 15)
- Kingisepp-Gdov offensive operation (February 1–March 1)
- Staraya Russa-Novorzhev offensive operation (February 18–March 1)
- January 27: Siege of Leningrad ends, after a joint effort by the Army and the Baltic Fleet, which provided 30% of aviation power for the final blow to the Germans. The Germans are forced to retreat 60–100 km from the city.
- June 9 - July 15: Vyborg-Petrozavodsk Strategic Offensive Operation pushes Finns northwestwards about 30–100 km to the other side of Bay of Vyborg and River Vuoksi.
See also
Bibliography
External links - (Retrieved on June 29, 2008)
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