The Third Reich attempts to starve the city of millions into submission
After the Wehrmacht had succeeded in surrounding Leningrad (present-day St Petersburg) on three sides by September 1941, Hitler decided that the city would be left to starve rather than risk the high casualties that would have resulted from taking the city by force. This plan matched the wider approach of Operation Barbarossa, as reducing the city population would free up “living space” to be “Germanized” by German “military farmers”. The food that the Soviet citizens would have consumed could now also be given over to the German army, which would live off the land. The army leadership saw it no differently, evidenced by an instruction relating to Leningrad: “We have no interest in preserving even a part of this metropolitan population.”
The two-and-a-half million inhabitants of Leningrad were forced to endure strict rationing and ever-shrinking portion sizes. People ate bread mixed with pine needles or sawdust, and even cooked glue or chewed on leather. There were even cases of cannibalism. More and more Leningraders starved to death, especially as they had to endure freezing temperatures that could fall to -40 °C in winter. Soon, piles of corpses accumulated at the sides of the roads, as it was impossible to bury anyone in the frozen ground. Although supplies did reach the city via the frozen Lake Ladoga, German shelling made this a risky undertaking and minimized the quantities delivered. By the time the 872-day siege had been lifted in January 1944, it had claimed the lives of over a million civilians.
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