Leningrad Liberated: 900-Day Siege of Starvation Ends
Soviet forces broke through the German blockade on January 27, 1944, ending a siege that had lasted 872 days and killed roughly one million civilians. The death toll dwarfs any other siege in recorded history. Leningraders survived by eating wallpaper paste, boiled leather, sawdust bread, and in documented cases, human flesh. The city's water supply froze, forcing residents to haul buckets from the Neva River through streets littered with unburied corpses. Despite the horror, factories continued producing tanks and ammunition. Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony was performed by a starving orchestra in the besieged city and broadcast by loudspeaker to demoralize German troops. Hitler had planned to raze Leningrad entirely and turn the site into an artificial lake. The city's refusal to surrender became the Soviet Union's most powerful symbol of resistance against fascism.
January 18, 1944
82 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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