Map of the siege of Leningrad. Mysteries of the siege of Leningrad (11 photos)

change from 07/25/2013 - ()

Most likely, previously carefully hidden information has finally begun to leak out to people, which can reveal to us the real organizers of that terrible war, the real goals that they set for themselves, and the real events that took place during that terrible and cruel time.

It seems to us that we know almost everything about the Great Patriotic War, because thousands of books have been written about it, hundreds of documentaries and feature films have been created, many paintings and poems have been written. But in reality, we only know what has long been emasculated and put on public display. There may also be some part of the truth, but not all of it.

You and I will now be convinced that we know very little even about the most important, as we were told, events of that War. I would like to draw your attention to an article by Alexey Kungurov from Chelyabinsk entitled “On mathematics and historical reality,” which at one time was undeservedly ignored by all the world’s media.

In this short article, he cited several facts that shatter the existing legend about the siege of Leningrad. No, he does not deny that there were protracted and heavy battles there, and there were a huge number of civilian casualties.

But he claims that there was no blockade of Leningrad (complete encirclement of the city), and provides convincing evidence for this assertion.

He reaches his conclusions by analyzing publicly available, widely known information using logic and arithmetic. You can watch and listen in more detail about this in the recording of his Internet Conference “Managing History as a Knowledge System”...

In Leningrad at that time there were many oddities and incomprehensibility, which we will now voice, using many fragments from the above-mentioned article by Alexei Kungurov.

Unfortunately, no reasonable and substantiated explanations have yet been found for what was happening in Leningrad at that time. Therefore, we have to hope that correctly formulated questions will help you and me find or calculate the correct answers.

In our additions to Alexey Kungurov’s materials, we will also use only publicly available and widely known information, repeatedly voiced and confirmed by photographic materials, maps and other documents.

So, let's go in order.

RIDDLE ONE

Where did this term come from?

Blockades exactly the city of Leningrad in reality did not have. This sonorous term was most likely coined to shift the blame onto the Germans for the mass casualties among the urban population. But There was no encirclement of the city of Leningrad in that War!

In the summer of 1941, according to available publicly available information, a certain, rather large territory of several thousand square kilometers, on which the city of Leningrad was and is now located, was cut off by German troops from the rest of the country. This happened at the end of August 1941:

“After stubborn battles, the enemy’s 39th motorized corps captured the large Mga railway junction on August 30. The last railway connecting Leningrad with the country was cut..."

RIDDLE SECOND

Why were there so few shells?

A. Kungurov's article begins with an analysis of the written statement that 148,478 shells fell on the city during the siege. Historians describe these events as follows:

“Leningraders lived in constant nervous tension, shelling followed one after another. From September 4 to November 30, 1941, the city was shelled 272 times for a total duration of 430 hours. Sometimes the population remained in bomb shelters for almost a day. On September 15, 1941, the shelling lasted 18 hours 32 m, on September 17 - 18 hours 33 m. In total, during the blockade of Leningrad, about 150 thousand shells were fired ... "

Kungurov, through simple arithmetic calculations, shows that this figure is taken from the air and may differ from reality by several orders of magnitude! One artillery battalion of 18 large-caliber guns is capable of firing 232,000 rounds during the mentioned 430 hours of shelling!

But the blockade, according to established data, lasted much longer than three weeks, and the enemy had several hundred times more guns. Therefore, the number of fallen shells, which newspapers of that time wrote about, and then copied by everyone who wrote to us about the blockade, should have been several orders of magnitude greater if the blockade had taken place in the form to which we were all taught.

On the other hand, many photographs of besieged Leningrad show that destruction in the central part of the city was minimal! This is only possible if the enemy was not allowed to attack the city with artillery and aircraft.

However, judging by the maps, the enemy was only a few kilometers from the city, and the reasonable question of why the city and military factories were not completely turned into ruins in a couple of weeks remains open.

RIDDLE THIRD

Why was there no order?

The Germans did not have orders to occupy Leningrad. Kungurov writes about this very clearly as follows:

“Von Leib, commander of Army North, was a competent and experienced commander. He had up to 40 divisions (including tank ones) under his command. The front in front of Leningrad was 70 km long. The density of troops reached the level of 2-5 km per division in the direction of the main attack. In this situation, only historians who do not understand anything about military affairs can say that under these conditions he could not take the city.

We have repeatedly seen in feature films about the defense of Leningrad how German tankers drive into the suburbs, crush and shoot trams. The front had been broken and there was no one ahead of them. In their memoirs, Von Leib and many other German army commanders stated that they were forbidden to take the city, gave the order to retreat from advantageous positions..."

Isn’t it true that the German troops behaved very strangely: instead of easily capturing the city and advancing further (we understand that the militias that we were shown in the movies are in principle incapable of providing serious resistance to regular troops), the invaders have been standing near Leningrad for almost 3 years, allegedly blocking all land approaches to it.

And taking into account the fact that there were most likely no or very few counterattacks from the defenders, for the advancing German troops this was not a war, but a real sanatorium! It would be interesting to know the true reaction of the German command to this legend of the blockade.

RIDDLE FOUR

Why did the Kirov plant work?

"It is known that The Kirov plant worked throughout the blockade. The fact is also known - he was located 3 (three!!!) kilometers from the front line. For people who did not serve in the army, I will say that a bullet from a Mosin rifle can fly at such a distance if you shoot in the right direction (I am simply silent about artillery guns of larger caliber).

Residents were evacuated from the Kirov plant area, but the plant continued to work under the very nose of the German command, and it was never destroyed (although one artillery lieutenant with a battery of not the largest caliber could have handled this task, with the right task and sufficient ammunition) ... "

Do you understand what is written here? It is written here that the fierce enemy, who continuously fired cannons and bombed the surrounded city of Leningrad for 3 years, did not bother to destroy the Kirov plant, which produced military equipment, during this time, although this could have been done in one day!

How can this be explained? Either because the Germans did not know how to shoot at all, or because they did not have an order to destroy the enemy’s plant, which is no less fantastic than the first assumption; or the German troops that stood near Leningrad, performed another function, unknown to us yet...

To understand what a city truly treated by artillery and aviation looks like, find military photos of Stalingrad, which was shelled not for 3 years, but for much less time...

Thus, the reasons for the mystery of the siege of Leningrad may be worth looking in a slightly different plane than we are used to doing?

Ending .
Here are the blockade years of 1942 and 1943. Just like in the 1st part, please read and write if something seems wrong or clumsy.
It is probably not interesting to everyone, but mainly to lovers and experts in the history of Leningrad and military history. Therefore, I hide it entirely under the cat.

1942

13. City of Kolpino, September 16, 1942 Photo plan based on aerial photography.
Comparing this image with a photograph taken in November 1941 allows us to clearly imagine the amount of destruction in the city: in the southern part, in areas of individual development, no more than a quarter of the buildings remain, and the workers’ settlement in the area of ​​modern streets. The Red Partisans/Tankers were almost completely destroyed. Large buildings used by enemy bombers and artillerymen for aiming, almost all have been preserved so far. The icons applied to the photograph by a German topographer reflect the peculiarities of the organization of the city’s defense in 1942: triangles – machine gun points (including machine guns were installed on water towers, as evidenced by the triangles depicted there); segments with two folds at the edges are the positions of the batteries. Water towers are labeled as landmarks. Trenches, defensive obstacles and anti-aircraft gun positions are also indicated (a circle with three lines).

14. Shushary and southern Kupchino, September 16, 1942
The territory, which 60 years later will turn into an industrial zone, before the war and during wartime was occupied by peat mining at the Obukhov Peat Plant (Izoplite factory): the light stripes in the lower right part of the photo are the peat mining itself, to the left (to the west) are the plant management and production buildings of the plant . Along the railway lines and highways there is a dense belt of defensive structures: trenches, barriers, firing points. To the north of the railway line there is an anti-tank ditch. “Ragged” edges – parapets, soil thrown out. The dark line of the branch line from the railway to the north on all modern maps was designated as a dismantled section; by the appearance in the picture - the supposed camouflage of some object, or a false target. Traces of explosions are visible throughout the area; their largest number is located near transport communications, defensive structures and the buildings of the peat plant, which worked during the blockade, supplying the besieged city with fuel.

15. Rybatskoe and Ust-Slavyanka, September 16, 1942
The buildings of Rybatskoe on the left and Novosaratovka on the right bank of the Neva are predominantly low-rise and have only minor traces of destruction. The layout of the territory would remain largely the same until the 1980s; One of the significant post-war changes is the transfer of the tram line in the area of ​​the river. Murzinki (northwestern part of the image) with straightening. The bridge along the old Shlisselburgsky tract along the Neva no longer exists at the date of filming. During the blockade, the line of the second belt of defensive structures passed through Rybatskoe. In this photo it can be traced along the trail of the anti-tank ditch on both banks of the Neva and the pontoon bridge across the river. On the southern bank of the Neva one can see fresh parapets. Between them are many trenches that run diagonally across the areas at the bottom of the image. On the right bank of the Neva there are also numerous trenches and communication passages. The road layout is drawn on the emulsion when the image is processed by a topographer; Kalyaevskaya Street was mistakenly deciphered as a road, although it was only an embankment for a tram line.

16. Pulkovo and Kiev highway, September 16, 1942
One of the hottest spots of the war years, the site of fierce battles in September 1941 and summer 1942. A milestone on the way to Leningrad, which Hitler’s army could not overcome. The front line, the line of the blockade of Leningrad, passed in the lower left corner of the picture, at the foot of the Pulkovo Heights. The contours of the layout of the Shosseynaya airport area can be read, but the entire territory is dotted with explosions, and only the largest buildings remained from the development, used as landmarks by the Nazis and cover by the defenders of Leningrad. There are practically no buildings in the settlements of Peski, Tolmachi, Gallerovo, located on the slopes of the Pulkovo ridge. Trenches are visible throughout the territory, highlighted by parapets; in the northern part there is an anti-tank ditch of the second defensive belt (here it was closest to the front) and gun positions.

17. Uritsk, September 16, 1942
The territory of the city of Uritsk, the villages of Ivanovka, Staro-Panovo and the village of Ligovo, Krasnoselsky district, Leningrad region. The layout of the area is like this. The way it looks in the photo was formed in the 1930s, but here the development of all settlements is shown either with significant damage or completely destroyed. After the war, only individual buildings near the Ligovo station were restored; nothing remained of the layout of the northern part of Uritsk. Uritsk was occupied by German troops on September 19, 1941. After stubborn battles, the front line stabilized along the eastern outskirts of Uritsk, along the river. Duderhofke. Along the Ivanovka and Dudergofka rivers, outside the buildings of Uritsk, the Germans set up a defense center with many trenches and firing points. In July-August 1942, the Uritsky section of the front became the theater of operations of the Staro-Panovskaya operation, as a result of which significant damage was caused to German engineering structures.

18. Petro-Slavyanka, September 16, 1942 (the image is flipped 180 degrees; the text description is given according to the true orientation)
One of the defense lines of Leningrad in the south-eastern direction passed through Petro-Slavyanka, along the Slavyanka and Kuzminka rivers. This photo shows a stage in the construction process of defensive structures: a ditch (bottom left) is being built parallel to the front line, new construction is identified by parapets - in some places they have already been thrown out and stand out as light spots on the dark grass, in others they are not yet there. To the west (to the left) there are many trenches and communication passages between them.

19. Northern part of the Nevsky district. Finland railway bridge, September 16, 1942
Plans of the 1930s suggested significant changes in the layout of this part of the city, but in the pre-war years they were implemented to a minimum extent. On the Malaya Okhta side, separate new houses appeared; An overpass has already been built along the route of the future Far Eastern Avenue under the tracks of the Finnish Connecting Railway Line, but then the road ends, and the two tram rings along the axis of the avenue do not have a connection (or are connected by a service line). The left bank part of the district generally preserves the layout of the St. Petersburg suburbs of the early twentieth century, interspersed with individual pre-war new buildings - the Palevsky residential area and the residential area on Tkachi Street. Agafonovskaya Street - future Sedov Street - in the late 1930s. was united with Vasilyevskaya and Ekaterininskaya streets, and in this picture it is already read as a highway. Individual anti-aircraft artillery systems can be seen near individual enterprises and on their territories. An anti-tank ditch is being built along the railroad bed on the right bank of the Neva.

20. Volodarsky Bridge and Vesyoly Settlement, September 16, 1942
A part of the city that was relatively unaffected by shelling and bombing. The number of defensive structures is insignificant compared to other areas. On the right bank of the Neva there are a large number of vegetable gardens. In order to eliminate the consequences of the hungry winter and increase food supplies, in March 1942 the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council adopted a resolution “On the development of individual gardening”; All vacant land in the suburbs and within the city itself was registered. In total, 633 subsidiary farms and 1,468 associations of gardeners were created, consisting of more than 170 thousand people. More than 100 thousand Leningrad residents had their own individual vegetable gardens.
The alignment of the embankments extending west from the Neva railway station is noteworthy (right edge of the image). The connection of one of them, passing through the village of Sosnovka, with the embankment of the tram line across the Volodarsky Bridge is clearly visible. During the war, it was used as a backup for the Finnish Railway, with trains passing along tram tracks. It was not possible to establish the location of the left bank connection with the railway network. According to the official version, in the 1980s. The reason for the need for a complete reconstruction of the bridge was the collision of a floating dock with its drawbridge in 1985, however, it cannot be ruled out that the movement of heavy transport along it during the war years contributed to the deterioration of the crossing structures.

21. Kirovsky district and port, September-October 1942
The photo from the fall of 1942 clearly shows the extent of destruction in the southwestern part of the city. All buildings along Stachek Avenue south of the future Komsomolskaya Square were completely destroyed or show signs of severe destruction, some of the houses were destroyed to the ground, some collapsed onto the avenue. There is a lot of damage in industrial areas. The only buildings that have survived relatively intact are those in the vicinity of Stachek Square. There are practically no ships near the port walls; isolated fragments of booms are observed in the port basins near the berths. In Ekateringofka, north of the Baroque basin, there is a cluster of booms or a large amount of driftwood. The section of Ekateringofka between Gladky Island and the territory of the Kirov plant is completely filled with driftwood or disguised as land. Next to the railway viaduct near the Kirov Plant on Stachek Avenue there is a barricade - here was one of the checkpoints from the city towards the front line.

Sea Port - Kirov Plant - Avtovo, large photo by click (2115*2190)

1943

22. Nevdubstroy, January 24, 1943
The territory of the State District Power Plant (State District Power Plant, since 1943 - State District Power Plant named after S. M. Kirov) and the 2nd Town of the village of Nevdubstroy at the enterprise. Construction of the facility began in 1931 according to the design of domestic design institutes, for the first time without technical assistance and the participation of foreign specialists. During the battles for Leningrad, the equipment and all structures of the station were completely destroyed. The photo was taken during Operation Iskra to break the blockade of Leningrad (January 12-30, 1943) in the southern sector of offensive operations. On both banks of the Neva there are many defensive and offensive structures, trenches on both sides. On the day of filming, the Red Army had already crossed the Neva, breaking through the Nazi defenses, and the fighting was going on to the east. On the ice of the river, random traces of German shell explosions are visible (the shelling was carried out from the north); the results of the “work” of our artillerymen are only on the left bank. The photo illustrates the high quality of the counter-battery fight of our troops: German explosions were mainly mortar explosions.

23. Shlisselburg, January 24, 1943
The territory of the city of Shlisselburg, occupied and almost completely destroyed during the war. Northern section of the operation to break the blockade of Leningrad. At the bottom of the photo is a low-water railway crossing across the Neva, already under construction. A test train ran along this route, called the “Road of Victory,” on February 2, 1943.

24. Kronstadt, September 29, 1943
The city and naval base suffered the most from the Luftwaffe raid on September 23, 1941. Some of the ships visible in the photo are sunk or submerged; It is difficult to distinguish them from those existing in an image of this resolution due to the shallowness of the depths. At the south-eastern end of the Petrovsky Dock canal there is a damaged battleship "Petropavlovsk" (before 05/31/1943 - "Marat"), with its stern to the west, bow to the east. Petrovsky dock and dock pool are filled with water. Damage to the fort structures is not visible, all forts are visible in their original outlines. North of Fort Peter I there is a large powder warehouse. The threads of the narrow gauge railway system throughout the island, from warehouses and the Marine Factory to the forts, are clearly legible (perhaps highlighted during deciphering).

25. Shlisselburg, September 29, 1943
The territory of Shlisselburg, liberated in January 1943, has already been completely or largely cleared of destroyed buildings. The beds of the Staroladoga and Malonevsky canals are dry and blocked by locks. Several railway bridges and road crossings were built across the Neva - if one was damaged by bombing or shelling, the others continued to operate. Upstream there are road transport bridges, downstream there are low-water and high-water railway bridges. A motor transport bridge is also built from Shlisselburg itself. A light elongated strip on the left bank of the Neva southeast of Shlisselburg is a railway station. On the right bank there are peat mines and quarries filled with water after peat extraction. Some of them lasted until the 1980s.

The Siege of Leningrad was a siege of one of the largest Russian cities that lasted more than two and a half years, waged by the German Army Group North with the help of Finnish troops on the Eastern Front. Second World War. The blockade began on September 8, 1941, when the last route to Leningrad was blocked by the Germans. Although on January 18, 1943, Soviet troops managed to open a narrow corridor of communication with the city by land, the blockade was finally lifted only on January 27, 1944, 872 days after it began. It was one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history and perhaps the most costly in terms of casualties.

Prerequisites

The capture of Leningrad was one of the three strategic goals of the German Operation Barbarossa- and the main one for Army Group North. This importance was determined by the political status of Leningrad as the former capital of Russia and Russian revolution, its military significance as the main base of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, the industrial power of the city, where there were many factories producing army equipment. By 1939 Leningrad produced 11% of all Soviet industrial output. They claim that Adolf Gitler was so confident of the capture of the city that, on his orders, invitations had already been printed to celebrate this event at the Astoria Hotel in Leningrad.

There are various assumptions about Germany's plans for Leningrad after its capture. Soviet journalist Lev Bezymensky argued that his city was supposed to be renamed Adolfsburg and turned into the capital of the new Ingermanland province of the Reich. Others claim that Hitler intended to completely destroy both Leningrad and its population. According to a directive sent to Army Group North on September 29, 1941, “After the defeat of Soviet Russia there is no interest in the continued existence of this major urban center. [...] Following the encirclement of the city, requests for negotiations for surrender should be rejected, since the problem of moving and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our existence, we cannot have an interest in preserving even a part of this very large urban population." It follows that Hitler's final plan was to raze Leningrad to the ground and give the areas north of the Neva to the Finns.

872 days of Leningrad. In a hungry loop

Preparing the blockade

Army Group North was moving towards Leningrad, its main goal (see. Baltic operation 1941 And Leningrad operation 1941). Its commander, Field Marshal von Leeb, initially thought to take the city outright. But due to Hitler’s recall of the 4th Panzer Group (chief of the General Staff Halder persuaded to transfer it to the south, for Fyodor von Bock's attack on Moscow) von Leeb had to begin a siege. He reached the shore of Lake Ladoga, trying to complete the encirclement of the city and connect with the Finnish army of the marshal Mannerheim, waiting for him on the Svir River.

Finnish troops were located north of Leningrad, and German troops approached the city from the south. Both had the goal of cutting off all communications to the city’s defenders, although Finland’s participation in the blockade mainly consisted of recapturing lands lost in the recent Soviet-Finnish war. The Germans hoped that their main weapon would be hunger.

Already on June 27, 1941, the Leningrad Soviet organized armed detachments of civilian militias. In the coming days, the entire population of Leningrad was informed of the danger. More than a million people were mobilized to build fortifications. Several defense lines were created along the perimeter of the city, from the north and south, defended mainly by civilians. In the south, one of the fortified lines ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudov, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo, and then across the Neva River. Another line ran through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino and Koltushi. The line of defense against the Finns in the north (Karelian fortified area) had been maintained in the northern suburbs of Leningrad since the 1930s and has now been renewed.

As R. Colley writes in his book “The Siege of Leningrad”:

...By order of June 27, 1941, all men from 16 to 50 years old and women from 16 to 45 were involved in the construction of fortifications, except for the sick, pregnant women and those caring for babies. Those conscripted were required to work for seven days, followed by four days of “rest,” during which they were required to return to their regular workplace or continue their studies. In August, the age limits were expanded to 55 years for men and 50 for women. The length of work shifts has also increased - seven days of work and one day of rest.

However, in reality these norms were never followed. One 57-year-old woman wrote that for eighteen days in a row, twelve hours a day, she hammered the ground, “hard as stone”... Teenage girls with delicate hands, who came in summer sundresses and sandals, had to dig the ground and drag heavy concrete blocks , having only a crowbar ... The civilian population erecting defensive structures often found themselves in the bombing zone or were shot at by German fighters from strafing flight.

It was a titanic effort, but some considered it in vain, confident that the Germans would easily overcome all these defensive lines...

The civilian population constructed a total of 306 km of wooden barricades, 635 km of wire fences, 700 km of anti-tank ditches, 5,000 earthen and wooden and reinforced concrete bunkers and 25,000 km of open trenches. Even the guns from the cruiser Aurora were moved to the Pulkovo Heights, south of Leningrad.

G. Zhukov claims that in the first three months of the war, 10 voluntary militia divisions, as well as 16 separate artillery and machine-gun militia battalions, were formed in Leningrad.

…[City party leader] Zhdanov announced the creation of a “people’s militia” in Leningrad... Neither age nor health were an obstacle. By the end of August 1941, over 160,000 Leningraders, of which 32,000 were women, had enlisted in the militia [voluntarily or under duress].

The militias were poorly trained, they were given old rifles and grenades, and were also taught to make incendiary bombs, which later became known as Molotov cocktails. The first division of militia was formed on July 10 and already on July 14, practically without preparation, it was sent to the front to help the regular units of the Red Army. Almost all the militia died. Women and children were warned that if the Germans broke into the city, they would have to throw stones at them and pour boiling water on their heads.

... Loudspeakers continuously reported on the successes of the Red Army, holding back the onslaught of the Nazis, but kept silent about the huge losses of poorly trained, poorly armed troops...

On July 18, food distribution was introduced. People were given food cards that expired in a month. A total of four categories of cards were established; the highest category corresponded to the largest ration. It was possible to maintain the highest category only through hard work.

The 18th Army of the Wehrmacht accelerated its rush to Ostrov and Pskov, and the Soviet troops of the North-Western Front retreated to Leningrad. On July 10, 1941, Ostrov and Pskov were taken, and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where it continued to advance towards Leningrad from the Luga River line. The German 4th Panzer Group of General Hoepner, attacking from East Prussia, reached Novgorod by August 16 after a rapid advance and, having taken it, also rushed to Leningrad. Soon the Germans created a continuous front from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, expecting that the Finnish army would meet them halfway along the eastern shore of Ladoga.

On August 6, Hitler repeated his order: “Leningrad should be taken first, Donbass second, Moscow third.” From August 1941 to January 1944, everything that happened in the military theater between the Arctic Ocean and Lake Ilmen in one way or another related to the operation near Leningrad. Arctic convoys carried American Lend-Lease and British supplies along the Northern Sea Route to the railway station of Murmansk (although its railway connection with Leningrad was cut off by Finnish troops) and to several other places in Lapland.

Troops participating in the operation

Germany

Army Group North (Field Marshal von Leeb). It included:

18th Army (von Küchler): XXXXII Corps (2 infantry divisions) and XXVI Corps (3 infantry divisions).

16th Army (Bush): XXVIII Corps (von Wiktorin) (2 Infantry, 1 Panzer Division 1), I Corps (2 Infantry Divisions), X Corps (3 Infantry Divisions), II Corps (3 Infantry Divisions), (L Corps - from the 9th Army) (2 infantry divisions).

4th Panzer Group (Göpner): XXXVIII Corps (von Chappius) (1st Infantry Division), XXXXI Motorized Corps (Reinhardt) (1 infantry, 1 motorized, 1 tank divisions), LVI Motorized Corps (von Manstein) (1 infantry, 1 motorized, 1 tank, 1 tank-grenadier divisions).

Finland

Finnish Defense Forces HQ (Marshal Mannerheim). They included: I Corps (2 infantry divisions), II Corps (2 infantry divisions), IV Corps (3 infantry divisions).

Northern Front (Lieutenant General Popov). It included:

7th Army (2 rifle divisions, 1 militia division, 1 marine brigade, 3 motorized rifle and 1 tank regiment).

8th Army: Xth 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: XIXth Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions), Separate units (2 rifle, 1 motorized division, 2 fortified areas, 1 rifle regiment).

Luga operational group: XXXXI Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions); separate units (1 tank brigade, 1 rifle regiment).

Kingisepp operational group: separate units (2 rifle, 1 tank division, 2 militia divisions, 1 fortified area).

Separate units (3 rifle divisions, 4 guard militia divisions, 3 fortified areas, 1 rifle brigade).

Of these, the 14th Army defended Murmansk, and the 7th Army defended areas of Karelia near Lake Ladoga. Thus, they did not take part in the initial stages of the siege. The 8th Army was originally part of the Northwestern Front. Retreating from the Germans through the Baltic states, on July 14, 1941 it was transferred to the Northern Front.

On August 23, 1941, the Northern Front was divided into the Leningrad and Karelian fronts, since the front headquarters could no longer control all operations between Murmansk and Leningrad.

Environment of Leningrad

Finnish intelligence had broken some of the Soviet military codes and was able to read a number of enemy communications. This was especially useful for Hitler, who constantly asked for intelligence information about Leningrad. The role of Finland in Operation Barbarossa was defined by Hitler’s “Directive 21” as follows: “The mass of the Finnish army will be given the task, together with the advance of the northern wing of the German armies, to bind the maximum of Russian forces with an attack from the west or from both sides of Lake Ladoga.”

The last railway connection with Leningrad was cut off on August 30, 1941, when the Germans reached the Neva. On September 8, the Germans reached Lake Ladoga near Shlisselburg and interrupted the last land road to the besieged city, stopping only 11 km from the city limits. The Axis troops did not occupy only the land corridor between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad. The shelling on September 8, 1941 caused 178 fires in the city.

Line of greatest advance of German and Finnish troops near Leningrad

On September 21, the German command considered options for the destruction of Leningrad. The idea of ​​occupying the city was rejected with the instruction: “we would then have to supply food to the residents.” The Germans decided to keep the city under siege and bombard it, leaving the population to starve. “Early next year we will enter the city (if the Finns do this first, we will not object), sending those who are still alive to internal Russia or into captivity, wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth, and hand over the area north of the Neva to the Finns " On October 7, 1941, Hitler sent another directive, reminding that Army Group North should not accept surrender from the Leningraders.

Finland's participation in the siege of Leningrad

In August 1941, the Finns approached 20 km to the northern suburbs of Leningrad, reaching the Finnish-Soviet border in 1939. Threatening the city from the north, they also advanced through Karelia to the east of Lake Ladoga, creating a danger to the city from the east. Finnish troops crossed the border that existed before the “Winter War” on the Karelian Isthmus, “cutting off” the Soviet protrusions on Beloostrov and Kiryasalo and thereby straightening the front line. Soviet historiography claimed that the Finnish movement stopped in September due to resistance from the Karelian fortified area. However, already at the beginning of August 1941, Finnish troops received orders to stop the offensive after achieving its goals, some of which lay beyond the pre-war 1939 border.

Over the next three years, the Finns contributed to the Battle of Leningrad by holding their lines. Their command rejected German entreaties to launch air attacks on Leningrad. The Finns did not go south of the Svir River in Eastern Karelia (160 km northeast of Leningrad), which they reached on September 7, 1941. In the southeast, the Germans captured Tikhvin on November 8, 1941, but were unable to complete the final encirclement of Leningrad by pushing further north , to connect with the Finns on Svir. On December 9, a counterattack by the Volkhov Front forced the Wehrmacht to retreat from its positions at Tikhvin to the line of the Volkhov River. Thanks to this, the line of communication with Leningrad along Lake Ladoga was preserved.

September 6, 1941 chief of the operational department of the Wehrmacht headquarters Alfred Jodl visited Helsinki in order to convince Field Marshal Mannerheim to continue the offensive. Finnish President Ryti, meanwhile, told his parliament that the purpose of the war was to regain areas lost during the "Winter War" of 1939-1940 and gain even more territory in the east, which would create a "Greater Finland". After the war, Ryti stated: “On August 24, 1941, I visited the headquarters of Field Marshal Mannerheim. The Germans encouraged us to cross the old border and continue the attack on Leningrad. I said that the capture of Leningrad was not part of our plans and that we would not take part in it. Mannerheim and War Minister Walden agreed with me and rejected the German proposals. As a result, a paradoxical situation arose: the Germans could not approach Leningrad from the north...”

Trying to whitewash himself in the eyes of the victors, Ryti thus assured that the Finns almost prevented the complete encirclement of the city by the Germans. In fact, German and Finnish forces held the siege together until January 1944, but there was very little systematic shelling and bombing of Leningrad by the Finns. However, the proximity of the Finnish positions - 33-35 km from the center of Leningrad - and the threat of a possible attack from them complicated the defense of the city. Until Mannerheim stopped his offensive (August 31, 1941), the commander of the Soviet Northern Front, Popov, could not release the reserves that stood against the Finnish troops on the Karelian Isthmus in order to turn them against the Germans. Popov managed to redeploy two divisions to the German sector only on September 5, 1941.

Borders of advance of the Finnish army in Karelia. Map. The gray line marks the Soviet-Finnish border in 1939.

Soon Finnish troops cut off the ledges at Beloostrov and Kiryasalo, which threatened their positions on the seashore and south of the Vuoksi River. Lieutenant General Paavo Talvela and Colonel Järvinen, the commander of the Finnish coastal brigade, responsible for the Ladoga sector, proposed to the German headquarters to block Soviet convoys on Lake Ladoga. The German command formed an “international” detachment of sailors under Finnish command (this included the Italian XII Squadriglia MAS) and the naval formation Einsatzstab Fähre Ost under German command. In the summer and autumn of 1942, these water forces interfered with communications with the besieged Leningraders along Ladoga. The appearance of ice forced the removal of these lightly armed units. They were never restored later due to changes in the front line.

City defense

The command of the Leningrad Front, formed after the division of the Northern Front in two, was entrusted to Marshal Voroshilov. The front included the 23rd Army (in the north, between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga) and the 48th Army (in the west, between the Gulf of Finland and the Slutsk-Mga position). It also included the Leningrad fortified area, the Leningrad garrison, the forces of the Baltic Fleet and the operational groups Koporye, Yuzhnaya (on the Pulkovo Heights) and Slutsk - Kolpino.

...By order of Voroshilov, units of the people's militia were sent to the front line just three days after formation, untrained, without military uniforms and weapons. Due to a shortage of weapons, Voroshilov ordered the militia to be armed with “hunting rifles, homemade grenades, sabers and daggers from Leningrad museums.”

The shortage of uniforms was so acute that Voroshilov addressed the population with an appeal, and teenagers went from house to house, collecting donations of money or clothing...

The shortsightedness of Voroshilov and Zhdanov had tragic consequences. They were repeatedly advised to disperse the main food supplies stored in the Badayev warehouses. These warehouses, located in the south of the city, extended over an area of ​​one and a half hectares. The wooden buildings were closely adjacent to each other; almost all the city's food supplies were stored in them. Despite the vulnerability of the old wooden buildings, neither Voroshilov nor Zhdanov heeded the advice. On September 8, incendiary bombs were dropped on warehouses. 3,000 tons of flour burned, thousands of tons of grain turned to ash, meat was charred, butter melted, melted chocolate flowed into the cellars. “That night, molten burnt sugar flowed through the streets,” said one of the eyewitnesses. Thick smoke was visible for many kilometers away, and with it the hopes of the city disappeared.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

By September 8, German troops had almost completely surrounded the city. Dissatisfied with Voroshilov's inability Stalin I took it off and replaced it temporarily G. Zhukov. Zhukov only managed to prevent the capture of Leningrad by the Germans, but they were not driven back from the city and laid siege to it for “900 days and nights.” As he writes A. I. Solzhenitsyn in the story " On the edges »:

Voroshilov failed the Finnish war, was removed for a while, but already during Hitler’s attack he received the entire North-West, immediately failed both it and Leningrad - and was removed, but again - a successful marshal and in his closest trusted circle, like the two Semyons - Tymoshenko and hopeless Budyonny, failed both the South-West and the Reserve Front, and all of them were still members of the Headquarters, where Stalin had not yet included a single Vasilevsky, nor Vatutina, – and of course everyone remained marshals. Zhukov - did not give a marshal either for saving Leningrad, or for saving Moscow, or for Stalingrad victory. What then is the meaning of the title if Zhukov handled affairs above all the marshals? Only after the Leningrad blockade was lifted - he suddenly gave it.

Rupert Colley reports:

...Stalin was fed up with Voroshilov's incompetence. He sent Georgy Zhukov to Leningrad to save the situation... Zhukov was flying to Leningrad from Moscow under the cover of clouds, but as soon as the clouds cleared, two Messerschmitts rushed in pursuit of his plane. Zhukov landed safely and was immediately taken to Smolny. First of all, Zhukov handed Voroshilov an envelope. It contained an order addressed to Voroshilov to immediately return to Moscow...

On September 11, the German 4th Panzer Army was transferred from near Leningrad to the south to increase the pressure on Moscow. In desperation, Zhukov nevertheless made several attempts to attack the German positions, but the Germans had already managed to erect defensive structures and received reinforcements, so all attacks were repulsed. When Stalin called Zhukov on October 5 to find out the latest news, he proudly reported that the German offensive had stopped. Stalin recalled Zhukov back to Moscow to lead the defense of the capital. After Zhukov's departure, command of the troops in the city was entrusted to Major General Ivan Fedyuninsky.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Bombing and shelling of Leningrad

... On September 4, the first shell fell on Leningrad, and two days later it was followed by the first bomb. Artillery shelling of the city began... The most striking example of devastating destruction was the destruction of the Badayevsky warehouses and dairy plant on September 8. The carefully camouflaged Smolny did not receive a single scratch throughout the entire blockade, despite the fact that all neighboring buildings suffered from hits...

Leningraders had to stand guard on roofs and stairwells, keeping buckets of water and sand ready to extinguish incendiary bombs. Fires raged throughout the city, caused by incendiary bombs dropped by German planes. Street barricades, designed to block the way for German tanks and armored vehicles if they broke into the city, only impeded the passage of fire trucks and ambulances. It often happened that no one extinguished a building that was on fire and it burned out completely, because the fire trucks did not have enough water to douse the fire, or there was no fuel to get to the place.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

The air attack on September 19, 1941 was the worst air raid that Leningrad suffered during the war. A strike on the city by 276 German bombers killed 1,000 people. Many of those killed were soldiers being treated for wounds in hospitals. During six air raids that day, five hospitals and the city's largest market were damaged.

The intensity of artillery shelling of Leningrad increased in 1942 with the delivery of new equipment to the Germans. They intensified even more in 1943, when they began to use shells and bombs several times larger than the year before. German shelling and bombing during the siege killed 5,723 civilians and injured 20,507 civilians. The aviation of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, for its part, made more than 100 thousand sorties against the besiegers.

Evacuation of residents from besieged Leningrad

According to G. Zhukov, “before the war, Leningrad had a population of 3,103,000 people, and with its suburbs - 3,385,000. Of these, 1,743,129, including 414,148 children, were evacuated from June 29, 1941 to March 31, 1943. They were transported to the regions of the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan.”

By September 1941, the connection between Leningrad and the Volkhov Front (commander - K. Meretskov) was cut off. The defensive sectors were held by four armies: the 23rd Army in the north, the 42nd Army in the west, the 55th Army in the south, and the 67th Army in the east. The 8th Army of the Volkhov Front and the Ladoga Flotilla were responsible for maintaining the communication route with the city across Ladoga. Leningrad was defended from air attacks by the air defense forces of the Leningrad Military District and the naval aviation of the Baltic Fleet.

The actions to evacuate residents were led by Zhdanov, Voroshilov and A. Kuznetsov. Additional military operations were carried out in coordination with the Baltic Fleet forces under the overall command of Admiral V. Tributs. The Ladoga flotilla under the command of V. Baranovsky, S. Zemlyanichenko, P. Trainin and B. Khoroshikhin also played an important role in the evacuation of the civilian population.

...After the first few days, the city authorities decided that too many women were leaving the city, while their labor was needed here, and they began to send the children alone. A mandatory evacuation was declared for all children under the age of fourteen. Many children arrived at the station or collection point, and then, due to confusion, waited four days for departure. The food, carefully collected by caring mothers, was eaten in the very first hours. Of particular concern were rumors that German planes were shooting down trains containing evacuees. The authorities denied these rumors, calling them “hostile and provocative,” but confirmation soon came. The worst tragedy occurred on August 18 at the Lychkovo station. A German bomber dropped bombs on a train carrying evacuated children. The panic began. An eyewitness said that there was a scream and through the smoke he saw severed limbs and dying children...

By the end of August, over 630,000 civilians were evacuated from Leningrad. However, the city's population did not decline due to refugees fleeing the German advance in the west. The authorities were going to continue the evacuation, sending 30,000 people a day from the city, however, when the city of Mga, located 50 kilometers from Leningrad, fell on August 30, the encirclement was practically completed. The evacuation stopped. Due to the unknown number of refugees in the city, estimates vary, but approximately there were up to 3,500,000 [people] within the blockade ring. There was only enough food left for three weeks.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Famine in besieged Leningrad

The two and a half year German siege of Leningrad caused the worst destruction and greatest loss of life in the history of modern cities. By order of Hitler, most of the royal palaces (Catherine, Peterhof, Ropsha, Strelna, Gatchina) and other historical attractions located outside the city’s defense lines were looted and destroyed, many art collections were transported to Germany. A number of factories, schools, hospitals and other civilian structures were destroyed by air raids and shelling.

The 872-day siege caused severe famine in the Leningrad region due to the destruction of engineering structures, water, energy and food. It led to the death of up to 1,500,000 people, not counting those who died during the evacuation. Half a million victims of the siege are buried at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery in Leningrad alone. Human losses in Leningrad on both sides exceeded those suffered in Battle of Stalingrad , battle of Moscow and in atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Siege of Leningrad became the deadliest siege in world history. Some historians consider it necessary to say that in its course genocide was carried out - “racially motivated famine” - an integral part of the German war of extermination against the population of the Soviet Union.

The diary of a Leningrad girl Tanya Savicheva with entries about the death of all members of her family. Tanya herself also died from progressive dystrophy shortly after the blockade. Her diary as a girl was shown at the Nuremberg trials

Civilians of the city especially suffered from hunger in the winter of 1941/42. From November 1941 to February 1942, only 125 grams of bread were given per person per day, which consisted of 50-60% sawdust and other non-food impurities. For about two weeks in early January 1942, even this food was available only to workers and soldiers. Mortality peaked in January–February 1942 at 100 thousand people per month, mostly from starvation.

...After several months there were almost no dogs, cats or birds left in cages in the city. Suddenly, one of the last sources of fat, castor oil, was in demand. His supplies soon ran out.

Bread baked from flour swept from the floor along with garbage, nicknamed the “siege loaf,” turned out black as coal and had almost the same composition. The broth was nothing more than boiled water with a pinch of salt and, if you were lucky, a cabbage leaf. Money lost all value, as did any non-food items and jewelry—it was impossible to buy a crust of bread with family silver. Even birds and rodents suffered without food until they all disappeared: they either died of hunger or were eaten by desperate people... People, while they still had strength left, stood in long lines for food, sometimes for whole days in the piercing cold, and often returned home empty-handed, filled with despair - if they remained alive. The Germans, seeing the long lines of Leningraders, dropped shells on the unfortunate residents of the city. And yet people stood in lines: death from a shell was possible, while death from hunger was inevitable.

Everyone had to decide for themselves how to use the tiny daily ration - eat it in one sitting... or spread it out over the whole day. Relatives and friends helped each other, but the very next day they quarreled desperately among themselves over who got how much. When all alternative food sources ran out, people in desperation turned to inedible things - livestock feed, flaxseed oil and leather belts. Soon, belts, which people initially ate out of desperation, were already considered a luxury. Wood glue and paste containing animal fat were scraped off furniture and walls and boiled. People ate soil collected in the vicinity of the Badaevsky warehouses for the sake of the particles of molten sugar it contained.

The city lost water because water pipes froze and pumping stations were bombed. Without water, the taps dried up, the sewer system stopped working... City residents made holes in the frozen Neva and scooped up water in buckets. Without water, bakeries could not bake bread. In January 1942, when the water shortage became particularly acute, 8,000 people who had remained strong enough formed a human chain and passed hundreds of buckets of water from hand to hand, just to get the bakeries working again.

Numerous stories have been preserved about unfortunate people who stood in line for many hours for a loaf of bread only to have it snatched from their hands and greedily devoured by a man mad with hunger. The theft of bread cards became widespread; the desperate robbed people in broad daylight or picked the pockets of corpses and those wounded during German shelling. Obtaining a duplicate turned into such a long and painful process that many died without waiting for the wandering of a new ration card in the wilds of the bureaucratic system to end...

Hunger turned people into living skeletons. Rations reached a minimum in November 1941. The ration of manual workers was 700 calories per day, while the minimum ration was approximately 3,000 calories. Employees received 473 calories per day, compared with the normal 2,000 to 2,500 calories, and children received 423 calories per day, less than a quarter of what a newborn needs.

The limbs were swollen, the stomachs were swollen, the skin was tight on the face, the eyes were sunken, the gums were bleeding, the teeth were enlarged from malnutrition, the skin was covered with ulcers.

The fingers became numb and refused to straighten. Children with wrinkled faces resembled old people, and old people looked like the living dead... Children, left overnight orphans, wandered the streets as lifeless shadows in search of food... Any movement caused pain. Even the process of chewing food became unbearable...

By the end of September, we ran out of kerosene for home stoves. Coal and fuel oil were not enough to fuel residential buildings. The power supply was irregular, for an hour or two a day... The apartments were freezing, frost appeared on the walls, the clocks stopped working because their hands froze. Winters in Leningrad are often harsh, but the winter of 1941/42 was particularly severe. Wooden fences were dismantled for firewood, and wooden crosses were stolen from cemeteries. After the supply of firewood on the street completely dried up, people began to burn furniture and books in the stoves - today a chair leg, tomorrow a floorboard, the next day the first volume of Anna Karenina, and the whole family huddled around the only source of heat... Soon Desperate people found another use for books: the torn pages were soaked in water and eaten.

The sight of a man carrying a body wrapped in a blanket, tablecloth or curtain to a cemetery on a sled became a common sight... The dead were laid out in rows, but the gravediggers could not dig graves: the ground was frozen through, and they, equally hungry, did not have enough strength for the grueling work . There were no coffins: all the wood was used as fuel.

The courtyards of the hospitals were “littered with mountains of corpses, blue, emaciated, terrible”... Finally, excavators began to dig deep ditches for the mass burial of the dead. Soon these excavators were the only machines that could be seen on the city streets. There were no more cars, no trams, no buses, which were all requisitioned for the “Road of Life”...

Corpses were lying everywhere, and their number was growing every day... No one had the strength left to remove the corpses. The fatigue was so all-consuming that I wanted to stop, despite the cold, sit down and rest. But the crouched man could no longer rise without outside help and froze to death. At the first stage of the blockade, compassion and the desire to help were common, but as the weeks passed, food became less and less, the body and mind weakened, and people became withdrawn into themselves, as if they were walking in their sleep... Accustomed to the sight of death, they became almost indifferent towards him, people increasingly lost the ability to help others...

And amid all this despair, beyond human understanding, German shells and bombs continued to fall on the city

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Cannibalism during the siege

Documentation NKVD Cannibalism during the siege of Leningrad was not published until 2004. Most of the evidence of cannibalism that had surfaced up to this time was tried to be presented as unreliable anecdotes.

NKVD records record the first consumption of human flesh on December 13, 1941. The report describes thirteen cases, from a mother who strangled her 18-month-old child to feed three older ones to a plumber who killed his wife to feed his sons and nephews.

By December 1942, the NKVD had arrested 2,105 cannibals, dividing them into two categories: “corpse eaters” and “cannibals.” The latter (those who killed and ate living people) were usually shot, and the former were imprisoned. The Soviet Criminal Code did not have a clause on cannibalism, so all sentences were passed under Article 59 (“a special case of banditry”).

There were significantly fewer cannibals than corpse eaters; of the 300 people arrested in April 1942 for cannibalism, only 44 were murderers. 64% of the cannibals were women, 44% were unemployed, 90% were illiterate, only 2% had a previous criminal record. Women with young children and no criminal records, deprived of male support, often became cannibals, which gave the courts a reason for some leniency.

Considering the gigantic scale of the famine, the extent of cannibalism in besieged Leningrad can be considered relatively insignificant. No less common were murders over bread cards. In the first six months of 1942, 1,216 of them occurred in Leningrad. Many historians believe that the small number of cases of cannibalism “only emphasized that the majority of Leningraders maintained their cultural norms in the most unimaginable circumstances.”

Connection with blockaded Leningrad

It was vitally important to establish a route for constant supplies to Leningrad. It passed through the southern part of Lake Ladoga and the land corridor to the city west of Ladoga, which remained unoccupied by the Germans. Transportation across Lake Ladoga was carried out by water in the warm season and by truck on ice in winter. The security of the supply route was ensured by the Ladoga Flotilla, the Leningrad Air Defense Corps and the Road Security Troops. Food supplies were delivered to the village of Osinovets, from where they were transported 45 km to a small commuter railway to Leningrad. This route was also used to evacuate civilians from the besieged city.

In the chaos of the first war winter, no evacuation plan was developed. Until the ice road across Lake Ladoga opened on November 20, 1941, Leningrad was completely isolated.

The path along Ladoga was called the “Road of Life”. She was very dangerous. Cars often got stuck in the snow and fell through the ice, on which the Germans dropped bombs. Due to the large number of people who died in winter, this route was also called the “Road of Death.” However, it made it possible to bring in ammunition and food and pick up civilians and wounded soldiers from the city.

...The road was laid in terrible conditions - among snow storms, under an incessant barrage of German shells and bombs. When construction was finally completed, traffic along it also proved to be fraught with great risk. Trucks fell into huge cracks that suddenly appeared in the ice. To avoid such cracks, the trucks drove with their headlights on, which made them perfect targets for German planes... The trucks skidded, collided with each other, and the engines froze at temperatures below 20 °C. Along its entire length, the Road of Life was littered with broken down cars abandoned right on the ice of the lake. During the first crossing alone in early December, over 150 trucks were lost.

By the end of December 1941, 700 tons of food and fuel were delivered to Leningrad daily along the Road of Life. This was not enough, but thin ice forced the trucks to be loaded only halfway. By the end of January, the lake had frozen almost a full meter, allowing the daily supply volume to increase to 2,000 tons. And this was still not enough, but the Road of Life gave Leningraders the most important thing - hope. Vera Inber in her diary on January 13, 1942 wrote about the Road of Life like this: “... maybe our salvation will begin from here.” Truck drivers, loaders, mechanics, and orderlies worked around the clock. They went to rest only when they were already collapsing from fatigue. By March, the city received so much food that it became possible to create a small reserve.

Plans to resume the evacuation of civilians were initially rejected by Stalin, who feared unfavorable political repercussions, but he eventually gave permission for the most defenseless to leave the city along the Road of Life. By April, 5,000 people were transported from Leningrad every day...

The evacuation process itself was a great shock. The thirty-kilometer journey across the ice of the lake took up to twelve hours in an unheated truck bed, covered only with a tarpaulin. There were so many people packed that people had to grab the sides; mothers often held their children in their arms. For these unfortunate evacuees, the Road of Life became the “Road of Death.” One eyewitness tells how a mother, exhausted after several hours of riding in the back of a snowstorm, dropped her bundled child. The driver could not stop the truck on the ice, and the child was left to die from the cold... If the car broke down, as often happened, those who were traveling in it had to wait for several hours on the ice, in the cold, under the snow, under bullets and bombs from German planes . The trucks drove in convoys, but they could not stop if one of them broke down or fell through the ice. One woman watched in horror as the car in front fell through the ice. Her two children were traveling in it.

The spring of 1942 brought a thaw, which made further use of the ice Road of Life impossible. Warming has brought about a new scourge: disease. Piles of corpses and mountains of excrement, which had until now remained frozen, began to decompose with the advent of warmth. Due to the lack of normal water supply and sewerage, dysentery, smallpox and typhus quickly spread in the city, affecting already weakened people...

It seemed that the spread of epidemics would finally wipe out the population of Leningrad, which had already been considerably thinned out, but in March 1942 people gathered and together began a grandiose operation to clear the city. Weakened by malnutrition, Leningraders made superhuman efforts... Since they had to use tools hastily made from scrap materials, the work progressed very slowly, however... the work of cleaning the city, which ended in victory, marked the beginning of a collective spiritual awakening.

The coming spring brought a new source of food - pine needles and oak bark. These plant components provided people with the vitamins they needed, protecting them from scurvy and epidemics. By mid-April, the ice on Lake Ladoga had become too thin to support the Road of Life, but rations still remained significantly better than they were in the darkest days of December and January, not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively: the bread now tasted like real bread. To everyone’s joy, the first grass appeared and vegetable gardens were planted everywhere...

April 15, 1942... the power supply generators, which had been inactive for so long, were repaired and, as a result, the tram lines began to function again.

One nurse describes how the sick and wounded, who were near death, crawled to the windows of the hospital to see with their own eyes the trams rushing past, which had not run for so long... People began to trust each other again, they washed themselves, changed their clothes, women began to use cosmetics, again theaters and museums opened.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Death of the Second Shock Army near Leningrad

In the winter of 1941-1942, after repelling the Nazis from near Moscow, Stalin gave the order to go on the offensive along the entire front. About this broad, but failed offensive (which included the famous, disastrous for Zhukov Rzhev meat grinder) was little reported in previous Soviet textbooks. During it, an attempt was made to break the blockade of Leningrad. The hastily formed Second Shock Army was rushed towards the city. The Nazis cut it off. In March 1942, the deputy commander of the Volkhov Front (Meretskova), a famous fighter against communism, general, was sent to command the army already in the “bag”. Andrey Vlasov. A. I. Solzhenitsyn reports in “The Gulag Archipelago”:

...The last winter routes were still holding out, but Stalin forbade withdrawal; on the contrary, he drove the dangerously deepened army to advance further - through the transported swampy terrain, without food, without weapons, without air support. After two months of starvation and the drying out of the army (the soldiers from there later told me in the Butyrka cells that they trimmed the hooves of dead, rotting horses, cooked the shavings and ate them), the German concentric offensive against the encircled army began on May 14, 1942 (and in the air, of course, only German planes ). And only then, in mockery, was Stalin’s permission to return beyond the Volkhov received. And then there were these hopeless attempts to break through! - until the beginning of July.

The Second Shock Army was lost almost entirely. Captured, Vlasov ended up in Vinnitsa in a special camp for senior captured officers, which was formed by Count Stauffenberg - the future conspirator against Hitler. There, from the Soviet commanders who deservedly hated Stalin, with the help of German military circles in opposition to the Fuhrer, a Russian Liberation Army.

Performance of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony in besieged Leningrad

...However, the event that was destined to make the greatest contribution to the spiritual revival of Leningrad was still ahead. This event proved to the whole country and the whole world that Leningraders had survived the most terrible times and their beloved city would live on. This miracle was created by a native Leningrader who loved his city and was a great composer.

On September 17, 1942, Dmitri Shostakovich, speaking on the radio, said: “An hour ago I finished the score of the second part of my new large symphonic work.” This work was the Seventh Symphony, later called the Leningrad Symphony.

Evacuated to Kuibyshev (now Samara)... Shostakovich continued to work hard on the symphony... The premiere of this symphony, dedicated to “our fight against fascism, our upcoming victory and my native Leningrad,” took place in Kuibyshev on March 5, 1942...

...The most prominent conductors began to argue for the right to perform this work. It was first performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir Henry Wood, and on July 19 it was performed in New York, conducted by Arthur Toscanini...

Then it was decided to perform the Seventh Symphony in Leningrad itself. According to Zhdanov, this was supposed to raise the morale of the city... The main orchestra of Leningrad, the Leningrad Philharmonic, was evacuated, but the orchestra of the Leningrad Radio Committee remained in the city. Its conductor, forty-two-year-old Carl Eliasberg, was tasked with gathering the musicians. But out of one hundred orchestra members, only fourteen people remained in the city, the rest were drafted into the army, killed or died of hunger... A call was spread throughout the troops: all those who knew how to play any musical instrument had to report to their superiors... Knowing how weakened by the musicians who gathered in March 1942 for the first rehearsal, Eliasberg understood the difficult task facing him. “Dear friends,” he said, “we are weak, but we must force ourselves to start working.” And this work was difficult: despite the additional rations, many musicians, primarily wind players, lost consciousness from the stress that playing their instruments required... Only once during all the rehearsals did the orchestra have enough strength to perform the entire symphony - three days before public speaking.

The concert was scheduled for August 9, 1942 - several months earlier, the Nazis had chosen this date for a magnificent celebration at the Astoria Hotel in Leningrad for the expected capture of the city. Invitations were even printed and remained unsent.

The Philharmonic Concert Hall was filled to capacity. People came in their best clothes... The musicians, despite the warm August weather, wore coats and gloves with their fingers cut off - the starving body was constantly experiencing the cold. All over the city, people gathered in the streets near loudspeakers. Lieutenant General Leonid Govorov, who had headed the defense of Leningrad since April 1942, ordered a barrage of artillery shells to be rained down on German positions several hours before the concert to ensure silence at least for the duration of the symphony. The loudspeakers turned on at full power were directed towards the Germans - the city wanted the enemy to listen too.

“The very performance of the Seventh Symphony in besieged Leningrad,” the announcer announced, “is evidence of the ineradicable patriotic spirit of Leningraders, their perseverance, their faith in victory. Listen, comrades! And the city listened. The Germans who approached him listened. The whole world listened...

Many years after the war, Eliasberg met German soldiers sitting in trenches on the outskirts of the city. They told the conductor that when they heard the music, they cried:

Then, on August 9, 1942, we realized that we would lose the war. We have felt your strength, capable of overcoming hunger, fear and even death. “Who are we shooting at? – we asked ourselves. “We will never be able to take Leningrad because its people are so selfless.”

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Offensive at Sinyavino

A few days later, the Soviet offensive began at Sinyavino. It was an attempt to break the blockade of the city by the beginning of autumn. The Volkhov and Leningrad fronts were given the task of uniting. At the same time, the Germans, having brought up the troops freed after capture of Sevastopol, were preparing for an offensive (Operation Northern Light) with the goal of capturing Leningrad. Neither side knew of the other's plans until the fighting began.

The offensive at Sinyavino was several weeks ahead of the Northern Light. It was launched on August 27, 1942 (the Leningrad Front opened small attacks on the 19th). The successful start of the operation forced the Germans to redirect the troops intended for the “Northern Light” to counterattack. In this counter-offensive they were used for the first time (and with rather weak results) Tiger tanks. Units of the 2nd Shock Army were surrounded and destroyed, and the Soviet offensive stopped. However, German troops also had to abandon their attack on Leningrad.

Operation Spark

On the morning of January 12, 1943, Soviet troops launched Operation Iskra - a powerful offensive of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts. After stubborn fighting, Red Army units overcame German fortifications south of Lake Ladoga. On January 18, 1943, the 372nd Rifle Division of the Volkhov Front met with the troops of the 123rd Rifle Brigade of the Leningrad Front, opening a land corridor of 10 - 12 km, which gave some relief to the besieged population of Leningrad.

...January 12, 1943... Soviet troops under the command of Govorov launched Operation Iskra. A two-hour artillery bombardment fell on the German positions, after which masses of infantry, covered from the air by aircraft, moved across the ice of the frozen Neva. They were followed by tanks crossing the river on special wooden platforms. Three days later, the second wave of the offensive crossed the frozen Lake Ladoga from the east, hitting the Germans in Shlisselburg... The next day, the Red Army liberated Shlisselburg, and on January 18 at 23.00 a message was broadcast on the radio: “The blockade of Leningrad has been broken!” That evening there was a general celebration in the city.

Yes, the blockade was broken, but Leningrad was still under siege. Under continuous enemy fire, the Russians built a 35-kilometer-long railway line to bring food into the city. The first train, having eluded German bombers, arrived in Leningrad on February 6, 1943. It brought flour, meat, cigarettes and vodka.

A second railway line, completed in May, made it possible to deliver even larger quantities of food while simultaneously evacuating civilians. By September, supply by rail had become so efficient that there was no longer any need to use the route across Lake Ladoga... Rations increased significantly... The Germans continued their artillery bombardment of Leningrad, causing significant losses. But the city was returning to life, and food and fuel were, if not in abundance, then sufficient... The city was still in a state of siege, but no longer shuddered in its death throes.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Lifting the blockade of Leningrad

The blockade lasted until January 27, 1944, when the Soviet "Leningrad-Novgorod Strategic Offensive" of the Leningrad, Volkhov, 1st and 2nd Baltic Fronts expelled German troops from the southern outskirts of the city. The Baltic Fleet provided 30% of the air power for the final blow to the enemy.

...On January 15, 1944, the most powerful artillery shelling of the war began - half a million shells rained down on German positions in just an hour and a half, after which Soviet troops launched a decisive offensive. One by one, cities that had been in German hands for so long were liberated, and German troops, under pressure from twice the Red Army in numbers, rolled back uncontrollably. It took twelve days, and at eight o’clock in the evening on January 27, 1944, Govorov was finally able to report: “The city of Leningrad has been completely liberated!”

That evening, shells exploded in the night sky over the city - but it was not German artillery, but a festive salute from 324 guns!

It lasted 872 days, or 29 months, and finally this moment came - the siege of Leningrad ended. It took another five weeks to completely drive the Germans out of the Leningrad region...

In the autumn of 1944, Leningraders silently looked at the columns of German prisoners of war who entered the city to restore what they themselves had destroyed. Looking at them, Leningraders felt neither joy, nor anger, nor thirst for revenge: it was a process of purification, they just needed to look into the eyes of those who had caused them unbearable suffering for so long.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

In the summer of 1944, Finnish troops were pushed back beyond the Vyborg Bay and the Vuoksa River.

Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad

Even during the blockade itself, the city authorities collected and showed to the public military artifacts - like the German plane that was shot down and fell to the ground in the Tauride Garden. Such objects were assembled in a specially designated building (in Salt Town). The exhibition soon turned into a full-scale Museum of the Defense of Leningrad (now the State Memorial Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad). In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Stalin exterminated many Leningrad leaders in the so-called Leningrad case. This happened before the war, after murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934, and now another generation of local government and party functionaries was destroyed for allegedly publicly overestimating the importance of the city as an independent fighting unit and their own role in defeating the enemy. Their brainchild, the Leningrad Defense Museum, was destroyed, and many valuable exhibits were destroyed.

The museum was revived in the late 1980s with the then wave of “glasnost”, when new shocking facts were published showing the heroism of the city during the war. The exhibition opened in its former building, but has not yet been restored to its original size and area. Most of its former premises had already been transferred to various military and government institutions. Plans to build a new modern museum building were put on hold due to the financial crisis, but the current Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu He still promised to expand the museum.

Green Belt of Glory and monuments in memory of the blockade

Commemoration of the siege received a second wind in the 1960s. Leningrad artists dedicated their works to the Victory and the memory of the war, which they themselves witnessed. The leading local poet and war participant, Mikhail Dudin, proposed erecting a ring of monuments on the battlefields of the most difficult period of the siege and connecting them with green spaces around the entire city. This was the beginning of the Green Belt of Glory.

On October 29, 1966, at the 40th km of the Road of Life, on the shore of Lake Ladoga near the village of Kokorevo, the “Broken Ring” monument was erected. Designed by Konstantin Simun, it was dedicated both to those who escaped through frozen Ladoga and to those who died during the siege.

On May 9, 1975, a monument to the heroic defenders of the city was erected on Victory Square in Leningrad. This monument is a huge bronze ring with a gap that marks the spot where Soviet troops eventually broke through the German encirclement. In the center, a Russian mother cradles her dying soldier son. The inscription on the monument reads: “900 days and 900 nights.” The exhibition below the monument contains visual evidence of this period.

“In order not to be eaten up by your conscience, you need to act as honor dictates...”
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

It seems to us that we know almost everything about the Great Patriotic War, because thousands of books have been written about it, hundreds of documentaries and feature films have been created, many paintings and poems have been written. But in reality, we only know what has long been emasculated and put on public display. There may also be some part of the truth, but not all of it.

We will now make sure that we know very little even about the most important, as we were told, events of that War. I would like to draw your attention to the article Alexey Kungurov from Chelyabinsk under the name, which at one time was undeservedly ignored by all the world media. In this short article he gave several facts, which shatter into smithereens the existing legend about the siege of Leningrad. No, he does not deny that there were protracted and heavy battles there, and there were a huge number of civilian casualties.

But he claims that siege of Leningrad(complete city surroundings) did not have, and provides convincing evidence for this assertion. He draws his conclusions by analyzing publicly available, widely known information using logic and arithmetic. You can watch and listen in more detail about this in the recording of his Internet Conference “Managing History as a Knowledge System”... In Leningrad at that time there were many oddities and incomprehensibility, which we will now voice, using many fragments from the above-mentioned article by Alexei Kungurov.

Unfortunately, reasonable and justified explanations what was happening at that time in Leningrad, not found yet. Therefore, we have to hope that correctly formulated questions will help you and me find or calculate the correct answers. In our additions to Alexey Kungurov’s materials, we will also use only publicly available and widely known information, repeatedly voiced and confirmed by photographic materials, maps and other documents. So, let's go in order.

Riddle one

Where did this term come from?

These maps clearly show the surrounded area in which Leningrad was located:

Riddle two

Why were there so few shells?

A. Kungurov’s article begins with an analysis of what fell on the city during the blockade 148,478 rounds. Historians describe these events as follows: “Leningraders lived in constant nervous tension, shelling followed one after another. From September 4 to November 30, 1941, the city was shelled 272 times for a total duration of 430 hours. Sometimes the population remained in bomb shelters for almost a day. On September 15, 1941, the shelling lasted 18 hours 32 m, on September 17 - 18 hours 33 m. In total, during the blockade of Leningrad, about 150 thousand shells were fired ... "

Alexey Kungurov, through simple arithmetic calculations, shows that this figure is taken from the air and may differ from reality by several orders of magnitude! One artillery battalion of 18 large caliber guns as mentioned 430 hours capable of firing 232,000 shots! But the blockade, according to established data, lasted much longer than three weeks, and the enemy had several hundred times more guns. Therefore, the number of fallen shells, which newspapers of that time wrote about, and then copied by everyone who wrote to us about the blockade, should have been several orders of magnitude greater if the blockade had taken place in the form to which we were all taught.

On the other hand, many photographs of besieged Leningrad show that destruction in the central part of the city were minimal! This is only possible if the enemy was not allowed to attack the city with artillery and aircraft. However, judging by the maps linked above, the enemy was only a few kilometers from the city, and a reasonable question is why the city and military factories were not completely turned into ruins in a couple of weeks, remains open.

Riddle three

Why was there no order?

The Germans there was no order occupy Leningrad. Kungurov writes very clearly about this as follows: “Von Leib, commander of Army North, was a competent and experienced commander. He had under his command up to 40 divisions(including tank ones). The front in front of Leningrad was 70 km long. The density of troops reached the level of 2-5 km per division in the direction of the main attack. In this situation, only historians who do not understand anything about military affairs can say that under these conditions he could not take the city. We have repeatedly seen in feature films about the defense of Leningrad how German tankers drive into the suburbs, crush and shoot a tram. The front was broken, and there was no one in front of them. In their memoirs, Von Leib and many other German army commanders stated that they were forbidden to take the city, gave the order to retreat from advantageous positions..."

Isn’t it true that the German troops behaved very strangely: instead of easily capturing the city and advancing further (we understand that the militias that were shown to us in the movies were in principle incapable of providing serious resistance to regular troops), the invaders almost 3 years worth near Leningrad, allegedly blocking all land approaches to it. And taking into account the fact that, most likely, there were no counterattacks from the defenders or there were very few, then for the advancing German troops it was not a war, but a real sanatorium! It would be interesting to know the true reaction of the German command to this legend of the blockade.

Riddle four

Why did the Kirov plant work?

"It is known that The Kirov plant worked throughout the blockade. The fact is also known - he was in 3 (three!!!) kilometers from the front line. For people who did not serve in the army, I will say that a bullet from a Mosin rifle can fly at such a distance if you shoot in the right direction (I am simply silent about artillery guns of larger caliber). From the area of ​​the Kirov plant, but the plant continued to work under the very nose of the German command, and it was never destroyed (although, with this task could cope with one artillery lieutenant with a battery of not the largest caliber, with a correctly posed task and a sufficient amount of ammunition) ... "

Do you understand what is written here? It is written here that the fierce enemy, who continuously fired cannons and bombed the surrounded city of Leningrad for 3 years, did not bother to destroy the Kirov plant, which produced military equipment, during this time, although this could have been done for one day! How can this be explained? Either because the Germans did not know how to shoot at all, or because they did not have an order to destroy the enemy’s plant, which is no less fantastic than the first assumption; or the German troops that stood near Leningrad carried out another function, unknown to us yet...

To understand what a city truly treated by artillery and aviation looks like, you can look at one that was shelled not for 3 years, but for much less time...

Riddle five

How was the Kirov plant supplied?

“The Kirov plant produced various products: by 1943 they mastered the production of IS-1 and tanks. From the photographs posted on the Internet, we can imagine (this is a large-scale and mass production). In addition to the Kirov plant, other factories in Leningrad also worked, producing shells and other military products. Since the spring of 1942, Leningrad has resumed... This is only a small piece of reality, very different from the historical myths written by professional historians..."

In order for a large machine-building enterprise, such as the Kirov Plant, to operate and produce products, it is necessary very serious, constant supply. And this should be not only electricity in the necessary and very large volumes, but also raw materials (thousands of tons of metal of the required grades), components of thousands of items, tools of thousands of items, food and water for workers and a lot of other things.

Besides this, it was necessary to put it somewhere finished products! These are not fountain pens! These are large products that could only be transported under their own power, by sea or by rail. And the fact that the products were manufactured is confirmed by written evidence:

“Due to the shutdown of almost all power plants, some machines had to be moved manually, which caused longer work hours. Often some of the workers stayed overnight in the workshop, saving time to complete urgent front-line orders. As a result of such dedicated labor activity, during the second half of 1941, the active army received from Leningrad 3 million. shells and mines, more 3 thousand. regimental and anti-tank guns, 713 tanks, 480 armored vehicles, 58 armored trains and armored platforms.

2. The workers of Leningrad also helped other sections of the Soviet-German front. In the fall of 1941, during fierce battles for Moscow, the city on the Neva sent troops of the Western Front over a thousand artillery pieces and mortars, as well as a significant number of other types of weapons. In the difficult situation of the autumn of 1941, the main task of the workers of the besieged city was to supply the front with weapons, ammunition, equipment and uniforms. Despite the evacuation of a number of enterprises, the power of Leningrad industry remained significant. IN September In 1941, city enterprises produced more than a thousand 76 mm guns, over two thousand mortars, hundreds anti-tank guns and machine guns..."

It's a strange blockade: On August 30, 1941, railway communication with the “mainland” was interrupted, and in the fall of 1941, “ over a thousand artillery pieces and mortars, as well as a significant number of other types of weapons...“How was it possible to transport such a colossal amount of weapons from “siege” Leningrad to the Western Front if there was no longer any railway communication? On rafts and boats across Lake Ladoga under continuous fire from German artillery and aircraft that dominated the air at that time? Theoretically this is possible, but practically it is very unlikely...