The German siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) lasted from September 8, 1941, to January 27, 1944 — 872 days. Hitler's explicit plan was to starve the city to death. He ordered that surrender would not be accepted: the city and all its inhabitants were to be destroyed.

The Starvation

By November 1941, the daily bread ration for workers was 250 grams — about two slices of bread. For everyone else, including children, it was 125 grams — a piece roughly the size of a deck of cards. The "bread" itself was only partially flour; it was stretched with cellulose, cotton seed, and dust swept from factory floors.

People ate everything. Wallpaper paste (which contained starch). Leather belts and shoes boiled into jelly. Books, whose bindings contained animal glue. Carpenter's joiner's glue dissolved in water. Cats, dogs, crows, and rats disappeared from the city entirely. The city zoo's animals were eaten. Cases of cannibalism were documented — the NKVD created a special unit to investigate them.

At its worst, 100,000 people were dying per month. Bodies piled up in the streets because the living were too weak to bury the dead. Yet the factories kept running, producing tanks and ammunition. Women and elderly men dug anti-tank trenches with their bare hands in frozen ground.

The Road of Life

The only supply route was across frozen Lake Ladoga — called "The Road of Life." Trucks drove across the ice under constant German bombardment. When the ice was thin, lighter loads were used; drivers drove with their doors open so they could jump if the ice broke. Many trucks broke through and sank. The drivers knew the risks and drove anyway.

The Symphony

In August 1942, Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony — composed partly during the siege — was performed by the surviving members of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra. Many musicians were so weakened by hunger they had to be helped to their chairs. Three had died during rehearsals. The performance was broadcast on loudspeakers throughout the city and toward the German lines. It remains one of the most powerful moments in the history of music — art as resistance, beauty as defiance.

Estimates of civilian deaths range from 800,000 to 1.5 million. The siege of Leningrad was the deadliest siege in human history.