The Siege of Leningrad (Russian: блокада Ленинграда (transliteration: blokada Leningrada)) was the German siege of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) during World War II and was one of the most lethal battle in world history. The German plan was coded as Operation Nordlicht (Operation North Light). The siege lasted from September 8, 1941, until it was lifted on January 27, 1944.

Fortifications and German offensive
By August, the Finns had reconquered the Karelian Isthmus, threatening Leningrad from the West, and were advancing through Karelia east of Lake Ladoga, threatening Leningrad from the North. In any event, the Finnish forces halted at the 1939 border. The Finnish headquarters rejected German pleas for aerial attacks against Leningrad and did not advance further south from the River Svir in the occupied East Karelia which they reached at September 7, 160 kilometers north-east of Leningrad. In the south, Germans captured Tikhvin on November 8, but failed to advance further north and connect with Finns at the River Svir. A Soviet counterattack forced Germans to retreat from Tikhvin, on December 9, all the way to the River Volkhov.
On September 4, Jodl came to persuade Mannerheim to continue the Finnish offensive and it is said that Mannerheim refused. After the war, the former Finnish president Ryti said: "On August 24, 1941, I visited the headquarters of Marshal Mannerheim. The Germans aimed us at crossing the old border and at continuation of the offensive to Leningrad. I said that the capture of Leningrad wasn't our goal and that we shouldn't take part in it. Mannerheim and the military minister Walden agreed with me and refused the offers of the Germans. The result was a paradoxical situation: the Germans were not able to approach Leningrad from the north…" Later it was asserted that there was no systematic shelling or bombing out of the Finnish territory.
On the other hand, the Soviets didn't know what Ryti and Mannerheim had told the Germans, and no one knows if their words were meant to last forever or only until the anticipated German victory was at hand. In any case, the mere threat of a Finnish attack complicated the Soviet defence of Leningrad. For example, at one point the Front Commander Popov could not transfer certain reserves against the Germans because they were needed to bolster the 23rd Army's defence on the Karelian Isthmus.

Supplies
On September 2, rations were reduced: manual workers had 600 grams of bread daily; state employees, 400; and children and dependents (other civilians), 300. A huge amount of grain, flour and sugar was wiped out on September 8, due to a lack of air defences. For several days after the siege began, however, it was possible to eat in some "commercial" restaurants — which used up to 12% of all fats and up to 10% of all meat the city consumed. On September 12, 1941, it was calculated that the provisions both for army and civilians would last as follows:
On the same day, a new food reduction took place: the workers received 500 g of bread; employees and children, 300; and dependents, 250. Rations of meat and groats were also reduced, but the issue of sugar, confectionery and fats was increased instead. The army and the Baltic Fleet had some emergency rations, but these were not sufficient. The flotilla of lake Ladoga was badly equipped and had been bombed by German aviation; several barges with grain were sunk in September. A significant part of this, however, was later lifted out by divers. This dampened grain was used in bread baking. When they ran out of reserves of malt flour, other substitutes, such as finished cellulose and cotton-cake, were used. Oats meant for horses were also used, while the horses were fed wood leaves.
When 2,000 t of mutton guts had been found in the port, a galantine was made of them. Later, the meat was replaced by that galantine and by stinking calf skins. During the siege, there were in total five food reductions: on September 2, September 10, October 1, November 13, and November 20 (250 g daily for manual workers and 125 g for other civilians). Reports of cannibalism began to appear. Starvation-level food rationing was eased by new vegetable gardens that covered most open ground in the city by 1943.

Food
Due to a lack of power supplies, many factories were closed down and, in November, all public transportation services became unavailable (in the spring of 1942, some tramway lines were reactivated, but trolleybuses and buses were inoperable until the end of the war). Use of power was forbidden everywhere, except at the General Staff headquarters, Smolny, district committees, air defense bases, and in some other institutions. By the end of September, oil and coal supplies had come to an end. The only energy option left was to fell trees. On October 8, the executive committee of Leningrad (Ленгорисполком) and regional executive committee (облисполком) decided to start cutting timber in the Pargolovo district and also the Vsevolzhskiy district in the north of the city. By October 24, only 1% of the timber cutting plan had been executed.

Power and energy

Main article: Road of Life The Road of Life
The siege continued until January 1944. The encirclement was broken as a result of Operation Spark — a full-scale offensive of troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts. This offensive started in the morning of January 12, 1943. After fierce battles, the Red Army units overcame the powerful German fortifications to the South of the Ladoga Lake, and on January 18, 1943 the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts met, opening a land corridor to the still-besieged city. In January 1944, a Soviet offensive drove off the besieging Germans from the southern outskirts of the city, ending the siege. Later, in the summer of 1944, the Finns were pushed back to the other side of the Bay of Vyborg and the Vuoksi River.

Soviet counter-offensive

Aftermath
The ultimate number of casualties during the siege is disputed. After the war, The Soviet government reported about 670,000 deaths from 1941 to January 1944, mostly from starvation and exposure. Some independent estimates give a much higher death toll of anywhere from 700,000 to 1.5 million, with most estimates around 1.1 million. Most of these victims were buried on the Piskarevskoye Cemetery. As of 2000, there were still empty lots in St. Petersburg suburbs where buildings stood before the siege.
Leningrad was awarded the title of Hero City in 1945.

Leningrad
The siege impressed itself on the psyche of Leningrad's inhabitants for at least one generation after the war. Leningrad had always prided itself on being a cultural city, and the choice of whether to burn a library (or 200-year old furniture) or freeze to death was a stark one. The conditions in the city were appalling and starvation was constantly with the besieged. On the other hand, the city did resist for nearly 3 years, and the pride of the city is unmistakable: "Troy fell, Rome fell, Leningrad did not fall."
The Siege of Leningrad was commemorated in late 1950s by the Green Belt of Glory, a circle of trees and memorials along the historic front line. Warnings to citizens of the city as to which side of the road to walk on to avoid the German shelling can still be seen (they were restored after the war). Russian tour guides at Peterhof, the palaces near St. Petersburg, report that it is still dangerous to go for a stroll in the gardens during a thunderstorm, as German artillery shrapnel embedded in the trees attracts lightning.

Cultural influence

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the Seventh Symphony, some of which was written under siege conditions, for the Leningrad Symphony. According to Solomon Volkov, whose testimony is disputed, Shostakovich said "it's not about Leningrad under siege, it's about the Leningrad that Stalin destroyed and that Hitler nearly finished off".
American singer Billy Joel wrote a song called "Leningrad" that referenced the famous siege. The song is partially about a young Russian boy, Viktor, who lost his father in the siege.
The Decemberists wrote a song called "When the War Came" about the heroism of civilian scientists during warfare . The lyrics state: "We made our oath to Vavilov/We'd not betray the solanum/The acres of asteraceae/To our own pangs of starvation". Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov was a Russian botanist whose laboratory, a seedbank containing 200 000 types of plant seeds, many of them edible, was preserved throughout the siege.
Italian melodic death metal band Dark Lunacy's 2006 album 'The Diarist' is about the siege. The Siege in music

American author Elise Blackwell published "Hunger" (2003), an acclaimed historical dramatization of events surrounding the siege.
British author Helen Dunmore wrote an award-winning novel, The Siege. Although fictitious, it traces key events in this siege, and shows how it affected those who weren't directly involved in the resistance.
In 1981 Daniil Granin and Ales Adamovich published The Blockade Book which was based on hundreds of interviews and diaries of people who were trapped in the besieged city. The book was heavily censored by Soviet authorities due to its portrayal of human suffering contrasting with the "official" image of heroism.
The Arab-Israeli author Emil Habibi also mentioned the siege in his short story "The Love in my Heart" (الحب في قلبي), part of his collection Sextet of the Six Days (سداسية الايام الستة). Habiby's character visits a graveyard containing the siege's victims and is struck by the power of a display he sees commemorating the children who died, and it inspires him to write some letters in the voice of a Palestinian girl detained in an Israeli prison. The Siege in literature

Auteur film director Andrey Tarkovsky included multiple scenes and references to the siege in his semi-autobiographical film The Mirror.
At the time of his death in 1989, Sergio Leone was working on a film about the siege. It drew heavily on Harrison Salisbury's "The 900 Days", and was a week away from going into production when Leone died of heart failure. See also