Siege of Leningrad 1941
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 8 September 1941 – 27 January 1944 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1941 | Wikidata P580 (start time) |
| Era | World War II era (1939–1945) | derived from year |
| Location | Russia | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Eastern Front | Wikidata P361 |
| Coordinates | 59.9303, 30.3192 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Siege of Leningrad was a military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front of World War II from 1941 to 1944. Leningrad, the country's second largest city, was besieged by Germany and Finland for 872 days, but never captured. The siege was the most destructive in history and possibly the most deadly, causing an estimated 1.5 million deaths, from a prewar population of 3.2 million. Some historians have classified it as a genocide due to the intentional destruction of the city and the systematic starvation of its civilian population.
In August 1941, Germany's Army Group North reached the suburbs of Leningrad as Finnish forces moved to encircle the city from the north. Land routes from Leningrad to the rest of the Soviet Union were cut on 8 September 1941, beginning the siege. The Germans decided to bomb the city and starve its inhabitants rather than attempt to capture it; many residents starved during the winter of 1941–1942. Supplies were delivered to the city by air, by ship over Lake Ladoga, or over the Road of Life, a highway built on the lake when it was frozen.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of Leningrad (revision 1380561838), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Other battles of the Eastern Front
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- Battle of Moscow 1941
- Battle of Raseiniai 1941
- Defense of Brest Fortress 1941
- First Battle of Kharkov 1941
- Siege of Odessa 1941
- Siege of Sevastopol (1941–1942) 1941
- Barvenkovo–Lozovaya offensive 1942
- Battle of Kalach 1942
All 33 battles of the Eastern Front →
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