The siege of Leningrad is the cordoning off of the cultural capital of Russia by German fascist troops. The Germans could not take Leningrad, but they took the city in a ring in order to starve the inhabitants to death and continuous bombing, and then wipe it off the face of the earth. During the 872-day siege, many historical monuments were destroyed, ancient buildings and palaces were turned into ruins, the population lost about a million people.
On September 8, 1941, German troops captured Shlisselburg, a city in the Leningrad Region. On the same day, the Germans approached the suburb of Leningrad. Thus began the blockade, which lasted until January 27, 1944. The city was not ready for the arrival of the invaders. The evacuation of residents was not carried out properly, the fortifications were built not by soldiers, but hastily by the residents of the city, mainly minor children, women and old people.
Despite the fact that all the sights were carefully camouflaged, the cultural monuments of Leningrad suffered colossal damage. To protect them from shelling and bombs, the monuments were filled with sandbags and covered with plywood, fabric protective nets were pulled over the buildings so that they were less visible from the air.
The fears of the Leningraders were well founded. Hitler ordered the destruction of the city and all its inhabitants, cultural attractions were of no value to him. Therefore, during the retreat, the Nazis destroyed and burned down palaces and parks. Buildings in the suburbs of Leningrad suffered the most. The fire started by the Germans in the Great Tsarskoye Selo Palace caused irreparable damage to the building, it took decades to restore it, and work on the revival of the architectural masterpiece continues today. Peterhof was turned into ruins. The amber room, beautiful tapestries, luxurious furniture, priceless museum exhibits have been irretrievably lost …
The city itself was in a depressing state largely due to constant shelling, power outages and hunger. When at the end of 1941 the power supply was cut off and the mercury column dropped to below forty degrees, besieged Leningrad made a terrible impression. Snow-covered trams stopped halfway, broken power lines, abandoned cars, gaping black windows of houses and corpses all around, corpses, lifeless bodies of emaciated people.
Leningrad produced no less terrible spectacle in the spring of 1942. After the first cold winter and a terrible famine during the ice drift, the bodies of people drowned and died of hunger began to surface. The decaying corpses gave the river a crimson hue, poisoned the water with cadaveric poison and the air with an intolerable stinking smell.
During the days of the blockade, the city resembled a garbage dump, there was mud all around, cleaning services did not work, and the orderlies could not cope with cleaning the dead from the streets and avenues. Bombings, shelling, cold, hunger, high mortality, looting and cannibalism destroyed more than a million people, and turned the most beautiful city of the Great Country into a giant morgue and cesspool.
