Presidential Library tells about Battle for Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War

On July 10, 1941, the Battle of Leningrad began, which lasted for more than three years. On January 27, 1944, the city was finally liberated from Nazi Siege, but fighting with enemy invaders continued until August 9th.

Thanks to the electronic collections of the Presidential Library, such as Memory of the Great Victory and Defenсe and Siege of Leningrad, as well as the materials from the World War II in Archival Documents Collection, which is created by the library in collaboration with the Federal Archives Agency, readers can learn about the incredible cost of the victory in this longest battle of the Great Patriotic War.

To mark the 80th anniversary of Leningrad's complete liberation from the Nazi siege, the Presidential Library presents information about the battle for this city on the banks of the Neva.

From June 22, when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, to July 10, when the Battle for Leningrad began, events unfolded rapidly. On the first day of the Great Patriotic War, Leningrad and its region were put under martial law, as declared by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which was published in the newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda.

On the night of June 23, the city's first air alert lasted 41 minutes, and on June 24, the Leningrad Military District became the Northern Front. By June 27, an army of volunteers had been formed, and by the evening of July 4, according to Viktor Dunaev's book The Great Patriotic War: Harbingers of Victory (2010), 77,413 people had enlisted in the Leningrad People's Militia.

To confront the enemy, defensive lines were constructed by joint efforts of troops and civilians on both the near and far approaches to the city.

On July 4th, German troops crossed the border of the Leningrad region and invaded the Pskov region. According to Viktor Dunaev's book, on July 8th, a meeting was held at Hitler's headquarters where they discussed the upcoming offensive on Leningrad. General Halder, the chief of staff of the army, made an entry in his diary on this day stating that the Fuhrer's decision to "level Moscow and Leningrad to the ground in order to completely rid the population of these cities" was unshakable. It was a national disaster that would deprive the centers of not only Bolshevism but in general.

The capture of Leningrad was a major goal of the Fascists under the Barbarossa plan to attack the Soviet Union. Capture of Leningrad would allow Hitler's troops to eliminate the main bases of the Baltic fleet, disable the city's military industry, and prevent a counterattack against German forces moving towards Moscow.

On July 10, 1941, the Leningrad Strategic Defensive Operation began. The city was attacked by the troops of Army Group North, but the lightning offensive was broken by Soviet soldiers who repelled enemy attacks in several directions – Luga, Novgorod, Staraya Russa, Petrozavodsk, Olonets and Estonia.

The ships of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, stationed between Dago Island and the Hanko Peninsula, blocked the entrance to the Gulf of Finland with mine barriers. This is described in the book "The Baltic Sea in the Battles for Leningrad" (1941-1944), written by Alexander Mushnikov and published in 1955, which is available in the collection of the Presidential Library.

The author of the book, Mushnikov, reports on the actions of the naval aviation during the war: "In the first month of the conflict, pilots from the Baltic region destroyed approximately 250 tanks, 248 armored vehicles, and a large number of enemy artillery pieces, gun positions, and anti-aircraft batteries in battles near Leningrad. In addition, 113 aircraft were lost in air combats. Operating at sea, Soviet pilots sunk about 50 various enemy ships, boats, and vessels."

From the sky, Leningrad was covered by the aces of the Soviet Air Force – often at the cost of their own lives. Boris Brodyansky in the book The Battle for Leningrad. Pilots (1944) writes: "The pilots of Leningrad were among the first to meet the monstrous military machine of Nazi Germany and blocked its path. It was the Leningrad pilots who laid the foundation for the aerial ram, which the German air pirates feared like fire... The fire ram on the Leningrad front became a mass phenomenon, the pilots always went to it when the question arose: should they be captured by the Germans or die with glory in the name of the Motherland?"

Victor Dunaev in the book The Great Patriotic War. Harbingers of Victory, telling about the actions of the fighters of the people's militia army at the very beginning of the Battle for Leningrad, cites such a heroic episode: "The militiaman Andreev, a fighter of the first regiment of the 1st Division of the People's Militia , having collected hand grenades, penetrated into an enemy firing point and, sacrificing himself, blew up a bunker from the inside, which had long annoyed the units of the regiment." And what, the author of the book asks, "is this feat, which preceded the feat of Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Matrosov, not primary, and no less heroic?.. The victory over the Nazi invaders, which none of the militia fighting at that time doubted for a minute, was forged even then."

Despite the heroic resistance of the soldiers of the Red Army, on September 8, the troops of Army Group North captured Shlisselburg, cutting off Leningrad from the Mainland. The siege of Leningrad began, which lasted for terrible 872 days.

The Battle for Leningrad, which was of great military, strategic and political importance, lasted for more than six months after the complete relief of the siege on January 27, 1944 - until August 9, 1944. The longest battle in the history of the Great Patriotic War became a symbol of the courage of the entire Soviet people. The date on Hitler's invitation cards to the Astoria Hotel was never put down…