Soviet naval units tried to evacuate the sick and wounded, but Leningrad came to symbolize the horrors of the Eastern Front. Starvation claimed thousands of lives, and it was not uncommon to find corpses left in the street. Six hundred fifty thousand died in 1942 alone. The brutal winter of 1941-42 that stopped the Germans in the south only added to Leningrad’s agony.
Supplies came in sporadically by barge across Lake Ladoga during the summer of 1942 and during the winters trucks would drive over the frozen ice. Truck convoys would sink in bomb craters left by Stuka attacks and would disappear in the rapidly melting ice as the temperature increased in the spring. Some 500,000 residents were taken out, but most stayed and many died. The summer thaws would reveal more corpses in the streets, forgotten and buried by snow.
Starvation was eased in 1943 by vegetable gardens that were planted on any open ground. Incredibly, war production continued in factories frozen by winter air coming through shell holes and bomb craters in the ceiling.
In January 1943, the siege was broken by a Soviet offensive, but not completely lifted. The rail line with Moscow was reestablished. The Soviet offensive of January 1944 lifted the siege, and for the first time in almost 900 days the populace could walk openly in the streets without fear of air attack.
The siege of Leningrad was dramatized for the entire world. Dimitri Shostakovitch wrote his Seventh Symphony, the Leningrad Symphony, during the siege. Leningrad came to symbolize the Soviet-Nazi conflict, and Americans especially identified with the Leningrad inhabitants.
Stalin bestowed the Order of Lenin on the city in 1945, and the title Hero City of the Soviet Union was awarded in 1965. Leningrad still remains a symbol of Nazi brutality and aggression on the Eastern Front.
