War on the Eastern Front: The Siege of Leningrad

you as the world moved towards the Second World War between 1938 and 1941 Germany annexed Austria and formed alliances with Finland Slovakia Hungary Romania Bulgaria Albania and Italy and conquered Western Poland Denmark Norway Holland Belgium Luxembourg and France by June 1941 they had control of much of North Africa and had captured Greece Crete and Yugoslavia in the same month the Germans and their allies invaded the Soviet Union this began the war on the Eastern Front known to the Russians as the Great Patriotic War it was to dwarf any war before or since one of its most grueling episodes took place in Leningrad in 1941 Leningrad had long been displaced by Moscow as the Soviet Union's political capital but it remained a vital center of Russian scholarship literature art music and ballet [Music] as st. Petersburg since the early 18th century and Petrograd during World War one it had been the embodiment of Czarist russia's imperial power the cradle of the Russian Revolution of 1917 we named Leningrad on the death of the first Bolshevik leader it was anathema to Adolf Hitler the Germans fascist leader it was also home of the Kirov works a key center of Soviet tank production and the only Soviet port on the Baltic Sea [Music] some Leningrad has lived in fear of the authorities but Communist Party members were enjoying a standard of living comparable with any Western city [Music] none of its two and a half million citizens could have foreseen that one in every three would soon perish in August 1939 the Soviets entered into a non-aggression pact with Germany signed by foreign ministers and Molotov and Ribbentrop the Soviet leader Stalin may not have expected the pact to hold indefinitely but he needed time to repair the damage his 1930s purges had inflicted on the Red Army he treated as near treason any suggestion that he should prepare for an immediate German attack according to the secret terms of the pact Germany invaded Western Poland on the 1st of September 1939 and the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland just eight days later the ease with which he was able to annex it and the Baltic States within a year did nothing to diminish Stalin's full sense of security historians still argue whether Stalin was negligent or whether he believed that his apparent inaction would allow him to anticipate the German invasion with a Soviet incursion into Nazi held territory he almost certainly believed the pact would induce Hitler into a long war with the Western powers which would ultimately defeat the Third Reich and allow the Soviet Union to annex most of Europe but we do know that he ignored reports from his own Secret Service's particularly the NKGB who had received good intelligence of imminent German attack and information from British sources made available through the breaking of the Enigma code Stalin believed the British were trying to persuade him to attack the Germans so that they were no longer resisting the Reich alone given Stalin's attitude it was no surprise that and raged on off the Leningrad Communist Party chief had left for his holiday on the Black Sea three days before the attack as Danoff was a typical Bolshevik party man and protege of Stalin born in 1896 he had joined the party in 1915 and won Stalin's trust by being an enthusiastic supporter of the purges from 1935 he became a member of the military Soviets of Leningrad then the Navy and the northwest front by 1941 he had risen to be party chief in Leningrad he suffered from cardiac athsma which made him habitually breathless and caused him to suffer from swollen ankles whether or not this prevented him from taking exercise he was considerably overweight which the siege of leningrad did not appear to correct Hitler invaded Stalin's empire on the 22nd of June 1941 the Luftwaffe the German air force hits 66 Soviet airfields destroying nearly a thousand Soviet aircraft on the ground and another 300 in the air [Music] Hitler planned to overwhelm Soviet forces as he had French Belgium and British armies the previous summer in a swift campaign codenamed Barbarossa after the 12th century king of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor under the protection of the Luftwaffe German tanks and infantry swarmed into eastern Poland the Baltic States and the Soviet republics of Ukraine and Belarus [Music] Stalin was so stunned by the Nazi assault that he delegated Molotov to inform the Soviet people via the public radio system installed in every city his speech prompted a run on the State Bank in Leningrad and panic buying in its food ships but the following day over a hundred thousand Leningrad swarmed to mobilization points and joined up by the end of the week the total had grown to over 200,000 following Molotov sahnoun sment The Hermitage museum's priceless collection of art and artifacts was evacuated from Leningrad to the Urals by train in secret it was soon followed by key elements of the Kirov works the Soviets most important tank producer [Music] radio sets were confiscated for the duration of the war on 25th of June 1941 the Soviet decision followed the British experience when the traitor Lord haw-haw had interrupted BBC broadcasts during the Blitz of 1940 with continued command of the skies the Germans were able to break through successive lines of defense on the Western Front ears of the Soviet Union three weeks after the start of Operation Barbarossa the Soviets had lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft by the 9th of July the Soviet Union's Western Front had lost nearly 350,000 men killed wounded missing or taken prisoner by the middle of August German forces were marching on Leningrad itself utterly confident that complete victory would soon be theirs in 1941 the Soviet Union as a federation of communist republics was only nineteen years old many of its citizens would gladly have seen the end of communism and welcomed the Germans as liberators especially in Ukraine and the Baltics which had only recently been annexed by the Soviet Union with Hitler's consent following the Molotov Ribbentrop pact many citizens of the Baltic states and the Ukraine hoped that the Germans would give them more independence than they were allowed as part of the Soviet Union not least because Stalin had deported so many of them to Siberia but the German policy of racial supremacy and savage repression in territory overrun by Nazi troops would soon change that as a result there was a flood of people fleeing the invasion some formed guerrilla fighting units known as Partizan's behind enemy lines while others sought refuge eastwards as russia itself including Leningrad rallied to its own autocrat as opposed to the foreign invader [Applause] [Music] [Applause] from the Northwest the Finns were advancing towards Leningrad they had joined the Germans in their attack on the Soviet Union in order to recover territory they had lost in the Winter War they had fought against the Russians from 1939 to 1940 with the consent of Hitler also given in the secret protocol of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact Stalin had invaded Finland in 1939 the fins out fought the Soviets in the beginning but in the end were defeated by overwhelmingly superior resources and lost nearly one-sixth of their territory fear of future reprisals from their much more powerful neighbor was to convince the Finns to limit their military ambitions to regaining territory which they believed was legitimately bears the Leningrad leadership was based in the small knee which in Czarist times had been a smart girls finishing school on the 24th of August 1941 as the Germans approached the Leningrad bosses formed a Leningrad military defense Soviet this provoked a somewhat comical message from Stalin only the government can create the military defense Soviet we ask you not to commit such an offense again hundreds of thousands of ordinary Leningrad errs were drafted in to build a line of fortifications from the outlying towns of King Sepp and Luger rights to the outskirts of Leningrad [Music] field marshal fondly the German army commander attacking Leningrad had at his disposal half a million men 1500 tanks these soon broke through the Luger line and advanced a city [Music] now the area around Leningrad was within range of fond leaves artillery but Hitler and the German High Command was so concerned by the implications of feeding the city's population of over 2.5 million that they hesitated to commit its forces to occupying the city [Music] Fon lieb's forces were moving towards Ladoga the huge lake to the east of Leningrad driving a wedge between Russian forces they captured the railway Junction town of Maga and on the 8th of September reached the southern shore of Lake Ladoga where they occupied shlisselburg at the mouth of the river neva this meant that the Germans had now cut off all overland supply lines between Leningrad and Moscow and with the finns were forming an iron ring around the city capture of shlisselburg convinced hitler's chief of staff franz halder that leningrad was now doomed hitler had decided as early as the 8th of july 1941 to erase Moscow and Leningrad in order to prevent people staying there whom we will then have to feed in winter the cities are to be destroyed by the air force tanks may not be used for this purpose [Music] [Applause] the Luftwaffe bombed Leningrad for the first time also on the 8th of September 1941 this marked the beginning of the Leningrad blockade [Music] Junkers bombers dropped over 6,000 in sentry bombs including over a hundred on the Smalley district where the Leningrad military command was based [Music] the raid set off more than a hundred and fifty fires the most serious at the berdyev warehouses destroyed virtually all the city's food supplies flames and smoke rising more than three miles high formed the ideal marker for a second raid that day which was to knock out the city's water supply countless delayed-action bombs were dropped by parachute lack of training ensured that bomb disposal teams often failed to defuse them [Music] [Music] the iron ring stretched round Leningrad to the south on the German side and also to the north on the Finnish side although the Finns refused to push as far as they might have to the disgust of the Germans and the probable salvation of the city had the Germans and the Finns met on the eastward side of the lake then the city would have been doomed as the Germans supreme command the okw believed it already was the West a large Soviet pocket remained on the coast of the Gulf of Finland around Iranian bomb which was supplied across the water or ice of the Gulf throughout the siege to the east a tiny pocket or bridgehead remained on the east of the river neva known as the near Sookie attic jock from the Russian for a five kopeck piece the equivalent of a dime or a sixpence it - never fell it was sustained throughout the siege its value symbolic rather than military no Leningrad commander had risked telling Stalin of the loss of shlisselburg he only learned of it from an intercepted German army communique furious he sent his most trusted general Georgy Zhukov to take over command of the leningrad front together with an enraged Arnoff the leningrad communist party chief Zhukov set about reorganizing the city's defense thousands of pill boxes hundreds of miles of trench systems barbed wire barricades and anti-tank barriers were erected security was tightened every few blocks your papers would be checked and rejected if you couldn't prove your identity you would be arrested and imprisoned all movement within the city between ten o'clock in the evening and 5:00 in the morning was forbidden everyone lived in terror at the NKVD the Soviet security police sailors from the Baltic Fleet were used as infantry and guns were removed from their ships and dug in on the coast or set on armoured trains fighting on land baltic fleet sailors soon gained a fearsome reputation with German forces born in 1896 Zhukov had been apprenticed to a Moscow furrier before joining the Tsar's cavalry in 1915 and becoming a sergeant he joined the Red Army in 1918 as one of the new red commanders his reputation was assured with the defeat of a Japanese force at houck in goal in Mont Golia in 1939 he'd been chief of the General Staff in the run-up to the 1941 German attack after Barbarossa was launched as the Red Army's most experienced combat commander aged 44 he was needed to command in the field Zhukov decreed anyone who retreated from their position on the approaches to Leningrad would be executed he threw in two divisions and a brigade of Marines across the river never to the south of the city this offensive was the first attempt to cut through the iron ring around Leningrad to the east it failed with massive casualties on 21st of September Hitler issued the famous directive that Leningrad was not to be taken by storm a week later the Germans supreme command instructed army group North to tie the tightest possible ring around the city it stated it's surrender will not be accepted aim was simply genocide to let the entire encircled population die rather than escape and then to move into the deserted city and wipe it off the face of the earth Hitler now diverted the tanks of fun lieb's Panzer divisions to the battle for Moscow this persuaded Stalin to recall Zhukov to deal with the threat to the Soviet capital fond leaves artillery bombardment continued as heavily as before Red Army forces fought back inflicting heavy casualties that Leningrad situation remained on a knife-edge the effect of Vong leaves advance was to split the Soviet forces dedicated to defending the area around Leningrad into to the western part became the Leningrad front and the eastern part later became the Volkhov front railways were crucial to the survival of Leningrad they connected the city to the Russian heartland when they split the Leningrad front in two German forces broke the direct line between Leningrad and Moscow and the indirect one via Tiffin but Tiffin remained under Soviet control so long as the Russians held at the railway Junction town of takign some supplies were being brought in via Lake Ladoga they were carried from the Russian heartland by railway to the ports on the lakes Eastern Shore then by boat across the lake and finally by Road from the ports on the lakes western shore to the city this route was made impassable to the Russians when von leaves Army Group North captured takign on November the 9th 1941 now the Russians were forced to build a new hundred and ninety mile forest supply road skirting around the north of the new German positions made of countless logs laid side by side it was known as the corduroy road progress through places so obscure that they did not appear on maps was bought with the lives of hundreds of peasants collective farm workers and gulag prisoners effectively forced labor as well as construction battalions [Music] [Music] winter came early in 1941 it proved to be one of the coldest of the century Germans began to dig in and make themselves as comfortable as possible in many ways they were better equipped than their Russian counterparts and far better provisioned than the citizens of Leningrad the river neva froze solid the city's water supply failed [Music] there was no fuel for civilian transportation [Music] there was virtually no heating for people's homes having cut the city off on 8th of september the germans had preempted the city's customary autumn harvest of firewood from the surrounding forests the electricity supply was restricted to factories and military command centers often there wasn't enough electricity to power the official radio programs broadcast over the public address system then programs were replaced by the sound of a metronome this came to be regarded as the heartbeat of the city sometimes its beat was quickened to give Leningrad as an air-raid warning sometimes it's topped with a desperately dispiriting effect on Denon grads citizens hunger was taking its toll on the 20th of November the Russian was cut again to four small slices of bread for factory workers and two for everyone else except frontline troops who had six Leningrad scientists developed a process to use the cellulose from wallpaper paste in bread making numerous infants died the death rate rose to 5000 per day before the official registration system broke down [Music] [Music] no one had the strength to dig individual graves mass graves were blasted with dynamite people slumped to their deaths at work at home or in the streets many on their way to dispose of the bodies of their relatives at one of the burial grounds scattered all over the city to lose a ration card meant almost certain death the authorities would not issue duplicate ration cards because they feared that people would pretend to have lost theirs in order to get to none of the people who had fled the Nazi invasion of the western parts of the Soviet Union were issued with ration cards this meant there were a hundred thousand who had to steal or kill to survive under these circumstances it had to be expected some people would resort to kill others for their meat as well as for their ration cards according to the central state archive of st. Petersburg 1,500 people were arrested for cannibalism during the siege 886 of them during that first terrible winter of 1941 242 the number of cases increased dramatically from the end of November formal head of state Michalka linen originally a Leningrad er eventually persuaded Stalin to order a daily airlift to bring in food partisans in villages outside the city brought in a little more but there was a massive shortfall the freezing of Lake Ladoga meant the supplies by boat would soon become impossible and would have to be replaced by some form of surface transport over the ice on the evening of 19th of November captain Moore off and a team of drivers and skin and bone horses set out from the western shore of Lake Ladoga across ice about a hand spread thick to try to prove the route a political commissar briefed him there are supplies in the city for two more days after that there is nothing more the ice is very young and not very strong but we can't wait each hour is dear they made it and on 21st of November they made it back with flour and high nutrition food the larder got ice road which linked with the Overland Road of life to form route 101 was open on the 22nd of November 60 trucks crossed with over 30 tons of flour the first eight days brought in 800 tons trucks bringing in supplies to the city on their return journey carried leningraders to safety on the lakes Eastern Shore but breaking ice and aerial bombardment restricted daily deliveries to 600 tons a fraction of what was needed it was obvious to the Germans that the ice road was all that was keeping Leningrad alive just and they sent out ski patrols and launched air attacks to try to cut it at its closest the ice road ran about eight miles from the German controlled shoreline a bizarre war on the ice developed the Russians built pillboxes out of blocks of ice and walls of ice to protect the road and anti-aircraft guns Aero sleighs powered by aircraft engines armed with machine guns and cannon proved highly effective in James bond-style battles on the vast frozen lake the supply line across the ice was jeopardized by a sudden thaw at the end of the month many trucks were lost as the ice melted on December the 9th Soviet forces recaptured Attica Veen this made the loss of life sustained in the building of the corduroy road unnecessary but he'd also shortened the route from a major rail head to the shore of Lake Ladoga from a hundred and ninety miles to sixty this was the first major successful counter-offensive against the German army by any combatant in World War two and according to Pavlov Leningrad's food chief saved thousands of people from starvation and probably many times more it occurred four days after the Moscow counter-offensive began and two days after Pearl Harbor despite the recapture of teen Leningrad US was still in the grip of mass starvation on the 9th of January 1942 it was on this day that the NKVD found 80 leaflets on one of the platforms of Leningrad Moscow station written by someone signing himself the rebel in them he claimed that the appalling hunger Leningrad as were suffering was being inflicted on them unnecessarily by their leaders the Luftwaffe often bombarded Leningrad as with Nazi propaganda leaflets the NKVD were desperate to find out who was responsible and proceeded to check the handwriting of all 18,000 people living or working in the area but they drew a blank on the 8th of March 1942 terrified of epidemics the city authorities instituted a massive spring clean as Leningrad has cleared the streets they found thousands of bodies people have been left where they died for months on end [Music] the tram service out of action since November was restored mostly by Lenin grads women a degree of normality was beginning to return when navigation resumed it brought an immediate increase in supplies by the middle of April Leningrad had enough flour for 58 days in the same month the Kremlin approved the pipeline under Lake Ladoga to supply the city with oil a new system enabled tankers usually pulled by train to be dragged across the water an electricity cable laid across the lake enabled factories out of action for many weeks to resume production many of the shells produced were destined not for forces fighting locally but were commandeered by starka the Soviet High Command for use in the Moscow region spring came too late for some throughout the winter Tania's Savitch ever kept a diary it faithfully recorded the dates and times of the deaths of her family members the last pages read mama died May the 13th at 7:30 in the morning all savage herbs are dead everyone is dead only Tania is left after the recapture of tea clean as part of the second attempt to break the siege the third was the Liu bang offensive from January to April 1942 2nd shock army attacking from the east penetrated far into the ring but never quite cut it and became trapped in total twenty Russian divisions had been expended in the unsuccessful six-month attempt to relieve Leningrad [Music] the deputy front commander leftenant general Andrey Vlasov who at 41 was one of the Red Army's youngest and most highly regarded generals was sent to take command of 2nd shock army and get it out he failed and in July was captured one of 60,000 Soviet troops killed or taken prisoner in the pocket the Russians had tried very hard to extricate him but now he offered his services to the Germans forming the Russian National Liberation Army in 1945 he surrendered to the Americans who handed him back to the Russians to meet a traitor's death on the gallows to safeguard against a repeat of the previous winters shortages every conceivable plot of land was given over to vegetable growing families were issued with gardening handbooks but the truth was that Leningrad a''s could be supplied with food more easily because there were so many fewer of them left [Music] the reduction of the population also allowed wooden houses to be vacated and chopped up for firewood which would be needed during the second winter of the siege teams of women loggers working outside the city suburbs added to this [Music] football matches and competitions were resumed results were broadcast to the Nazi troops to taunt them with how they had failed to break Leningrad as morale [Music] Hitler now prioritized the Nazi offensive on the Soviet oil fields far to the south of Leningrad he wanted to release as many of his forces from the siege as possible on the 6th of July he made the beginning of September the deadline for the destruction of Leningrad and sent in even heavier artillery no one suffered more from the increased bombardment than the children still in the city to maximize its military effort Don off and the military council decided to reduce the city's population to 800,000 and ordered the evacuation of a further 300 thousand mostly children [Music] [Music] some reached safety but many didn't the lightly-armed boats were easy targets for the left one Tania Sava chipper was among the evacuees but like many others she would soon die from the Fannin's after-effects the composer Dmitri Shostakovich was evacuated from Leningrad at the beginning of the siege but he continued working on his 7th symphony the Leningrad [Music] on the 9th of August 1942 it was given its Leningrad premiere [Music] this was commemorated 25 years later with a performance by the few survivors from the original orchestra Nazi troops were listening to the original concert their commander ordered artillery to shell the concert hall but it was soon silenced by Russian Gunners the commander in charge of Russian artillery during the premiere of frosty Kovach's 7th symphony was leonid Guevara he had taken over as Leningrad front commander in June 1942 under duress cover of had briefly served with the white army in the Russian Civil War despite the fact that he defected to the Red Army and took his artillery battery with him he narrowly escaped Stalin's purges of the 1930s which sought to eradicate Czarist elements from the soviet military of had distinguished himself during the Battle of Moscow as commander of the fifth army an artillery specialist he understood the siege warfare that raged on Don off believed that three failed attempts to lift the siege had taken such a toll on Leningrad as morale that he had German prisoners paraded down Leningrad's Main Street the Nevsky Prospekt a fourth attempt to break the siege by attacking out of Leningrad and westward from Volkov had been made in the autumn but had failed in the first week of December 1942 Stalin called Governor on the scrambled telephone line and gave him a cryptic message prepare for war game number five the operation was also known as a scrum the spark the name of the first Russian and social democratic newspaper preparations were made in secret troop movements were restricted to small groups this Gras units were forbidden to use radio after some delays operation is scrub again at 9:30 a.m. on the 12th of January 1943 more than 4500 guns opened up on the Nazis the barrage lasted two hours 20 minutes at 11:42 a green rocket induced one Infantry Division to attack before the caduceus had finished finally but somehow it got across the ice intact on the 16th of January the distance between the two Soviet fronts was reduced to just 3/4 of a mile two days later the two fronts joined together finally there was a break in the blockade Nash's worst reunion ocean area lot of stores era Yuri's Macha building in Rada [Applause] in operation Iskra the leningrad and Volkoff fronts attacked the German forces in the wedge between them the Germans were driven out of the area immediately to the south of Lake Ladoga and Soviet forces regained the key town of shlisselburg here they constructed a new bridge nearly a mile long across the river neva and built a temporary railway line that connected Leningrad with the line to tiffith on the 7th of February the first train reached Leningrad via the shlisselburg bridge loaded with much-needed food supplies but like the city the railway was under constant German fire throughout 1943 and was cut countless times one barred montz were heavier than ever Schelling always took place during the morning and evening rush hours to maximize civilian casualties nearly a quarter of Leningrad housing was flattened by now food supplies were reaching Leningrad from the USA under the American aid scheme known as lend-lease and to a lesser extent from the United Kingdom nonetheless the rebel continued his campaign against the authorities but he had started getting careless he sent as dawn off a letter in a pink envelope known as a secret key complaining as a worker in a hot factory about the distribution of food coupons one of the two districts where secret cos were still on sale had a steelworks the NKVD home Dinh they checked everyone's lockers and handwriting the handwriting of worker number 42 ones Sergey Lavrov matched the writing on the rebels letters and leaflets he was arrested and interrogated revealing that he had no connection with the Germans and on 12th of December 1943 the Leningrad prosecutor coup botkin declared the case closed in late November 1942 the Red Army broke through the northern flank of Hitler's forces around Stalingrad and encircled nearly a quarter of an many trapped in cyber city gave themselves up on the 31st of January 1943 Friedrich Paulus surrendered the day after Hitler promoted him to Field Marshal over 90,000 Nazi troops were taken prisoner the Soviet victory was hailed as the turning point in the war by the world's press [Music] immediately after the German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943 the Russians launched another operation Polar Star to push the Germans further from Leningrad like Uranus and little Saturn the successful Stalingrad operations it had a cosmic code name and like those it was envisaged as a double encirclement with the Leningrad and Volkoff France cutting off German forces still close to Lake Ladoga and then a week later the Northwest front would launch a wider attack trapping the German 18th army but the Soviets were forced to divert forces to the south where the Germans were pushing them back to create the great Kursk salient this would become the focus of the war in the summer of 1943 as a consequence Operation Polar Star failed and the relief of Leningrad was postponed at once again [Music] [Music] it wasn't until January 1944 that the operation to break the blockade completely code name never finally began [Music] at the beginning of Operation never the Germans were still at their closest point to Leningrad just six miles from the city when the ice hardened the Russians began secretly moving troops ammunition and equipment across the river neva into the Iranian bomb pocket for the first time an offensive would be launched out of that pocket in concert with one from Leningrad itself [Music] [Music] Soviet aircraft bombed Nazi trenches and forward installations victories in other theatres of the war enabled Stalin to provide a more powerful force than at Stalingrad Soviet forces now outnumbered Army Group North by more than half a million men ground forces drove a wedge between one and three miles deep into the Nazi lines on a three mile front soon German troops were retreating in complete disorder often into the hands of partisans behind their lives [Music] Red Army troops met little resistance as they move forward taking possession of one Nazi position after another driving on to the city suburbs [Music] the Leningrad blockade was finally lifted on the 27th of January 1944 the longest siege in history lasting 872 days and responsible for more than a million deaths was over [Music] [Applause] within a year of the war the extent of the suffering and heroism of ordinary Leningrad errs was suppressed to conceal the incompetence of their leaders and preserve Moscow's preeminence but at the time Leningrad as celebrations were unrestrained [Music] [Applause] [Music] Soviet resistance to the siege of leningrad not only preserved the lives of two-thirds of the city's population but it had a massive effect on the german offensive from 9th of july to 26th of september 1941 38 German and Finnish divisions were involved in the operations to encircle the city that is half a million troops after the siege of leningrad the war on the Eastern Front was to continue for a further 16 months it was fought on a fronts 2,000 miles long stretching from the Arctic Circle to the Caucasus in 1941 242 the Soviets suffered defeats on the approaches to Moscow at Minsk smiley ants Sevastopol Kharkov and were driven all the way back to the river Volga on the best estimates combined military and civilian Soviet deaths exceeded 27 million when the war in Eastern Europe was over the Japanese still had control of much of eastern Asia while the Tokyo government and the civilian population were devastated by United States atomic bombs the Red Army defeated the million strong Imperial Kwantung Army in Manchuria and brought Japanese military resistance to its end PBS America is looking at the terror and triumph of the d-day landings and the bitterness of the fighting in the days that followed that's at five past 10:00 tomorrow next with a hard luck story of a luxury liner the Britannic [Music]

Channel: PANGEA

Views: 1,700,008

Rating: 4.6352239 out of 5

Keywords: leningrad, war on the eastern front, documentary, war, battle, bolshevik revolution, history, WW2, WWII, world war two, world war 2, stalin, petrograd, patriotic war, hitler, seige of leningrad

Id: nTXhvjyaxQ4

Length: 51min 42sec (3102 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/fasterfind]

That's some Hitchcock badassery. I can't imagine what it'd be like to be waiting out some shit and listening to a metronome that occasionally changes.

[u/Zenakisfpv]

For a direct link to the quote from the historian: https://youtu.be/nTXhvjyaxQ4?t=1458

"Having had cut the city off on the 8th of September, the Germans had preempted the city's customary harvest of firewood from the surrounding forests. The electricity supply was restricted to the factory and military command centers. Often there wasn't enough power for the official radio programs broadcast over the public address system. Then, programs were replaced by the sound of a metronome. This became to be known as the heartbeat of the city. Occasionally it's beat was quickened to give Leningrad'ers an air-raid warning. Sometimes it stopped with a sudden dis-spiriting effect on it's citizens."

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The longest siege in history, lasting 872 days and responsible for a million deaths."

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This documentary, which features rarely seen archive footage now digitally restored, explores the siege of Leningrad, which lasted from 1941 to 1944. It was one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history and one that claimed the most casualties. Presented by Chris Bellamy, Professor of Military Science and Doctrine at the UK's Cranfield University and the author of Absolute War, this is the conflict's definitive single-volume history.

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I thought there were much longer sieges though...