As German forces advanced all across the western Soviet Union during the initial stages of Hitler’s invasion in 1941, a sizeable force of Nazi troops moved to capture Leningrad, an important Soviet port and industrial city located on the Baltic coast.
With the initial Nazi advance being repelled by the Soviet forces defending the city, German troops and their Finnish allies established a blockade around Leningrad, leaving the Soviet soldiers and civilians inside to starve.
With the defenders’ supplies dwindling and only a narrow set of routes across the frozen Lake Ladoga available to bring food to the city, Leningrad refused to bow to the Nazi war machine, becoming an impregnable fortress that weathered the siege.
People trapped inside the city by Nazi forces had to endure hellish conditions, with daily rations for civilians at one point being limited to only 125 grams of low-quality bread.
Yet even as tens of thousands perished due to starvation, cold and constant bombardment by Nazi forces, others endured, stubbornly defending Leningrad.
Anti-aircraft gunners defending the besieged Leningrad.
© RIA Novosti . Boris Kudoyarov
/ Meanwhile, the Soviet command worked tirelessly to relieve the city, launching several unsuccessful attempts to break the blockade, until one finally succeeded.
Dubbed Operation Iskra (Spark), this undertaking involved the forces of the Red Army’s Volkhov and Leningrad fronts, as well as forces from the Soviet Baltic Fleet, smashing through the German forces maintaining the blockade on January 18, 1943.
Even though the blockade was fully lifted only a year later in January 1944, the success of Operation Iskra marked the beginning of the end of the Nazi stranglehold on the city, allowing the Soviets to bring more supplies into Leningrad and drastically improve the lot of civilians and soldiers in the city.