In September 1941, the German army's three armies, the North, The Center and the South, invaded the Soviet Union, reaching the most critical period. Army Group North on the North Road, led by Loeb, had already reached the city of Leningrad. However, the offensive was thwarted, and part of Army Group North was about to be transferred to the middle road to take part in operation Typhoon in Moscow. Marshal Loeb of the German army had to take Leningrad before his troops could be drawn. Otherwise, once Operation Typhoon begins, the forces will be drawn and the remaining forces will not be able to capture Leningrad.
It can be seen that even in 1941, the first year of the Soviet-German war, the German army had exposed the weakness of insufficient troops due to the vast territory of the Soviet Union. The time left for Marshal Loeb was very tight, and on September 16, he commanded the German army to launch a large-scale offensive. First cut through the junction of the two Soviet armies, and first capture the city of Pushkin, 18 km south of Leningrad. By the 19th, the German infantry, under the cover of tanks and aviation, launched a large-scale attack on the Soviet positions, but due to the stubborn resistance of the Soviet army, it was able to withstand the crazy attack of the German army, and Loeb's last attempt was declared a failure.
After Loeb's elite forces were constantly transferred to Army Group Center, the German offensive against Leningrad had to be stopped and turned to a siege, continuous shelling and aerial bombardment of Leningrad in an attempt to destroy the city, and 3 million Leningrad soldiers and civilians faced an unprecedented famine.
In the winter of 1941, leningrad's most difficult day, the city was besieged on three sides by the Germans, leaving only the frozen Ladoga Lake. The Soviets carved out a road on the ice, relying on this ice road, risking the cracking of the ice surface caused by german shelling, to resupply the Soviet troops in the city and resist the Germans to the death.
At the most difficult time for the Soviet army, all the birds, rats, and pets in the city were eaten, and there were basically only women in the city, because all the men went to the front, and the food supply could only maintain the minimum subsistence needs of people, and even the phenomenon of cannibalism. So much so that the city's police force set up a special division to prevent cannibalism from happening.
But murders are becoming more and more numerous, the motive for killing is only to rob the victim's food ration card, and in order to survive, some people have brutally killed their own relatives. At least 5,000 people were involved in the arrest, and human nature was distorted by extreme hunger that could not be stopped by any measures.
The Soviet-German theater was carried out in 1943, and as the German army became more and more depressed, the Soviet army accumulated enough strength in the Leningrad battlefield. On 12 January, a massive counterattack was launched against the Germans, bombarding the German positions with 2,000 cannons for two hours, followed by two armies launching a surprise attack on the Germans, and after 7 days of fierce fighting, they advanced 14 kilometers into the German positions, initially breaking the 17-month siege of the Germans.
By early 1944, the Soviets had mobilized three fronts, 1.25 million troops, 23,000 artillery pieces, 1,500 tanks, and 1,400 aircraft, launching a decisive counterattack against the Germans in Leningrad. On January 14, the counterattack began, in the face of the overwhelming superiority of the Soviet offensive, the German army was gradually defeated, after 13 days of fierce fighting, the Soviet army recaptured many cities around Leningrad, opened the railway line from Leningrad to Moscow, and completely lifted the German siege for 872 days.
The longest and most brutal siege in the history of modern warfare, the famine caused by lack of food, caused more than 1.5 million deaths from starvation in Leningrad, about 3.5 million Soviet troops killed or missing, 500,000 Nazi soldiers killed or missing, and most civilians died of hunger and cold. The Soviet military and civilians stubbornly resisted with iron will, and the German army has never been able to conquer this heroic city, which can be said to be a miracle of World War II.