Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

Operation Barbarossa
Russian tanks roll towards the battle front on June 22, 1941, to defend Soviet territory from
German troops. This was the first day of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, the drive to defeat the
USSR.
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Leningrad, Siege of
Leningrad, Siege of, 900-day blockade of Soviet Russia's second city by German forces
during World War II, lasting from September 1941 to January 1944. Following the onset
of Operation Barbarossa—the German plan for the conquest of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics—the German Army Group North made rapid progress through the
Baltic republics towards its principal target, the city of Leningrad (now St Petersburg).
By September 4 Leningrad was surrounded by German troops to the south, while their
Finnish allies took up positions to the north of the city. Leningrad's only remaining link
with the USSR was now by water across Lake Ladoga. The total destruction of
Leningrad was one of Adolf Hitler's major objectives in the Russian campaign and had
been specifically mentioned in the Barbarossa directive of December 18, 1940. The
German leader had described the city as a centre of Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia;
there was thus to be no place for Leningrad in the Nazi “New Order”.

The German strategy was to lay siege to the city and to cut all water and power
supplies, while at the same time subjecting the population to merciless air attacks and
artillery bombardment. The population of some 3 million was to be callously left either
to starve or to freeze to death. By late 1941, the daily bread ration had been cut to
110 g (4 oz) per citizen, and, before long, isolated incidents of cannibalism were being
reported. To make matters worse, the winter of 1941-1942 was extremely harsh.
Nevertheless, the population showed quite astonishing courage and fortitude in the
face of such adversity. After seven months a road link, popularly known as the “Road
of Life”, was established across the frozen Lake Ladoga, enabling supplies to be
brought in and providing an escape route for more than 500,000 people. The siege was
finally lifted by the advancing Soviet armies in January 1944, by which time some
1,250,000 citizens had perished as a result of the blockade. In 1945 the Presidium of
the Supreme Soviet awarded Leningrad the Order of Lenin for its outstanding
resistance to the German invaders.

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The Times Report on the Lifting

of the Siege of Leningrad
This report on the lifting of the siege of Leningrad appeared in The Times on January
17, 1944. The city had been under siege since September 4, 1941, with German forces
to the south and Finnish forces to the north. Approximately 1,250,000 of Leningrad’s
citizens died as a result of the terrible privations caused by a blockade that was
eventually ended by the advancing Soviet armies after 900 days.

Soviet Thrust in a New Sector

Vital Lateral Railway Line Cut

OFFENSIVE OPENED ON LENINGRAD FRONT

GERMAN FEARS FOR BALTIC

Russian forces have broken through enemy defences north of Novo Sokolniki on a front
eight miles wide and five miles deep. North of Velikye Luki they have cut the railway
line to Dno and Leningrad.

German sources have described a new Russian offensive between Lake Ilmen and
Leningrad, and the enemy interprets the assault as an attempt to reach the Baltic.

A THREE-DAY BATTLE

40 MORE PLACES OCCUPIED

The report of the Russian High Command last night stated:—

North of Novo-Sokolniki, as a result of three days’ fighting, our troops broke through
the enemy defences on a front eight miles wide and five miles deep. They occupied
more than 40 inhabited places, including the railway station of Nasva (10 miles north
of Velikye Luki). The railway line Novo-Sokolniki-Dno has been cut.

During January 16, west and north-west of Kalinkovichi, our troops fought their way
forward, and occupied several inhabited localities, including the large localities of
Novoselki, Yakimovichi, and Klinsk.

West and south-west of Sarny there was fighting of local importance, in the course of
which our troops occupied the town and large railway station of Kostopol (35 miles
south of Sarny), as well as other inhabited localities.

East of Vinnitsa and north of Uman our troops continued to repel the counter-attacks of
large forces of enemy infantry and tanks, destroying or disabling 136 German tanks.

On other sectors of the front there was fighting of local significance at a number of
points.

During January 15 our troops on all sectors of the front destroyed or disabled 190
German tanks and shot down in air combat or by A.A. fire 60 German aircraft.

Novo Sokolniki, at the southern end of the northern Russian front, is 25 miles north of
Nevel and 10 miles west of Velikye Luki, held by the Russians. The cutting of the
railway to Dno junction, 100 miles farther north, means that one railway route to the
Leningrad sector has been lost by the Germans.

“DRIVE TOWARDS BALTIC”

BERLIN ON BATTLE NEAR LENINGRAD

STOCKHOLM, JAN. 16

Berlin spokesmen yesterday and to-day dwell on the great importance of the new
Russian offensive launched on Friday between Lake Ilmen and Leningrad, alleging that
it was begun by enormous forces with the obvious determination of getting to the
Baltic Sea. News of the offensive so far comes from German sources, but there is
sufficient direct information available to lend the German reports credibility. For
instance partisans in the forests of the Baltic States have been greatly increased
recently by arrivals from Russia, some of whom were dropped by parachute during the
long Estonian nights. Not all of them remain in the forests. Many scatter throughout
the towns, finding little difficulty with identification documents or language because of
the presence of a great variety of nationalities attached to the German military and
labour forces. Many of the arrivals are Estonian exiles who speak Estonian as their
mother tongue and who, it is said, are able to move relatively easily about Tallinn
itself.

According to the Germans the main Russian blows are aimed at Russia’s oldest town,
Novgorod, above Lake Ilmen, south of Leningrad, and from Oranienbaum, on the
Finnish Gulf. The Germans reached the gulf between Oranienbaum and Leningrad in
1941 and have maintained their positions ever since, but Oranienbaum, as an isolated
Russian bridgehead, has defied all German efforts, relying entirely on local resources
and the precarious sea route to Kronstadt and Leningrad for supplies of food, arms and
ammunition, and for reinforcements.

That forces in Oranienbaum are now able to attack as one of the fists of the new
Russian offensive gives some idea of the extent to which the Russians must dominate
this restricted part of the Finnish Gulf, whose western egress has been virtually sealed
by the Germans since 1942, with the Kronstadt fortress and units of the Red Fleet
inside.

Source: The Times [http://www.the-times.co.uk/]

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Blitz, The
Blitz, The, sustained German bombing campaign against London and other British
cities during World War II, from September 1940 to mid-1941, in which over 43,000
British citizens lost their lives. The Blitz was named after the German blitzkrieg
strategy of mobile offensive warfare, though it was not a specific example of this.
Since the end of World War II the Blitz has been celebrated in popular British culture as
an example of the courage and resilience of the British people, and of Londoners in
particular, during a crucial period when the British Isles stood alone against the might
of the German armed forces, the Wehrmacht.

While the Battle of Britain was still in progress the Germans had refrained from
attacking civilian targets, concentrating instead upon the destruction of the Royal Air
Force (RAF). Nevertheless, a limited bombing campaign against industrial and
communications installations had been under way since mid-August 1940. On the night
of August 24, 1940, German bombers originally bound for the oil refineries at Thames
Haven drifted off course and dropped their loads on central London. An escalation of
the air war immediately set in on both sides. Winston Churchill ordered retaliatory
attacks against Berlin, and the Germans responded by launching further raids on
London and Liverpool. On September 7, the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe
(German air force), Hermann Göring, launched a huge daylight raid on the East End of
London which left 430 dead, over 1,600 seriously injured, and thousands more
homeless. Thereafter his bombers returned to London on 57 consecutive nights. The
German aims were to disrupt war production and communications, paralyse the British
economy, and, not least, to instil terror in the civilian population. However, although
London's defences were hardly equipped to repel a major air offensive, the Germans
themselves lacked a strategic bomber force capable of conducting an independent air
war over Britain. Their crews, too, lacked the required training and, although damage
to property and loss of life were extensive, the Blitz statistics pale into insignificance
when compared to those of the later Allied raids on Hamburg and Dresden. The
counter-attack by the RAF took a heavy toll off attacking bombers, though not enough
to halt the German raids; by the autumn of 1940 British air defences were destroying
German bombers faster than the Germans could build them, showing that Germany
could not win a prolonged aerial campaign over Britain. Anti-aircraft batteries, and
barrage balloons against low-flying bombers supplemented the efforts of the Spitfires
and Hurricanes of the RAF's Fighter Command.

Gradually the Germans extended the scope of their operations and targeted numerous
other cities, including Coventry, Manchester, Plymouth, Bristol, Glasgow, and Belfast.
Nevertheless, London bore the brunt of the attacks from September 1940 to May of the
following year. Although British propaganda insisted that Britain could “take it”, a
phrase popularized by Churchill during the Blitz, the disruption of industry and
commerce caused by the bombing was considerable. The rituals of air raid drill, patrols
by warders, blackouts in which streetlights were extinguished and windows heavily
curtained to deny German bombers aiming points, and taping of windows to prevent
glass flying in a bomb explosion, became part of the pattern of daily life under
constant threat of attack. Morale among the civilians, too, was not as strong as it was
portrayed in contemporary British propaganda. Exhaustion, lack of sleep, fear, and
bereavement all took their toll. Indeed, many chose to flee the capital, and by
November 1940 the population of central London had dropped by 25 per cent.
Children, in particular, were evacuated from the endangered cities to remoter areas, a
relocation that in some cases would last for years. Those for whom evacuation or flight
were not serious options, particularly the population of the deprived East End districts,
sought shelter from the bombing in the stations of the London underground, from
which some people did not emerge for weeks on end. The authorities, who had
originally wished to prevent recourse to such measures, soon found themselves
powerless in the face of overwhelming public pressure.

Though British cities continued to suffer heavy raids in the winter of 1940 and well into
1941, the Blitz had lost its original strategic purpose—preparatory bombardment
heralding a full-scale German invasion across the English Channel—in September
1940, when Adolf Hitler suspended Operation Sea Lion (his invasion plan) following
RAF bomber attacks on invasion forces in occupied France. The Luftwaffe switched
from daylight to night bombing after September, acknowledging their failure to gain air
superiority. By enduring the Blitz, Britain's civilians at least eased German pressure on
RAF bases, and ensured Britain's victory in the Battle of Britain.

The London Blitz finally ended with an extremely heavy raid on May 10, 1941. Almost
1,500 people were killed, the House of Commons was severely damaged, and over
2,000 fires raged over a wide area of the capital. In the following weeks smaller attacks
continued on London and other cities, but by the early summer of 1941 the vast
majority of the Luftwaffe's striking power had been redeployed in Eastern Europe prior
to the launching of Operation Barbarossa, Adolf Hitler's planned surprise attack on the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Blitz was finally over.

Contributed By:
Geoffrey Thomas Waddington

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THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE

Blitz on London
One of the most famous images of World War II, this photograph shows the dome of St Paul’s
Cathedral rising out of the smoke and flames of an air raid on London. During the Blitz, the British
capital endured 57 consecutive nights of German bombing.
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Archive Films
Bombardment During the Blitz
From September 1940 to July 1941, London and other major British cities suffered severe damage
from German air attacks. Bombing both day and night, the Blitz caused considerable loss of life,
damage and disruption. At one point raids were launched over London on 57 consecutive nights.
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Nazi-Soviet Pact
Nazi-Soviet Pact, non-aggression treaty between Germany and the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR) with a secret additional protocol, signed in Moscow in the
early hours of August 23, 1939, by Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and
Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov. Apart from issuing a mutual
guarantee of non-aggression, the two countries undertook to consult on matters of
common interest, and to refrain from joining any combination of powers hostile to the
other. The secret protocol divided Eastern and Central Europe into German and
Russian spheres of influence, provided for a fourth partition of Poland, and allowed
Joseph Stalin a political free hand in Finland, the Baltic States, and Bessarabia.

The signature of the pact came as a tremendous shock to the rest of Europe, not least
because Stalin had been negotiating for an alliance with Great Britain and France for
several months. Many found it incomprehensible how two such total ideological
adversaries could apparently bury their differences and reach a speedy and amicable
agreement. Adolf Hitler needed an arrangement with Stalin in order to neutralize the
USSR in his forthcoming conflict with Poland. Stalin wanted to extend his frontiers
westwards for security reasons and to avoid involvement in a war for which Russia was
too weak.

After the fall of France in June 1940, German-Soviet relations became increasingly
acrimonious. Hitler had always intended to conquer his Lebensraum in Russia, and for
him the Nazi-Soviet Pact was only a temporary expedient. At a secret conference on
July 31, 1940, the decision was taken in principle to invade Russia in the spring of
1941, hopefully after having forced Britain to capitulate. Relations were further
strained by the presence of German troops in Finland and Romania, and a disastrous
visit to Berlin by Molotov in November 1940. Preparations for “Barbarossa”—the
German code name for the invasion plan—proceeded apace, and the decision to attack
the USSR was confirmed in a war directive of December 18, 1940. The pact ceased to
function when Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

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Keystone Pressedienst GmbH

Nazi-Soviet Pact
On August 23, 1939, the Foreign Minister of the German Reich, Joachim von Ribbentrop (centre, in
the process of signing), and the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, Vyacheslav M. Molotov (left;
on his right is Joseph Stalin) signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact in Moscow. In this document, both sides
came to an agreement over the territorial division and political reorganization of eastern and
southern Europe in their respective spheres of influence.
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