Strike Missions: Leningrad

An exhilarating breakdown of some of history's most decisive battles. With expert analysis and eyewitness accounts examining the strategy behind the chaos of the war. On September 8th, 1941, German forces closed in around the Soviet city of Leningrad, initiating a siege that would last nearly 900 days and claim the lives of 800,000 civilians. The German advance continued until late September when Soviet forces finally halted Army Group North in the suburbs of Leningrad. With his army now bottled up in trench warfare, Hitler changed strategy and ordered them to settle in for a siege. Hitler stressed that requests for surrender negotiations were to be ignored since the Nazis didn’t have the desire to feed the city’s large population. Hitler had chosen a chilling alternative to advance on Leningrad directly: he would simply wait for it to starve to death. On September 8th, 1941, German forces initiated a siege that lasted nearly 900 days and claim the lives of 800,000 civilians in the city of Leningrad.