Lessons from the Siege of Leningrad

(Food Storage, Disaster Preparedness, WWII, History, USSR)

James: This is an interesting link. See:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/siege_of_leningrad.htm

 A city of 2.5 million ( about the same as Philadelphia and immediate suburbs) cut off from food deliveries. One big difference from today was the general patriotism and social order. The magnitude of deaths is ominous for those of us aware of future scenarios disrupting the grid and/or trade.

EXCERPT:

When the Germans invaded Russia in June 1941, the population of Leningrad was about 2,500,000. However, as the Germans advanced into Russia, a further 100,000 refugees entered the city. The area that the city authorities controlled produced just 1/3rd of what was needed for grain, 1/3rd of what was needed for coal, 1/12th of what was needed for sugar and half of what was needed with regards to meat - if the supply lines could be kept open. On September 12th, those in charge of the city estimated that they had the following supplies:

+Flour for 35 days
+Cereals for 30 days
+Meat for 33 days
+Fats for 45 days
+Sugar for 60 days

The nearest rail head outside of the city was about 100 miles to the east at Tikhvin - but this was soon to fall to the Germans on November 9th. By mid-September (two weeks into the siege), Leningrad was effectively surrounded and cut-off from the rest of Russia with minimal food and energy supplies for her population. The siege was to last for 900 days.

While the city had a rail network of sorts, Stalin ordered that all vital goods in the city that could help defend Moscow be moved out of Leningrad and to the capital.

Rationing had been introduced almost immediately. Soldiers and manual workers got the most of what was available, followed by office workers then by non-working dependents and children. The city authorities found it difficult to grasp just how serious their situation was. While certain food was rationed, restaurants continued to serve non-rationed food in their 'normal' way.

The authorities also failed to inform people in Leningrad just how much food there was - this was probably done so as not to panic people, but if people had known the true situation, they could have planned accordingly. The number of shops handling food was drastically cut to allow for better control - but it also meant that people had to queue for much longer. There is also evidence that money could buy food away from rationing and the black market thrived where it could away from prying eyes.

Winters in Leningrad are invariably extremely cold. The winter of 1941-42 was no exception. Lack of fuel meant that the use of electricity in homes was banned - industry and the military took priority. Kerosene for oil lamps was unobtainable. Wood became the major source of heat in homes with furniture and floor boards being burned in most homes.

The food needed to fight the cold was simply not available. If bread was obtainable, people had to queue in the bitter cold in the hope that some might be left by the time they got to the front of the queue. Dogs and cats were hunted for food and stories emerged of cannibalism - freshly buried bodies were, according to some, dug up in the night. Gangs of people braved German guns to leave the city and dig up potatoes in fields outside of the city. This actually did bring in some food that was not kept by those who ventured out - the potatoes were handed in to the authorities and then distributed equably.

The city authorities ordered that a bread substitute be concocted by those who might have the skill, as they knew that flour was in very short supply. 'Bread' baked by bakers even in the first few months of the siege contained only 50% rye flour. To boost the loaf, soya, barley and oats were used. However, the oats were meant to feed horses and malt was used as an alternate substitute. Even cellulose and cottonseed were tried in an effort to produce bread. Both had little nutritional value but there was plenty of both in Leningrad. The city developed ingenious ways to produce 'food' - cats and sheep intestines were stewed, flavored with oil of cloves and the resulting liquid became a substitute for milk; seaweed was made into broth and yeast was made into soup.

Regardless of all the work done by the experts in Leningrad, food remained in very short supply and people were only getting 10% of the required daily calorific intake - despite the fact that most of their work was labor intensive. One writer in the city, Tikhonov, wrote about workers who ate grease from bearings in factory machines and drank oil from oil cans such was their hunger. People collapsed in factories and on the streets - and died. The city organized mass burials to cope with the number who died. When not enough grave diggers could be found, explosives were used to blow a hole in the ground and the bodies were simply thrown in with the expectation that snow would simply cover them up.

Where people died in the street, there was a scramble for their ration card. " If this happened, there was an immediate scrabbling for the dead one's ration card - not because anyone wanted to steal it but because everyone realized that a ration card handed in to the authorities meant an infinitesimal portion more food for all. Such were the indignities we suffered."

" I watched my father and mother die - I knew perfectly well they were starving. But I wanted their bread more than I wanted them to stay alive. And they knew that about me too. That's what I remember about the blockade: that feeling that you wanted your parents to die because you wanted their bread."

In November 1941, while the siege was in its early stages, 11,000 people died of what the authorities called 'alimentary dystrophy' (starvation) - over 350 a day. However, this number greatly increased as the winter took a hold on the city. The two lifelines Leningrad had were constructing a road out of the city to allow supply trucks to get through and using Lake Lagoda as a means of transport. Thousands of people assisted in building the road that was meant to link to Zaborie - the next major staging post east of the fallen Tikhvin. The road was more than 200 miles long when it was completed in just 27 days. However, though it was termed a road, in many places it was barely more than a track not wide enough for two lorries to pass. Parts of it were too steep for lorries to cope with and the snow made parts of it impossible to use. On December 6th, the city authorities announced that the road - known by the people as the 'Road of Life' - was to be used for the first time. The news was well received in the city but, in truth, the road was not capable of providing all that the city required for survival. Over 300 lorries started out on the first journey but breakdowns and blizzards meant that the most distance traveled in any one day was 20 miles.

On December 9th, the city received news that Tikhvin, with its vital railhead, had been recaptured by the Russians. The Germans who had occupied the town were the victims of Hitler's belief that the Russian campaign would be over quickly. They had not been issued with winter clothing and became victims of both the weather and a major Russian assault. 7,000 Germans were killed in the attack and they were pushed back 50 miles from Tikhvin. Railway engineers were brought in by the Russians to repair the line and bridges. For one week they ate food supplies left by the Germans in their retreat. As a result, and by the standards of those in Leningrad, they ate well and all the required repairs to the line were finished in just one week. Supplies started to trickle into the beleaguered city.

Another supply route was to use the frozen Lake Lagoda. Ironically, though the weather was extremely cold for the people of Leningrad, it was not cold enough to sufficiently freeze the lake to allow it to cope with the weight of lorries. The lake was frozen enough to stop barges bringing in supplies but the ice had to be 200mm thick to cope with lorries. It only achieved such a thickness at the end of November, and on November 26th, eight lorries left Leningrad, crossed the lake and returned with 33 tons of food. It was a major achievement - but the city needed 1000 tons of food each day to function. Once the ice had proved reliable and safe, more journeys were made and occasionally this mode of transport brought in 100 tons of food a day.

Though the 'Road of Life', the rail system and the use of Lake Lagoda brought much needed relief to the city, they could not provide all that was needed and the city's records show that 52,000 died in December 1941 alone - lack of food and the cold accounted for over 1,600 death a day. However, the figures collected by the city were for those who were known to have died and been buried in some form or another. They do not include people who died at home or on the street and whose bodies were never found. The official death total for the whole 900 day siege is 632,000. However, some believe (such as Alan Wykes) that the figure is likely to be nearer 1 million.