Saturday, January 27, 2007
This Day in the History of Perseverance
On this day in 1944, the nearly 900 day siege of Leningrad was fully lifted by Soviet troops. Nazi Army Group North had sidestepped the Soviet forces in late Summer, 1941, and on September 8, 1941, fully surrounded the city. Apparently most of the citizens never thought of surrender, but fought on, designing and making guns (the excellent PPS-43 sub-machine gun) and building tanks in the city factories as part of the heroic defense. It cost them--the range of estimates of the dead range between 640,000 and 800,000. The nadir came in the depths of Winter, 1942, when some in the city turned to cannibalism. Some relief began flowing in over Lake Ladoga when the siege was partially lifted in January, 1943,
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:38 AM 
