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entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello and welcome to Battleground 44.

This week we're going to be talking about a momentous but overlooked event that took place 80 years ago this week.

On the 27th of January 1944, Soviet forces finally drove

the last German units from around Leningrad, lifting a siege that had lasted 872 days.

It began shortly after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia, in June

1941. The Germans expected the city to fall within

a few months. Thereafter, it was to be raised to the ground and all the inhabitants murdered

or expelled. The martyrdom of what was formerly, and now is again, St. Petersburg, has been

described by my guest today as the deadliest blockade of a city in human history.

About three quarters of a million of its inhabitants died, mostly of starvation. That's four

times as many as in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The story is rich

in tales of heroism and fortitude on the part of the inhabitants,

but it has a darker side too as the struggle for survival led people to unthinkable acts.

The defence by the Soviet authorities was marked by some strokes of inspiration,

along with many instances of stupidity and disregard for human life. All in all, the siege of

Leningrad was one of the great events of the Second World War and its end marked another

great failure of the German campaign in the East. Well, with me here today to talk about all this

...