Hello everyone, and thank you once again for listening to the saga of World War II,

Akasas Belli project. In today's episode, we pick up a thread I left hanging all the way back

in episode 13, the Siege of Leningrad. With this episode, I think we will nearly complete our

coverage of the Eastern Front in 1943. I think we'll do one more episode on the fighting

in eastern Ukraine in late-1943. Then we'll be able to shift our gaze back over to the Mediterranean

and Pacific. So anyway, let's begin episode 36, Siege.

I have been astonished that Japan should in a single day have plunged into war against the United States and the British Empire.

What kind of a people do they think we are?

Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them

until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

The In the final hours of January 27, 1944, the few remaining people in Leningrad went about their usual tasks in the freezing night, and neared to the sounds of not-so-distant artillery duels.

Something unusual happened, that cold winter night, though.

Red, white, and blue rockets screeched overhead.

They were a signal.

The siege had been lifted after 872 days.

In June of 1941, when Barbarossa was in its early days, and the Red Army was more a mass of conscripts than a professional army,

the men of Army Group North were pushing relentlessly toward the Gulf of Finland and the former Tsarist capital.

Leningrad, formerly and again St. Petersburg, was one of the Soviet Union's largest cities, with a population of

2.5 million, and was by no means self-sufficient. But it was a proud city, so rather than

evacuate and prepare for siege, people returned to the city to prepare its defense. Unfortunately,

this would only increase the number of mouth defeat once the city was encircled.

In September, as the Osteer closed in, Leningrad was by no means prepared for the siege.

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