Save for a small corner of frozen Lake Ladoga, Leningrad was encircled. This also was cut off when von Leeb’s forces captured Tikhvin in November 7, severing this last rail link across the ice. Fortunately, the Russians recaptured the town in December. Despite this link however, supplies could not be safely sent. Trucks moving across the ice had to progress slowly and be wary of cracks in the ice. It also must be mentioned that an icy lake is not necessarily flat; the supply trucks had to go up exceptionally steep gradients in freezing weather. They were also prone to being attacked by German bombers. Strong winds only added to the hardship.
Leningrad had only two months supply of food from the outset of the siege. People therefore began to scavenge on sparrows, cats, dogs and the like. Even then, deaths from starvation rose rapidly, and the monthly rate soon surpassed the annual average. On Christmas Day 1941 4,000 died. At the height of the siege the only water source was from the river.
The city likely could have been taken in a few weeks despite exceptionally stiff Soviet resistance had it not been for several unusual circumstances. In the first place, Hitler decided that Leningrad was to be surrounded and not entered, because he did not want to feed a city of 3 million for a winter, so the army group therefore had to try to capture Tikhvin and wheel forward from it. Secondly, the Finnish commander in chief, Field Marshal Mannerheim, refused to cross the border and close in from the north. ‘Finland is not interested in annexing any part of Russia,’ he said. Apparently he did not want to do what he conceived to be the Germans' work for them, and he also did not want to lend substance to the old Soviet argument that the Finnish border on the Karelian Isthmus was a threat to Leningrad. Finally, in the second week of September, Hitler removed Army Group North's armor. He left the army group one motorized corps, and demanded that it be withheld for a thrust toward the east to meet the Finns on the Svir when the time was ripe.
The defenders of the city held out heroically. Despite the continuous bombardment and shelling of Leningrad for almost 900 days, they held out. It was a miracle that they survived the siege. No encirclement of any city has ever lasted for so long.
[2] http://gi.grolier.com
See also Wikipedia's article on Leningrad's siege.
The Russians held tight. After all, this was the sector where the Germans were more greatly outnumbered. With 52 Axis divisions (some which were contributed by Germany’s weaker allies) against 64 divisions, Rundstedt did not manage to advance as far as the other two army-groups. Hitler was eager to take the Ukraine and the Caucasus. In the Caucasus lay Maikop, and in particular (though distant) Baku, two cities literally floating on oil. Germany could double or even triple its current oil production rate if utilized correctly. Currently Germany’s only major source of oil was from the Ploesti oil fields in Romania. [German scientists had discovered a way of making oil through synthetic methods, but though it had the support of Hitler, it was impractical due to the high cost]
On June 30, the Soviet Commander of the South-West Front, General Mikhail Kirponos, had ordered his troops to retreat to the pre-1939 border with Romania. However, it was inadequately prepared—the Soviets stopped construction after the annexation of Bessarabiya and Bukovina.
On July 9, the Russians launched two counterattacks by the 5th and 6th armies at the north and south of the German spearhead respectively. They slowed the German advance but did not stop it.
The next day, the Germans launched a general offensive in the Ukraine, with Kiev as its prize. It took the Russians by surprise. Stalin wanted Kiev to be held and Marshal Budenny reluctantly launched a few counterattacks. The first one, comprising mostly of infantry charging at tanks, proved hopeless. Stalin transferred Marshal Budenny later for his ‘incompetence’.
The Germans planned to encircle Kiev instead of taking it directly, which would cause the Germans lots of casualties. The Germans captured Uman south of Kiev in early August. With it were 100,000 men with 300 tanks and 1100 guns. Due to poor military strategy, the Germans advanced rapidly north of Kiev—as the Russians were reinforcing Kiev.
The Romanians laid siege to Odessa on August 14, but the Russian defenders were evacuated after 9 weeks to bolster the defences of the Crimea, now under attack.
The Russians evacuated the Black Sea port of Nikolayev on August 18. Von Brauschitsch, a general of Hitler, asked that Hitler changed his mind and start the march to Moscow again, but this was firmly rebutted three days later when Hitler announced to his Operational High Command (OKH) that ‘the essential target to be achieved before winter is not the capture of Moscow but the conquest of the Crimea and the Donets coal and industrial basin together with the interruption of oil supplies from the Caucasus…’. Hitler probably wanted to deprive the Soviet Union of its main industrial area while getting some to support his army. His generals retorted at the decision but Hitler’s indecisive mind was made up. Hitler, at his headquarters at Rastenburg, East Prussia (set up a few months ago) was now talking about the aftermath of the war. The new capital of the German empire would be in Linz, Austria, where Hitler spent his boyhood. A triumphal arch would be erected in Berlin too.
On August 26, Kiev was encircled save for a southern portion which was about to be cut off by the German armies advancing into the Crimea. Only then did the Russians realize the danger to Kiev and ask for permission to withdraw (from Stalin). But he refused.
Almost a month later, on September 19, Kiev fell with 665,000 prisoners and over 3000 guns. It was Hitler himself who determined the tactical maneuver that captured the third largest city of the Bolsheviks.
Hitler, ever confident of victory, invited journalists from neutral countries to the Propaganda Ministry, showing them how the USSR would be incorporated into the Third Reich. ‘From oranges to cotton’, he said, ‘we can grow anything in that country.’ Hitler planned to have a population of 400 million in Germany and the occupied territories, of which 130 million would be in the Ukraine. Germany would be the second most populous country in the world behind China, and it would far surpass the United States in every aspect.
The mood of the National Defence Committee in the Kremlin dulled. “Everything Lenin has built, we have lost,” Stalin lamented. The capture of Kiev with its prisoners meant that Germans could take the Ukraine virtually unopposed, limited only by their fuel tanks.[4]
Now, what could stop the Germans?
[4] Clark, Alan. Barbarossa, The Russian-German Conflict 1941-45 (USA, 1985) p.192