Siege of Leningrad

8 September 1941: Shlisselburg falls

German forces captured Shlisselburg on Lake Ladoga on 8 September 1941, severing Leningrad's last overland connection with unoccupied Soviet territory and beginning the conventional siege period.

Army Group North's summer advance had already cut the city's principal rail links; taking Shlisselburg brought German troops to the lake and closed what remained. The 20th Motorized Division is the formation commonly identified with the seizure.

The city suffered its first massive German air raid the same day, and the fires included the blaze at the Badayev food warehouses.

A blockade, not a sealed ring

Leningrad was land-blockaded but not hermetically sealed. Lake Ladoga stayed outside complete Axis control — a possible and dangerous route for supply and evacuation.

Finnish forces held the northern approaches, but the action that cut the southern land connection on 8 September was German.

What the day set in motion

Movement of people and supplies now depended increasingly on air transport and the lake rather than on rail or road, while the same day's bombing had damaged food stocks.

The conventional inclusive count of the blockade is 872 days; the familiar "900 days" is commemorative shorthand.

Close to one million city residents are estimated to have died during the blockade, though totals vary according to whether evacuees and military deaths in the wider battle for Leningrad are included.