The horror Siege of Leningrad: How 1.5million people died during Nazi starvation blockade that saw mothers resort to feeding their babies BLOOD and families turn to cannibalism – but Vladimir Putin’s mum survived

A baby sucking blood rather than milk from its mother; a human leg found in a worker’s locker; children ending up stooped and hairy. 

These are scenes that would be at home in the fertile mind of a horror fiction writer.

But, more than 80 years ago, amidst the beautiful architecture and majestic culture of Russia’s second city, this was the reality. 

The 900-day Siege of Leningrad, imposed by the invading forces of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany from September 1941, left an estimated 1.5million soldiers and civilians dead.

New book Saint Petersburg: Sacrifice and Redemption in the City that Defied Hitler, by historian Sinclair McKay, highlights the full horror of human suffering.

The first winter of the siege, in which temperatures dropped to minus 43C, was the worst – a time when starvation was a universal affliction and death was just around the corner.

Many of the siege’s survivors, who included the mother of Vladimir Putin, were left with mental and physical scars that would last the rest of their lives.   

The horror began on September 8, 1941, when German forces encircled the city – 11 weeks after starting their invasion of Russia.

Two women collect the remains of a dead horse for food during the Siege of Leningrad

Bodies strewn across a street in Leningrad in the winter of 1941, when hundreds of thousands of people starved to death

All supply routes were cut off, and the food warehouses that were stocked were bombed from the air by the Luftwaffe.

With the Russian army unable to provide any relief, Leningrad – now with only enough food to last for a month – was on its own. 

Bread became the city’s most valuable commodity, more coveted than money. The official daily ration sank to as little as 125 grams. 

And as conventional food grew scarce, city dwellers turned to whatever they could find that might contain calories. 

Even wallpaper paste – usually a mixture of flour, water and glue – was consumed.

The youngest children could do nothing but wait for their parents to find them something to eat. 

McKay writes: ‘There were infants who – by some ancient foraging instinct – were scrabbling with tiny fingers in the gaps between floorboards for individual grains of rice or millet that might have been dropped.’

Mothers with babies were so malnourished that many could not produce breast milk.

Pictured: Vladimir Putin as a toddler on the lap of his mother Maria Shelomovam and his grandmother

Vladimir Putin, right, poses for a photograph with his parents Maria and Vladimir Putin in 1985

Families seen wrapped up warm in freezing temperatures during the Siege of Leningrad

A man stands over the bodies of fallen citizens in Leningrad, 1941

One became so desperate that she ‘drove a blade into her arm and let her baby suck blood from the wound’.

That story, although horrifying, does not compare to the examples of real cannibalism – which nearly 2,000 people in the city would be jailed for – that emerged.

In one case, the suspicious colleagues of a machine operator at a factory found the remains of a human leg in his locker.

Caught bang to rights, the man then led his supervisors to where he had hidden two more legs in the grounds of the factory.

McKay adds: ‘There was a plumber at a packing plant who murdered his wife and then told his son and nephews that the meat he was giving them had come from the body of a dog. 

‘In a shadowed corner near an apartment block was found a bag containing not only bones but also the remnants of a cooked human head.’

In another even more horrendous case, a mother suffocated her toddler daughter and then fed her body to her three older children.

And given that the starving were prepared to eat each other, it is no surprise that beloved pets were killed for food as desperation increased.

Russian soldiers lead German prisoners of war through Leningrad after the failure of the siege

One young boy, Valerii Sukhov, wrote in early December 1941: ‘Yesterday we caught and killed the cat. Today we ate it grilled. Very tasty’.

Elsewhere, a mother killed the family cat and then made soup with the meat, but told her daughter that the flesh was that of a rabbit.

Teenage girl Lena Mukhina wrote in her diary in early January, 1942, that her family’s ‘dear puss’ had fed them for ten days.

Ration cards became highly prized. One 18-year-old killed his younger brothers for their cards. 

One chilling physical effect of starvation was that it made young children produce large amounts of facial hair, due to hormone imbalances.

McKay tells how the lack of food made children appear arthritic and old, to the point where there were ‘some small children walking around like miniature elderly adults’.

‘Time had accelerated hideously for them, their bodies now apparently carrying the weight of decades,’ he adds.

By contrast, older children who should have been going through puberty did not have the nutrients they needed to develop, and so their physical development froze. 

Leningrad workers volunteer for the Red Army, July 3, 1941

Women help dig defences in Leningrad amid the German advance, October 1941

German soldiers advancing on Leningrad, September 1941

Saint Petersburg: Sacrifice and Redemption in the City that Defied Hitler, by Sinclair McKay, is published by Penguin

As for adults, one woman in her 30s noted how she became ‘just bones and wrinkled skin’.

Resident Ivan Savinkov recorded in his diary in January 1942 how it had become impossible to distinguish between men and women in the communal bath houses.

He wrote: ‘Only skeletons, not people. What will become of us?’ 

However, McKay points out that, despite the immense deprivation and monstrosities that resulted in the struggle for survival, some semblances of civilisation continued.

Concerts continued to be performed at Leningrad’s famous Philharmonic Hall, including a recital of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. 

Amidst the extremely cold temperatures, the musicians had to play whilst wrapped in layers of clothes.

As for the actors who made up the Leningrad Theatre of Miniatures, they continued to stage dramas.

In the summer of 1942, the Philharmonic orchestra’s rendition of Dmitri Shostakovich’s specially composed Seventh Symphony was broadcast around the world.

Even German troops enforcing the blockade around the city heard the tones of defiance.

By then, the change in the weather had eased the food situation, as locals could grow vegetables. And the Red Army had restored some supply lines.

And although the siege would continue until late January 1944, the worst had been and gone. 

Saint Petersburg: Sacrifice and Redemption in the City that Defied Hitler, by Sinclair McKay, is published by Penguin.

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