January 27, 1944: The Siege of Leningrad Is Lifted

January 27, 1944: The Siege of Leningrad is lifted, after having been in place since September 8, 1941. The Nazis retreat, having failed to take the Soviet Union's 2nd-largest city.

The siege began when the Wehrmacht severed the last road to the city. Although Soviet forces managed to open a narrow land corridor to the city on January 18, 1943, it took the Red Army 872 days to lift the Siege. The city was helped by the fact that the Soviets had managed to keep the Nazis out of the national capital and largest city, Moscow, and had held them off at Volgograd and Kursk, while the Western Allies were keeping them occupied in North Africa and Italy.

The blockade became one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, and it was possibly the costliest siege in history, due to the number of casualties which were suffered throughout its duration. An estimated 1.5 million people died as a result of the siege. At the time, it was not classified as a war crime.

But, in the 21st Century, some historians have classified it as a genocide, due to the intentional destruction of the city, and the systematic starvation of its civilian population, to the point where animals in the zoo were killed for food, and people even resorted to cannibalizing the dead. The dead couldn't be buried, because Russian Winter meant the ground was frozen, so the bodies -- people and animals -- were left out. So, yes, it was a genocide. Also, the aggressors were the Nazis: Genocide was kind of their thing.

St. Petersburg, named for the Apostle who became the 1st Pope, was the capital of Russia from 1712 until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918. In 1905, its name was changed to the less-German-sounding, more-Russian-sounding Petrograd. Vladimir Lenin moved the capital to Moscow, and after his death in 1924, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. After the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, the city's name was restored to St. Petersburg. As was said at the time, "Better to name it for a saint than for a monster."

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January 27, 1944 was a Thursday. Nick Mason, the drummer for British rock band Pink Floyd, was born.

Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 2 games played in the NHL. The New York Rangers lost to the Chicago Black Hawks, 6-4 at the Chicago Stadium. And the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs played to a tie, 2-2 at the Montreal Forum. The Boston Bruins and the Detroit Red Wings were not scheduled.