Compared to distant Moscow, the battle in Leningrad was fought very crisply. As soon as the Germans were ready to attack, they began their own attack.

What Voroshilov feared the most, after all, happened. Before the onset of winter, Germany seemed to want to take the city named after Lenin.

The Soviets were startled at the beginning of the battle, because what they saw was the SS Foreign Legion in SS uniforms, not regular Wehrmacht soldiers.

The Estonians, dressed in SS uniforms, gave a powerful attack at the outset, advancing a full 10 kilometers before halting the attack.

The Soviet soldiers guarding the front-line positions were dumbfounded, they had never seen such a deadly style of fighting.

The 15th Panzergrenadier Division of Estonia stopped the offensive after losing 20 tanks and losing a full 700 men and abandoning a regiment.

The 19th SS Division next door was similar, and at the cost of 400 men, they followed the flank of the 15th Panzergrenadier Division to cover the division's advance.

These two divisions, along with the 20th Waffen-SS Division behind them as reserves, formed an offensive spearhead and tore through the outer defenses of Leningrad in one day.

Don't underestimate such a loss, 1,100 people died in one day, which is not a small loss for the Axis powers.

If there is such a huge loss every day, it is definitely an unbearable burden to accumulate!

1,000 people a day, then 30,000 people will be lost in a month. That's 360,000 a year!

This is only a local battlefield loss, looking at the entire war, the loss may be tripled or even quadrupled!

The loss of 1 million a year almost means that the troops of more than 5 million people are broken.

The loss of a fifth of the troops is unbearable, both for structural damage to the troops, and for the replacement of old and new.

Before this battle, the average daily losses of Germany were actually only about 1,000 people, and this was the entire Eastern Front, not a local battlefield......

The Soviet troops around Leningrad suffered no less heavy losses, and they really did not know why the German troops would fight so vigorously all at once.

As the saying goes, it is not that the Raptors are not but the river, and the direct reaction of the Soviet army after being frightened is that thousands of people surrender.

They didn't have much ammunition in the first place, and most of the soldiers were really just numbers used to scare people.

In fact, there are very few soldiers who can really fight, only about 150,000, but compared with the direction of Moscow, the proportion is still a lot more.

But most of these 150,000 troops were concentrated in the inner ring, that is, near the city, and the troops placed on the periphery were actually second-rate goods.

In this way, once the position is breached, the number of soldiers who surrender will be difficult to control. On the very first day of the German attack, more than 10,000 people surrendered on the Soviet side.

Most of the surrendered Soviet soldiers were ethnic Russians, so the SS units that accepted the surrendered soldiers reported a mutiny involving prisoners, in which more than 300 prisoners died.

After this somewhat surprising incident, the Estonian troops were ordered to rectify the situation, and they were not allowed to dispose of Soviet prisoners of war who had surrendered at will.

After all, these prisoners of war are now the wealth of German merchants, and with these prisoners of war, the minerals of Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic have been developed at a high speed.

Austria, in particular, has become the largest tungsten production site in Germany due to the presence of tungsten ore. Nearly 500 tons of tungsten metal can be produced here every year, which is used in the production of weapons in Germany.

The tungsten ore was mined by coolies in prisoner-of-war camps. Generally speaking, they were Polish or Soviet prisoners of war.

It is not an exaggeration to say that tungsten ore mining in Germany has blood on every piece. The reality is even worse, there are people dying here every day.

Therefore, every labor force is actually precious and cannot be wasted for Germany.

After all, Germany is a country with a population of only 80 million, and it cannot rely on these people to complete the war for world hegemony.

The next day the German offensive was even more rapid, and the main German forces in the south advanced northward, rushing into the edge of the city of Leningrad.

Street fighting began, but on this day the Soviet defenders surrendered even more, reaching an unprecedented 30,000.

The Soviet soldiers stationed on the periphery quickly surrendered their weapons because they had no intention of resisting.

"We can't go on like this...... If we continue to fight like this, within 15 days, we will lose Leningrad. Voroshilov said to his chief of staff depressedly.

"The Germans will destroy this place, turn it into a ruin, and then we will all be buried together!" He pointed to the map, which was densely marked with areas of German shelling.

"You are too optimistic, Comrade Marshal......" The chief of staff, apparently more pessimistic, rubbed a copy of Lenin's anthology in his hand, shook his head and said: "If the intensity of the battle continues, in about 7 days we should run out of ammunition." ”

"If we don't replenish it, we can't afford it. The tanks are running out of fuel, and the artillery is running out of shells......" said the chief of staff bitterly: "The losses of our troops are even more miserable. ”

In order to stop the German attack, the Soviet Union actually paid a heavy price, with tens of thousands of casualties every day, and even more if civilians are counted.

"I appointed 4 new regiment commanders yesterday...... We had 5 divisions routed and 2 lost contact. "When it comes to losses, the chief of staff is heartbroken.

Some people are missing, and if they don't make it, they surrender. The troops lost their formation, and the positions were occupied by the Germans.

Now the periphery of Leningrad is in chaos. The Voroshilov cluster of the Soviet Union, with 400,000 troops, now has only 340,000 men left.

The German army surpassed in terms of strength, because after calculating losses and replenishment, the German army besieging Stalingrad still numbered about 350,000 men.

"The only way to maintain decency now is to ......surrender while Leningrad is still useful," the chief of staff glanced at Marshal Voroshilov and made a very taboo proposal.

Voroshilov was stunned for a moment after hearing this suggestion, then glanced at the chief of staff, who had worked with him for a month, and sighed.

This breath was full of helplessness, and there were some inexplicable grievances: "I can't surrender, the Soviet Union has not yet surrendered marshal...... You can, but only after I die. ”