On this day, 84 years ago, on September 4, 1941 (July 13, 1941 in the lunar calendar), the Nazis surrounded Leningrad. A large number of civilians died of hunger. On September 4, the German encirclement of Leningrad tightened, tightly enclosing the city from the south, west and east, while the Finns moved south from the north along the Karelian Isthmus. Adolf Hitler did not order his soldiers to storm the city. He planned to starve all the soldiers and civilians in the city to death. When the troops occupied and advanced northward along the Volhof Valley in the city of Novgorod, the Germans effectively surrounded Leningrad. When the German army reached Schlutherberg, they cut important railway lines, including the one to Murmansk. The Russians tried to escape by boat on Lake Ladoga and the Neva River, but some of the boats were sunk. In the west, the Germans rushed to Pushkino first, and they invaded and occupied Luga from the west and south. In the middle of the war, the German army encountered tenacious resistance from the Soviet Red Army. But the Soviets lacked new tanks, many of which were old and even relied on agricultural tractors. On the southern front, the Germans encountered great difficulties. They had to overcome the resistance they encountered in Ukraine, and the city of Odessa still held on. Illustration of the Nazis surrounding Leningrad