Hitler's planned to take Leningrad by forcing people to die of hunger, with the Nazis assuming that starvation would prove to be the most effective weapon.
"Hitler ordered [his troops] not to enter the city to avoid losses in street battles, where tanks were unable to take part. German troops, in fact, quite comfortably and easily, expected that the coming famine and cold would force the city to surrender," Granin said.
"In reality, the war stopped being a war. From the enemy’s side, it gradually turned into an expectation of surrender.”
Indeed, with the heating switched off during the bitterly cold winter at the beginning of the siege, from 1941 to 1942, thousands of residents of the former imperial capital died of hunger and exhaustion each day when rations fell to just 125 grams of bread per person.