The Starving City That Defeated Hitler

Summary

Camp Gagnon – "The Starving City That Defeated Hitler"

Host: Mark Gagnon
Guest/Co-host: Christos
Date: May 15, 2026

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Overview

In this powerful episode of "Camp Gagnon: History Camp," host Mark Gagnon and co-host Christos deliver a gripping, detailed account of the Siege of Leningrad, one of the longest and deadliest sieges in modern history. The pair weave together historical facts, personal stories, and philosophical reflections to explore how a starving city resisted Hitler's Nazi regime—not merely through combat, but through the incredible resilience and humanity of ordinary people. The episode dives into harrowing statistics, legendary acts of courage, and haunting individual tales to reveal both the horrors and the perseverance that defined Leningrad's ordeal.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Significance of Leningrad

[04:18-06:06]

• Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, was not just a city; it was the cultural and intellectual heart of Russia and the birthplace of the Bolshevik Revolution.
• Hitler viewed it as an ideological enemy and symbolic target, aiming to destroy it rather than occupy it.

“For Hitler, this place represented something else entirely… the ideological cradle of everything that he despised.”
— Mark Gagnon (06:01)

2. Operation Barbarossa and the Siege Begins

[06:06-08:01]

• The German offensive began June 22, 1941, quickly encircling Leningrad by September, trapping ~3 million people with every supply line cut.
• Hitler’s directive was to starve out the city, denying negotiations and any interest in the population’s fate.

"Requests for surrender negotiations shall be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us."
— Mark Gagnon (quoting German directive, 07:19)

3. Descent into Starvation and Suffering

[08:01-11:48]

• City started with only a 30-day food supply, worsened by the bombing of major storage warehouses.
• Rations dropped to 125g of bread a day for civilians (mixed with fillers), leading to mass starvation.
• Residents resorted to eating boiled leather, dirt mixed with burnt sugar (the "Bedai of earth"), and eventually, widespread instances of cannibalism.

“The bread was just mixed with cellulose and bran… basically to stretch out the flour supply.”
— Christos (09:08)

• The Soviet government suppressed reports of cannibalism, focusing wartime narratives on heroism rather than desperation.

4. Survival, Resilience & Acts of Defiance

[12:12-14:50]

• Leningrad’s "Road of Life" via frozen Lake Ladoga became the city’s only tenuous supply line, constructed against enormous odds and at great cost.
• About 800,000 tons of supplies brought in, a million people evacuated, but many truck drivers, navigators, and engineers died on the treacherous journey.

"Running around the clock with their headlights off... many of them are still at the bottom of Lake Ladoga today."
— Mark Gagnon (13:51)

5. Unimaginable Sacrifice: Vavilov Institute

[14:50-17:24]

• Scientists at the Vavilov Institute starved to death surrounded by edible seeds, refusing to consume them to preserve humanity's agricultural heritage.
• At least nine scientists died in this act of principle.

“They were sitting in rooms filled with rice and wheat and corn... all these edible seeds and products... but they chose not to eat them.”
— Mark Gagnon (15:59)

6. Art, Culture, and Symbolic Resistance

[22:00-27:34, after mid-episode ads]

The Leningrad Symphony

• Dmitri Shostakovich began composing his 7th Symphony under siege, and the city’s decimated orchestra was reassembled—musicians so weak some had to be carried or fainted during practice.
• On August 9, 1942, the symphony was performed in the besieged city, broadcast to both citizens and the German lines after artillery silenced enemy guns.

"We heard it, and we knew we would never take this city."
— Attributed to a German soldier (25:45)

The Hermitage Museum

• Workers evacuated over a million art pieces east, then stayed and gave tours in empty galleries, reciting lost art from memory, some dying while protecting only frames as symbols of hope.

“The galleries were stripped completely bare... Yet the guides continued to give tours.”
— Christos (26:44)

7. Personal Stories: Tanya Savicheva’s Diary

[27:48-29:14]

• Tanya, an 11-year-old girl, chronicled the loss of her family in simple, devastating diary entries. Her notes—culminating in “Everyone is dead; only Tanya is left”—have become a symbol of the siege’s human cost.

"Nine pages that capture the murder of an entire family... written in a child's handwriting."
— Mark Gagnon (29:14)

8. Liberation and Aftermath

[30:10-32:04]

• The siege lasted 872 days, only ending fully in January 1944 after a narrow supply corridor and massive Soviet offensive.
• Estimated total deaths: 800,000 to 1.3 million, mostly civilians perished from starvation.
• The siege became central to Russian identity and collective memory.

9. Philosophical/Rhetorical Reflections

[32:04-34:58]

• Mark and Christos reflect on what could have been done and emphasize the resistance of ordinary people: scientists guarding seeds, musicians playing through pain, a child chronicling loss.
• These acts are discussed as resistance to dehumanization—a lesson in perseverance under evil and mechanized bureaucracy.

"They were just ordinary people caught in this monstrous human calamity. And they found ways to take some autonomy, and they asserted their humanity in the face of deliberate dehumanization."
— Mark Gagnon (33:40)

• Discussion of whether the siege constitutes a genocide (ultimately, it's not classified as such under U.N. definitions, but clearly a crime against humanity).

10. Legacy and Human Spirit

[35:22-40:00]

• The hosts focus on the “beautiful part”: people insisting on being human, preserving art, music, scientific knowledge, and helping each other even in catastrophe.
• Reflection on how “doing something rather than nothing” — whether grand or small — is the true mark of heroism in moments of disaster.

“It shows us what it means to insist on being human and perseverance... to continue to create art and music and try to inject beauty into the most tragic and awful situations, because what else can you do, you know?”
— Mark Gagnon (34:46)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Hitler's plan:
  “It's the deliberate starvation of 3 million human beings. And that's not like a side effect of the siege. That was the plan.”
  — Christos (07:46)

• On the Vavilov scientists:
  “If my family's starving, I'm giving them the seeds... but I'm also not in the position where I understand the impact of what they were actually doing.”
  — Mark Gagnon & Christos (16:55-17:03)

• On the Leningrad Symphony:
  “Across the city, citizens who could barely stand listened in the streets. German soldiers were hearing it from their own trenches.”
  — Mark Gagnon (25:22)

• On the Hermitage's empty frames:
  “The galleries were stripped completely bare. All that remained were just empty frames hanging on the walls where the paintings used to be. Yet the guides continued to give tours.”
  — Christos (26:44)

• On Tanya Savicheva’s diary:
  “The Savichevs are dead. Everyone is dead. Only Tanya is left.”
  — Mark Gagnon (quoting Tanya's diary, 28:01)

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Useful Timestamps

| Segment | Time | |-----------------------------------------------------|--------------| | Setting the Scene/Intro to Leningrad | 04:18–06:06 | | Operation Barbarossa & Encirclement | 06:06–08:01 | | Starvation & Cannibalism | 08:01–11:48 | | The Road of Life (Lake Ladoga) | 12:12–14:50 | | The Seed Bank, Vavilov Institute | 14:50–17:24 | | The Leningrad Symphony & Shostakovich | 22:00–25:48 | | Hermitage Museum & Cultural Defiance | 26:16–27:34 | | Tanya Savicheva’s Diary | 27:48–29:14 | | Liberation of Leningrad & Aftermath | 30:10–32:04 | | Reflection on Ordinary Heroism | 32:56–34:58 | | Philosophical/Psychological Reflections | 35:22–40:00 |

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Tone & Atmosphere

Mark and Christos present this episode with gravity, reverence, and occasional dark humor—always respectful of the human suffering described. The language is vivid but never sensationalized, focusing on personalizing the incomprehensible statistics and atrocities by telling the stories of individual acts of resilience, sacrifice, and resistance.

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Conclusion

This episode delivers both a thorough historical narrative and a meditation on human endurance. “The Starving City That Defeated Hitler” uses the siege of Leningrad not only to educate listeners on a crucial event of World War II but also to explore what it means to be human in the face of monstrous adversity. Through stories of empty bread, uneaten seeds, music played through bombings, and diaries of loss, the podcast reminds us that civilization endures—even, and perhaps especially, when the world seems determined to extinguish it.

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Listener Call to Action:
At the end, Mark encourages listeners (especially those with Russian heritage or personal connections to Leningrad’s story) to share their own accounts, corrections, or suggestions for future episodes.

“Doing something rather than nothing is the thing that I always look at in these kind of situations. The people that helped… those people get lost to history, but we didn’t forget them.”
— Mark Gagnon (36:00)

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Transcript

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[Mark Gagnon]

For 872 days, the city of Leningrad endured one of the most horrifying sieges in human history. Not conquered, not occupied, just slowly starved. Entire families collapsing from hunger. People were boiling leather belts for soup. Bodies froze in the streets, and they were dragged away on children's sleds. And inside one research institute, scientists starved to death, surrounded by tons of edible

[Christos]

seeds that they refused to eat because

[Mark Gagnon]

they believed protecting the future mattered more than saving themselves. Nearly a million civilians would die during

[Christos]

the siege, yet somehow, the city never surrendered.

[Mark Gagnon]

And today, we're going inside the siege of Leningrad. From Adolf Hitler's chilling order to let the population starve to the frozen road of life across a lake that became

[Christos]

the city's only lifeline. From the diary of a young girl that became one of World War II's

[Mark Gagnon]

most haunting documents to a symphony performed

[Christos]

by starving musicians while bombs fell around them.

[Mark Gagnon]

This is a morbid but important story

[Christos]

about humanity at its worst. So sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp.

[Mark Gagnon]

What's up, people? And welcome back to History Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me in my tent, where every single week I explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from all

[Christos]

of history through all time, forever, for always.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yes, that is what I do here in the tent is I'm trying to understand everything that's ever happened. And every single day, more history gets made and there's more stuff that we got to read about.

[Christos]

But today we have a great one.

[Mark Gagnon]

All right, just for today, I'm going to say, you know what?

[Christos]

I don't have to worry about everything

[Mark Gagnon]

that's ever happened because today we're looking at one of the more morbid and dark and in my opinion, under told

[Christos]

stories of World War II that I

[Mark Gagnon]

think is, I mean, extremely important to not only the arc of the war,

[Christos]

but also specifically to understanding the, the Russian psyche and who Russian people are in a lot of ways and why their role in World War II is

[Mark Gagnon]

so important for them.

[Christos]

I mean, as they say, World War II was won with British intelligence, American manufacturing and Soviet blood. And this is the episode why you will understand why the last part is so significant.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, before we jump in, I just want to say a few things. One, thank you so much for everyone for tuning in.

[Christos]

Truly. Yeah, dude, I'm grateful for you. Yes. You listening right now or maybe watching? For just supporting the show. Every time you click on an episode or, you know, subscribe or comment or any of that stuff, you help keep the lights on. You help keep the fire burning here at the campsite. Additionally, I want to give a big shout out to my pal Christos. How are you, friend? What's going on?

[Mark Gagnon]

Christos? We don't have time to jump in. If you want to talk to Christos, you can join our secret society.

[Christos]

Yes, this is a secret society. This is a place where we all gather around in the woods and we talk. It's not Bohemian Grove, it's patreon.com Camp Gagnon.

[Mark Gagnon]

And there you're going to get every

[Christos]

single episode of this podcast. Religion, camp, history, camp, Camp Gagnon.

[Mark Gagnon]

All of those, all ad free.

[Christos]

So if you're annoyed about the ads for about a price of a cup of coffee, you're gonna get every episode ad free.

[Mark Gagnon]

And on top of that, you are going to get monthly zooms where we

[Christos]

just, you know, tap in with the people and we talk with all the

[Mark Gagnon]

campers that'll be eligible to you, as well as bonus episodes that never go

[Christos]

out to the public that are only for the inner sanctum. Now with all that out of the way, let's jump into the siege of Leningrad.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, in order to understand why Leningrad

[Christos]

mattered at the time, we have to

[Mark Gagnon]

understand what it represented. And this wasn't just any old Soviet city.

[Christos]

Okay. Leningrad, now known today as St. Petersburg, was the former capital of the Russian empire.

[Mark Gagnon]

Peter the Great built it from nothing

[Christos]

in the early 1700s as Russia's window to the west. It was the crown jewel of Russian civilization. The peak of everything that Russian culture could contribute.

[Mark Gagnon]

The home of the Hermitage Museum, the Marinsky Theater, world class universities and a

[Christos]

just a massive cultural legacy that rivaled, you know, like these culture hubs like Paris and Vienna.

[Mark Gagnon]

And by 1939, it was responsible for

[Christos]

11% of all Soviet industrial output. And the naming of it is actually interesting. It was originally named St. Petersburg after

[Mark Gagnon]

Peter the Great, and then it was a little too German, they felt, so they named it to Petrograd, and then

[Christos]

they renamed it to Leningrad, obviously after Vladimir Lenin in the 1920s, and then after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s, I think 91 is when they've returned it back to St. Petersburg.

[Mark Gagnon]

So it's been called all sorts of

[Christos]

different names, and we now know it

[Mark Gagnon]

as St. Petersburg, but at the time

[Christos]

that we're talking, it is just Leningrad.

[Mark Gagnon]

And for Hitler, this place represented something else entirely. It was the birthplace of the Bolshevik Revolution, the city where Lenin launched the

[Christos]

Communist uprising in October of 1917.

[Mark Gagnon]

And in Hitler's mind, Leningrad wasn't just a strategic target.

[Christos]

It was the ideological cradle of everything that he despised.

[Mark Gagnon]

And taking it or sacking it, you know, do basically destroying the whole thing

[Christos]

would just be this symbolic, poetic victory for him and the Nazi regime.

[Mark Gagnon]

So when Operation Barbarossa started, this is the German.

[Christos]

German invasion of the Soviet Union on

[Mark Gagnon]

June 22, 1941, Army Group north had one primary objective.

[Christos]

Get Leningrad.

[Mark Gagnon]

The advance was staggering.

[Christos]

German forces covered hundreds of miles in just weeks, crushing Soviet defenses that were still reeling from Stalin's catastrophic purges of military leadership in the late 1930s.

[Mark Gagnon]

And by September 8, 1941, German and Finnish forces had completed the encirclement. Every railway, every highway, every supply route

[Christos]

into the city was completely cut off, and roughly 3 million people were trapped inside this circle. Now, here's where it gets kind of messed up. And by kind of, I mean extremely.

[Mark Gagnon]

Hitler didn't want to take the city.

[Christos]

He didn't want to fight house to house like they would later, you know, have to do in Stalingrad.

[Mark Gagnon]

Instead, he issued a directive, now preserved in German military archives, stating that Leningrad

[Christos]

should not be occupied. According to directives sent to Army Group

[Mark Gagnon]

north on September 29, 1941, he said,

[Christos]

after the defeat of Soviet Russia, there

[Mark Gagnon]

can be no interest in the continued

[Christos]

existence of this large urban center.

[Mark Gagnon]

Following the city's encirclement, requests for surrender

[Christos]

negotiations shall be denied, since the problem

[Mark Gagnon]

of relocating and feeding the population cannot

[Christos]

and should not be solved by us.

[Mark Gagnon]

So, I mean, that's as morbid and

[Christos]

evil of a document as you could possibly imagine.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, think about what that means. I mean, it's kind of a, you

[Christos]

know, a flowery sort of diplomatic BS

[Mark Gagnon]

Paragraph you know, but that's the exact quote.

[Christos]

It's the deliberate starvation of 3 million human beings.

[Mark Gagnon]

And that's not like a side effect of the siege.

[Christos]

It's not like a unfortunate thing that happened because, you know, the fog of war, that was the plan. And the people of Leningrad had no idea.

[Mark Gagnon]

And when the siege began, the city

[Christos]

had roughly a 30 day food supply on hand. Soviet leadership had failed to evacuate most of the civilian population in time, partly due to the disbelief that the Germans

[Mark Gagnon]

would advance so quickly, partly due to

[Christos]

bureaucratic chaos, basically slowing everything down, and

[Mark Gagnon]

partly because Stalin initially forbade evacuation, seeing

[Christos]

as, you know, this is the cultural center. If everyone leaves, they see it as a defeat.

[Mark Gagnon]

On September 8, German bombers hit Bedaev

[Christos]

warehouses, which were one of Leningrad's major food storage facilities holding particularly large amounts of sugar and flour reserves. Thousands of tons went up in flames

[Mark Gagnon]

and citizens would later dig up the

[Christos]

scorched earth beneath the warehouses, boiling the sugar soaked soil, trying to extract whatever calories they could. And they even had a name for it. They called it Bedai of earth.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, this is what the Nazi

[Christos]

regime did to the people of Leningrad, literally causing them to dig and eat dirt. That's where things eventually get, but we're not there just yet. As autumn turned into winter, rations were cut again and again. And by November 1941, the Daily Bread ration for civilians, non working dependents, children, the elders, all the people that need it hit the lowest point. I mean, 125 grams per day, that's like the size of like your palm. And calling it bread even is generous. By that point, the bread was just mixed with like cellulose and bran and other fillers, basically to stretch out the flour supply.

[Mark Gagnon]

Workers received 250 grams and soldiers at

[Christos]

the front lines got 500 grams. Think about that.

[Mark Gagnon]

125 grams, that's supposed to keep a

[Christos]

human being alive for weeks and weeks, months on end. And of course, as you can imagine, it couldn't.

[Mark Gagnon]

Hey, real quick, most people who watch

[Christos]

this channel aren't subscribed.

[Mark Gagnon]

And when you subscribe, you help the channel grow and you stay in the loop with every new drop, religion, camp history, camp and Camp Gagnon. Now let's get back to it. The death toll in December of 1941

[Christos]

alone reached an estimated 53,000 people. By January 1942, it was even worse. People would just collapse in the streets and never up. Bodies piling up in apartments and in stairwells and courtyards. The ground was just completely frozen solid in the harsh Soviet winter, and you couldn't even dig to actually carve out graves. So the corpses of people were just being stacked in parks and cemeteries, anywhere that there was space.

[Mark Gagnon]

And the cold.

[Christos]

I mean, you know, there's, like, memes about, like, the Russian winter, but it's merciless, specifically in this window. The winter of 1941-42 was one of the harshest on record, with temperatures plunging to minus 30 degrees Celsius. That's minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit. And the city's water supply just froze. Sewage systems just froze. There's no electricity, no heat.

[Mark Gagnon]

People would burn furniture or books, anything

[Christos]

combustible, just to survive one more night. And then came the things that are, you know, hardest to discuss in any type of, you know, academic setting. Starvation does something unimaginable to the human mind and the human spirit in general.

[Mark Gagnon]

As the famine got worse, reports of

[Christos]

cannibalism began to surface. The Soviet secret police, the nkvd, established a dedicated unit to actually investigate these cases.

[Mark Gagnon]

And during the siege, over 2,000 people

[Christos]

were arrested on cannibalism charges. Some cases involved consuming people that had, you know, already died. Others were even darker than that. Soviet authorities were forced to classify cannibalism into two categories. One, using the flesh from corpses, and two, murder for the purpose of obtaining food. And it's documented that both were happening.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, obviously, this isn't something that the

[Christos]

Soviet government wanted the world to know. So for decades after the war, the full horror of what happened inside the city was actually suppressed by the Soviets. The official narrative focused on, you know,

[Mark Gagnon]

heroism and resistance, of course, because there

[Christos]

was plenty of that. But the whole picture includes the desperation that drove ordinary good people to these unthinkable acts.

[Mark Gagnon]

And here's the thing. Even in the depths of that darkness,

[Christos]

something remarkable was happening. The city refused to let go.

[Mark Gagnon]

And the most extraordinary act, perhaps, of

[Christos]

the entire siege was really just beginning.

[Mark Gagnon]

So if you look at a map

[Christos]

of wartime Leningrad, which would be awesome if you wouldn't mind pulling it up, Christos, basically, you can see the encirclement on the map.

[Mark Gagnon]

German forces to the south.

[Christos]

And to the west, you had the Finnish forces to the north, and the

[Mark Gagnon]

only gap was the northeast across Lake

[Christos]

Ladoga, the largest lake in all of Europe. And you can see it right here. So obviously you have, like we said, the fins on the front are on the north side. And then you have Lake Ladoga going to the other side on the. On the eastern side of Leningrad.

[Mark Gagnon]

And in the summertime, the lake was

[Christos]

a viable but of course, vulnerable supply route with, you know, barges running a gauntlet of German air attacks.

[Mark Gagnon]

But when winter hit and the lake

[Christos]

froze over, Soviet engineers saw something that no one else would have even tried to do. They built a road across the ice.

[Mark Gagnon]

And on November 22, 1941, the first

[Christos]

convoy of horse drawn sleds across the frozen surface of Lake Ladoga was actually created. The route was roughly 18 miles across open ice, exposed to German artillery and airstrikes, with the constant risk of the ice just cracking and, you know, pulling in all of these helpless people into the frozen lake.

[Mark Gagnon]

And they called it the Daroga Zizny,

[Christos]

the road of life.

[Mark Gagnon]

And over the following months, engineers work

[Christos]

to reinforce and try to maintain this route.

[Mark Gagnon]

Measuring ice thickness every single day and

[Christos]

plotting paths around the weak spots. Laying cables and even a full pipeline across the bottom of the lake. And trucks replaced sleds as the ice started to get thicker. Running around the clock with their headlights off to avoid German bombers, drivers kept their doors open so they could jump if the ice started to give way. And many of them didn't make it, trucks would break through and sink. And many of them are still at the bottom of Lake Ladoga today.

[Mark Gagnon]

But to a degree, the road of life actually worked. Between November 1941 and April 1942, it

[Christos]

carried roughly 800,000 tons of supplies into the city and evacuated over 1 million people, mostly women and children and the wounded.

[Mark Gagnon]

It was the only thing standing between

[Christos]

Leningrad and just total annihilation of everyone there.

[Mark Gagnon]

Was it enough?

[Christos]

Obviously not. People were still dying by the thousands every single day. But without the road of life, there would have been no one left to save.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, at this point, to illustrate what

[Christos]

was going on in the city, I

[Mark Gagnon]

want to tell you a story that

[Christos]

sounds like it's made up, but it's not. Inside the besieged Leningrad sat the Valavov Institute of Plant Industry, one of the world's largest seed banks, founded by the brilliant geneticist Nikolai Vavilov.

[Mark Gagnon]

Vavilov had spent decades traveling the world,

[Christos]

basically just collecting seeds and plant samples from every single continent.

[Mark Gagnon]

And by 1941, the institute held tens

[Christos]

of thousands of varieties of seeds and

[Mark Gagnon]

grains and nuts, representing this massive, irreplaceable

[Christos]

library of global agricultural biodiversity.

[Mark Gagnon]

And this is the craziest irony.

[Christos]

Vavilov himself had already been arrested by Stalin in 1940 on trumped up charges and basically thrown into prison, where he would die of starvation in January 1943, while his life's work sat in a building surrounded by starving people, his colleagues, the scientists who remained at the institute

[Mark Gagnon]

made a choice that still is difficult to even comprehend.

[Christos]

They were starving. Their families were starving.

[Mark Gagnon]

And they were sitting in rooms filled

[Christos]

with rice and wheat and corn, peanuts, potatoes, all these edible seeds and products that could have kept them alive, but they chose not to eat them. At least nine scientists at the Vavilov Institute died of starvation during the siege while surrounded by all of this potential food that they were protecting. Dmitri Ivanov died at his death surrounded by thousands of packets of rice. Alexander Shtukin died guarding the peanut collection. Lilia Rodina died protecting the oat samples. And one by one, they all perished, choosing to preserve the future of agriculture and scientific advancement over their own survival.

[Mark Gagnon]

And these scientists understood something that transcended

[Christos]

their immediate suffering, that those seeds represented centuries of biodiversity that could never be replaced. All of Avalov's research would be gone. Right? If you eat them, a piece of humanity's agricultural heritage would just be erased. I mean, think about that. Like, what would you do?

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, if I'm in that position,

[Christos]

I'll be honest, I'm probably eating those seeds same, right?

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, if my family's starving, I'm giving them the seeds.

[Christos]

Like, it's not even a question in my mind, but I'm also not in the position where I understand the impact of what they were actually doing. You know, like, if. If they're like, oh, this research could potentially stop a famine in the future. Like, oh, we have, like, seed samples that can grow in underground environments and stop a famine in 100 years. Like, that's worth something.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's really admirable, you know, I mean,

[Christos]

like, it's kind of remarkable that they did that.

[Mark Gagnon]

What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break real quick

[Christos]

because I gotta tell you something kind of embarrassing.

[Podcast Guest or Additional Commentator]

All right.

[Mark Gagnon]

I've been working out pretty consistently for a while.

[Christos]

I love working out. I think it's super important. Part of my daily routine.

[Mark Gagnon]

And I don't really eat garbage, and I'm doing all the stuff you're supposed to do, and I got in pretty good shape. But at some point, I noticed the

[Christos]

results kind of just stopped, like, matching my effort kind of around the time that I had a kid, you know,

[Mark Gagnon]

I'd put in, like, the same amount

[Christos]

of work, but, like, I wasn't getting

[Mark Gagnon]

the same results at the gym.

[Christos]

I would get, like, a little bit more belly fat. My energy was kind of inconsistent. Recovery was taking a little bit longer,

[Mark Gagnon]

and I assumed, like, I was just getting older, which makes sense, right? You know, guys, when they hit their 30s, testosterone, not like naturally goes down. And you know, when that happens, your body literally starts storing more fat and

[Christos]

you start losing muscle faster.

[Mark Gagnon]

But here's the thing that messed me up. The more body fat you carry, the more your body actually converts testosterone into

[Christos]

estrogen, which makes it even easier to gain this fat. And it's a cycle that keeps on going around.

[Mark Gagnon]

And so I started taking Mars Men. And honestly, I've been on it for a while and I've actually noticed a difference. This is going to sound crazy. This is real 2024. I did blood work. My testosterone was like fine. It was like on the lower side of normal. And I did blood work recently completely unrelated to this. And I've been taking Mars Men for,

[Christos]

I don't know, maybe like four or five months.

[Mark Gagnon]

My testosterone went up. Now I don't know if it's from Mars. I'm not going to say it's only them. Maybe I've been eating a little cleaner, I've been sleeping better, who knows? But my testosterone actually got an increase. I mean, I couldn't believe it. My energy feels steadier throughout the day. My workouts have been better. And going into summer, I'm actually like

[Christos]

leaning out in a way that I feel better about now.

[Mark Gagnon]

Mars Men is a natural supplement. I don't even have it in the

[Christos]

studio because it's at my house.

[Mark Gagnon]

There's no synthetic hormones, no sketchy stimulants, just actual ingredients like Tonga Ali, shilajit, zinc, boron, and they're designed to actually

[Christos]

support healthy testosterone levels.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now look, you can just go buy

[Christos]

all of these supplements yourself. You can go buy Tongat Ali, she legit.

[Mark Gagnon]

But you got to make sure they're from the right place.

[Christos]

You got to make sure they're the right quality.

[Mark Gagnon]

And it can get expensive to actually

[Christos]

like parse it all together.

[Mark Gagnon]

But with Mars Men, it's just all of it in one already done for you. It's made in the USA, it's third party, tested in every batch, and over 91% of users actually report higher energy. Now here's the crazy thing with Mars men. There's a 90 day money back guarantee. 90 days, three months of trying it out. And if it's not for you, you get your money back.

[Christos]

Zero risk.

[Mark Gagnon]

And for a limited time, the people

[Christos]

are listening to this program.

[Mark Gagnon]

You're going to get 50% off for life.

[Christos]

I don't know how often this offer comes around. I don't know why they're doing this.

[Mark Gagnon]

50% off for life. Free shipping and three free gifts@ Mengotomars.com that's Mengotomars.com for 50% off and three

[Christos]

free gifts when you check out.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's also available on Amazon. It really worked for me. I like it.

[Christos]

I still take it because, you know, I like natural supplements and it makes me feel good.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now when they ask where you heard

[Christos]

about it, tell them the good people at Camp Gagnon sent you. It really helps the show more than you know.

[Mark Gagnon]

What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break really quick

[Christos]

because I want to tell you a scary story. Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Specifically for the dudes. All right? Imagine you're going out with your wife.

[Christos]

Okay? You're having some dinner. You know, you get some drinks. The vibes are good.

[Mark Gagnon]

And you go back to your apartment, your house.

[Christos]

The lights are low. You got a little Miguel playing on the radio.

[Mark Gagnon]

And all of a sudden you realize your piece is like, yeah, dude, I'm actually good.

[Christos]

You're like, wait, what?

[Mark Gagnon]

We're ready to go.

[Christos]

And your piece is like, nah, dude, I'm just actually gonna sit this out.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, you're trying everything, all right?

[Christos]

And your wife's just looking at you like, all right, are we gonna do this? And you gotta be like, maybe. Maybe tomorrow.

[Mark Gagnon]

Well, this doesn't have to happen anymore because I want to tell you about bluechew Gold.

[Christos]

Yes.

[Mark Gagnon]

Because this isn't just about showing up physically and being the man that you are. It's about actually being in the moment. Bluechew Gold's new formula combines ingredients that support blood flow and mental arousal. And that's also going to help blood flow flow to your brain. You're probably thinking of funny lines, you know what I mean?

[Christos]

Being. Being cool off the cuff.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's not just performance. It's connection.

[Christos]

All right?

[Mark Gagnon]

And now you're not overthinking. You're not stressed. You're just there and able to be you. Now, if this is a tablet that

[Christos]

dissolves under your tongue and it's really simple and discreet and you can just

[Mark Gagnon]

put it in your wallet or something, that way you are always ready to go. And ladies, if you're listening, send your man the link. Turn him into a trophy husband. Keep him in the house. You know what I mean? A stay at home, house, husband. That's what you want, right? Give it to him and let him

[Christos]

lay it down, all right?

[Mark Gagnon]

No awkward timing, no weird pressure.

[Christos]

Just the confidence you really want.

[Mark Gagnon]

So discover your options right [e-mail]. and we got a special deal for

[Christos]

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[Mark Gagnon]

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[Christos]

podcast and making this show possible. Now, let's get back to it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Crazy enough, things actually get even more unbelievable. So this guy, Dmitri Shostakovich, one of

[Christos]

the greatest composers of the 20th century, was in Leningrad when the siege began. He started composing his seventh symphony during the first weeks of bombardment, writing music while serving as a volunteer firefighter on the roof of the Leningrad Conservatory.

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[Mark Gagnon]

The Soviet authorities eventually evacuated him to

[Christos]

a nearby town now called Samara, where he completed the symphony in December of 1941.

[Mark Gagnon]

The symphony premiered in the town of

[Christos]

Klibashev in March of 1942 and was quickly performed in Moscow as well as London.

[Mark Gagnon]

But Soviet leadership wanted something more powerful, something borderline insane. They wanted the seventh Symphony performed inside

[Christos]

Leningrad itself while it was being besieged. And the task fell on Carl Eliasberg, conductor of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra. But there was an issue. His orchestra was decimated. Many musicians had died of starvation, many were killed in the bombing, and many of them were even evacuated. When Eliasburg gathered these surviving players, only 15 musicians showed up. Barely enough for, you know, an ensemble, let alone a full symphony that required over 80 performers.

[Mark Gagnon]

So the Soviet military recalled musicians from

[Christos]

the frontline units and players were pulled from anti aircraft batteries and infantry positions to fill the orchestra and rehearsals began. But the musicians were so weak from so many weeks of malnutrition that some couldn't even blow into their instruments. Brass players reportedly fainted during practice.

[Mark Gagnon]

Eliasburg himself had to be carried to

[Christos]

rehearsals on a sled because he was just too frail to even walk. And on August 9, 1942, the performance took place. The date was very deliberately chosen. It was the day Hitler had originally planned to celebrate the fall of Leningrad with a banquet at the Hotel Astoria. Instead, the city's loudspeakers broadcasts show Stakovich's 7th Symphony across all of Leningrad and played it directly into the German lines. Before the concert, Soviet artillery launched a massive barrage, what they call Operation Squall, specifically to silence the German guns so that the music could be heard uninterrupted.

[Mark Gagnon]

And for over an hour, the symphony

[Christos]

poured out of the speakers. Across the city, citizens who could barely stand listened in the streets. German soldiers were hearing it from their own trenches. As one account often attributed to a German soldier says, we heard it, and we knew we would never take this city. Whether that exact quote is real or apocryphal or, you know, maybe it's just a part of a legend that grew around the event. The message, the feeling, is very real.

[Mark Gagnon]

The Leningrad Symphony became an international symbol of resistance. A city that couldn't feed itself could still make music.

[Christos]

It could still create art and culture and be this intellectual hub that it always was. And it's not just resilience, it's defiance in the face of evil. And speaking of using art and culture as a mechanism for defiance, there's another story from the siege that absolutely deserves to be told.

[Mark Gagnon]

The Hermitage Museum was one of the

[Christos]

greatest art collections in the world, home to many Rembrandts and da Vinci and Raphael and thousands of other masters.

[Mark Gagnon]

And before the siege fully closed, curators

[Christos]

and volunteers worked desperately to evacuate over 1 million pieces of art east to the Ural Mountains for safekeeping. But then the thousands of museum workers stayed behind in the empty space.

[Mark Gagnon]

And here's the crazy part.

[Christos]

The galleries were stripped completely bare. All that remained were just empty frames hanging on the walls where the paintings used to be.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yet the guides continued to give tours. They would stand in front of these

[Christos]

blank spaces and describe these missing masterpieces just from memory. The brushwork, the composition, the history of each piece, the story. As if the paintings were still there. And visitors would just walk through these empty halls while starving staff would recite the art from memory.

[Mark Gagnon]

And some of those museum workers died

[Christos]

during the siege while guarding a building full of nothing but the frames.

[Mark Gagnon]

But those frames were hope.

[Christos]

In a way. It was a belief.

[Mark Gagnon]

It was a promise that the art

[Christos]

would come back that the city would survive and that the culture that was there was worth preserving, even when the walls were completely barren and the people were starving.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, all of these stories from,

[Christos]

you know, the symphony that played, the seeds that remained uneaten, the empty frames. Leningrad kept insisting on civilization even when the civil world had just abandoned it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Among the millions trapped inside Leningrad was

[Christos]

an 11 year old girl named Tanya Savicheva.

[Mark Gagnon]

Tanya kept a small notebook, barely bigger

[Christos]

than, you know, just like a passport or something.

[Mark Gagnon]

And in it she recorded what was

[Christos]

happening to her and to her family. And the entries are just devastating in how morbid and simple they are. She wrote only dates and names. And here are some of the examples. And I apologize, I don't speak Russian, so if I mispronounce any of these names, it's unintentional. It just says, Xenia died 28th December, 12:30 in the morning, 1941. Next entry. Grandma died 25th January, 3 o', clock, 1942. Lekka died 17th March, 5 o' clock in the morning, 1942. Uncle Vasya died 13th April, 2 o' clock at night, 1942. And the names go on and on and on until there are just three final entries. The Savichevs are dead. The next entry. Everyone is dead. In the final entry, only Tanya is left. Tanya was eventually evacuated from Leningrad, but her health had already been destroyed by the siege. She died of intestinal tuberculosis on July 1, 1944, at the hospital in the town of Shatki. She was only 14 years old at the time.

[Mark Gagnon]

And her diary has become one of

[Christos]

the most recognized symbols of the human cost of the siege. And it sits today in a museum in St. Petersburg. Nine pages that capture the murder of an entire family. I mean, generations of bloodlines just completely wiped off the map. Written in a child's handwriting, a memorial complex on the green belt of glory along the road of life is dedicated to her memory. But the reality is there were thousands of Tanyas. Hundreds of thousands, actually. I mean, children who watched their parents die. Parents who simply watched their children die. Entire families that just vanished from the face of the earth, leaving behind nothing but names and dates on ration cards. Now, the siege didn't end in one single dramatic moment. It wasn't some supernatural force or heroes coming in and saving the day. It was ground down over months and years.

[Mark Gagnon]

And in January 1943, the Soviet military

[Christos]

launched Operation Iskra, or Operation Spark, which punched a narrow corridor through the German lines just south of Lake Ladoga. The gap was only about, you know, a couple miles wide, and it was under constant fire. But it allowed a railway to be built, the so called Road of Victory, which vastly increased the flow of supplies into the city.

[Mark Gagnon]

The full liberation wouldn't come until a year later.

[Christos]

On January 27, 1944, after a massive Soviet offensive pushed German forces back along the entire front, the siege of Leningrad was officially lifted. And that night, the city celebrated with 324 artillery guns firing a 24 salvo salute over the Neva River. 872 days, 2 years, 4 months and 19 days.

[Mark Gagnon]

One of the longest and deadliest sieges

[Christos]

of a major city in modern history. And the numbers are just horrendous to even comprehend even now. Historians estimate that roughly 800,000 to a million civilians perished inside the city itself, with the total death toll, including soldiers and those who died during the evacuations,

[Mark Gagnon]

reaching roughly 1.1 to 1.3 million.

[Christos]

The vast majority of civilian deaths were caused by starvation.

[Mark Gagnon]

And by comparison, the entire British civilian

[Christos]

death toll for all of World War II was roughly 67,000. After the war, Leningrad was awarded the title of Hero City by the Soviet government, one of only 12 cities to receive the honor. The siege became a foundational element of the Soviet identity, proof that the Russian people could endure anything. They could survive anything, overcome anything. And on January 27, it is still commemorated as the day of the lifting of the blockade. And in St. Petersburg, it remains one of the most solemn dates on the entire calendar.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, of course, when looking at a

[Christos]

tragic historical event, there's always a question, right? Like, what could they have done? What else could they have done? Is there anything they could have done differently? I mean, was there a way to negotiate? Was there a way to maybe find a way out? Well, not really, Right?

[Mark Gagnon]

Hitler's own directive suggested that surrender wouldn't

[Christos]

have been accepted anyway. The plan was extermination. There was never supposed to be an occupation.

[Mark Gagnon]

Some historians argue that the defense of Leningrad tied down so many German forces

[Christos]

that could have been redeployed to Moscow or to the southern front, and as a result, actually contributed to the broader Soviet survival. Others point out that Stalin's refusal to evacuate the city early, when it was still somewhat possible, was a massive catastrophic failure that certainly cost countless of lives. But here's what I keep noticing when doing research for this story.

[Mark Gagnon]

The scientists who guard the seeds so

[Christos]

that, you know, they could be preserved for all of humanity and never ate them. The musicians who played a symphony that, you know, they could barely Even breathe through.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, a little girl who kept

[Christos]

recording the dates and the times of her family's deaths because she just didn't know what else to do. The truck drivers who crossed a frozen lake with their doors open, knowing that at any moment they could just be dropped to the bottom of a cold, cold body of water.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, none of these people were

[Christos]

generals or politicians or, like, you know, like, even soldiers.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, obviously, there's many soldiers, but most

[Christos]

of the people we're talking about were

[Mark Gagnon]

none of these big, you know, top

[Christos]

brass making grand strategic calculations.

[Mark Gagnon]

They were just ordinary people caught in

[Christos]

this monstrous human calamity. And they found ways to take some autonomy, and they asserted their humanity in the face of deliberate dehumanization.

[Mark Gagnon]

And the siege of Leningrad isn't just

[Christos]

a story about war. Of course. It's a story about what happens when,

[Mark Gagnon]

you know, a system when evil is

[Christos]

sort of mechanized and you have these purely rational, bureaucratic evil dictators basically deciding that 3 million people should just not exist.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's like, it's confounding, and it's difficult

[Christos]

to even really process how, you know, 3 million people that all had lives and their own opinions and just like you and I liked art and sports and music and, you know, eating dinner with their friends and family were just going to be decimated.

[Mark Gagnon]

And instead, they. Those same people responded with strength and

[Christos]

courage and a national pride to not be defeated.

[Mark Gagnon]

And to me, that's kind of the

[Christos]

most morbid but beautiful part, you know,

[Mark Gagnon]

that even beyond the war, the politics or anything like that, it shows us

[Christos]

what it means to insist on being human and perseverance and to keep giving tours in the museum when all hope is lost, to protect the seeds for

[Mark Gagnon]

the betterment of humanity, even at your

[Christos]

own expense, and to continue to create art and music and try to inject beauty into the most tragic and awful situations, because what else can you do, you know? Because to me, like, that's even more than survival. It's a general resistance to evil, and it's a showcasing of the beauty of humanity even in the darkest hour.

[Mark Gagnon]

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an

[Christos]

abridged history of the siege of Leningrad.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, once again, like, I always

[Christos]

think about, like, this. It's going to sound kind of dumb, but. Mr. Rogers, quote, an alumni of my college. Let the record show it's a beautiful

[Podcast Guest or Additional Commentator]

day in the neighborhood.

[Mark Gagnon]

Not that one. That is not the quote.

[Christos]

It is not a beautiful day, Christos. It's a terrible day in Leningrad.

[Mark Gagnon]

But looking at disaster and, sure, you

[Christos]

can look at a disaster. And you can look at a calamity and the most awful things that human beings do and we should focus on the terrible parts.

[Mark Gagnon]

But simultaneously, in order to preserve your

[Christos]

own well being, look at the people that are helping.

[Mark Gagnon]

Look at the people that are spending

[Christos]

their time and risking their lives to do what they can to help. A situation, even if it's something small or trivial in the moment, like playing a symphony, might not seem like it's going to really help that much, or it's something massive. Literally foregoing your own sustenance in order to preserve scientific research for all of humanity. Doing something rather than nothing is the thing that I always look at in these kind of situations. The people that helped, and I'm sure there's countless other stories that never got recorded of people sacrificing in their own lives for their families, their friends, people that they didn't even know. And those people get lost to history, but we didn't forget them.

[Podcast Guest or Additional Commentator]

There's got to be a psychological thing about having sustained all this torture of like hunger and everything else where they're like, no, we're going to end up on the right side of history here.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, I mean, probably. I mean, I also think like the,

[Christos]

like, there's a Russian ethic and a Russian pride that I think stems from moments like this. Of course, the totality of World War II is probably part of it, but

[Mark Gagnon]

like withstanding this type of brutal, you

[Christos]

know, torment and evil and effectively like a genocide in a way. I don't even know if it's classified as a genocide in the broad sense, because, yeah, I wonder if it would, I mean technically.

[Mark Gagnon]

But by resisting that and trying to

[Christos]

like, not only survive but to thrive in the way that they could, showcases something like that is so embedded into what it means to be Russian. You're saying it's not classified as a genocide?

[Podcast Guest or Additional Commentator]

No, not general.

[Mark Gagnon]

Because it's not ethnic.

[Christos]

Ethnic. Is that the reason?

[Podcast Guest or Additional Commentator]

Under the U. N. Definition, genocide requires an intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

[Christos]

Right. So I guess they weren't trying to go, ah, I'm curious. I feel like, yeah, I mean, I guess that. Were they going after him because they were Russian?

[Podcast Guest or Additional Commentator]

I think it was like a personal thing with Hitler. It's what it makes it seem like. And then others classify it as a war crime, a crime against humanity.

[Christos]

I mean, certainly a war crime. I mean they're targeting like, you know, like food reserves and you know, like seed silos and stuff like that. Right. Like if you're trying to disrupt, like, a people's ability to feed themselves like just civilians, I mean, that's obviously a war crime.

[Podcast Guest or Additional Commentator]

It was tied more to strategic, slash, political destruction of a city and the Soviet population than to eliminating a specific protected ethnic group.

[Mark Gagnon]

I see.

[Christos]

That makes sense.

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[Mark Gagnon]

No photos, please. I'm just a regular dad who happens to have a stylist. I really look my best when someone

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[Christos]

Hey, we can all see you two way mirrors.

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[Christos]

I'm coming in for a hug. Yeah, I get that.

[Mark Gagnon]

So I mean all that to say

[Christos]

it is a. Yeah, it's a just a tragic moment in history. But again, when looking at these horribly morbid tales, I really try to focus on the good and what good is there, if there is any good. And oftentimes the bad largely outweighs the good. But I don't know, it just gives me, like, a little bit of pride to see human beings trying to be good, even in these types of moments, even the stories that we don't know about. And, yeah, I mean, the Russians are. These are badass, dude.

[Mark Gagnon]

Like, they are.

[Christos]

They are tough people. And I don't think they were tough because of this. I think they're tough. And this also happened, and they continued to be tough and showed off their resilience. But it's. Yeah, one of these stories that. It just makes you glad that I'm not living in that type of situation. You know what I mean? Like, as a new father, the idea of, like, having to, like. Like, many women had new babies in that time, and they were like, what do I do? And it's these types of things. Like, I've become so soft since having a kid. Oh, my gosh, I can't even handle it.

[Podcast Guest or Additional Commentator]

A little tear on the monitor here. No, no, no, no.

[Christos]

Come on, dude, don't be crazy. I'm Russian. No, I'm culturally Russian.

[Mark Gagnon]

Sometimes. I actually went to.

[Christos]

I was in France one time and a guy thought I was Russian, came up to me, started speaking pure Russian. So just off my face alone.

[Podcast Guest or Additional Commentator]

And what'd you say?

[Christos]

Spasiba. Really?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, dude.

[Christos]

I hit him with a little bit. But I'm curious what you guys think if you're Russian, Russian history, if you have Russian lineage, if you've heard of

[Mark Gagnon]

the story through your own family's tales

[Christos]

and accounts, or this is something you've read about. I'd love to know if there's anything I missed or overlooked. Again, I'm not a historian. I'm just a comedian with a great team that helps me research as well as a WI FI connection to help me do of Deep Dive on my own. But if there's anything I missed, please let me know. If there's future topics we should cover, please drop a comment.

[Mark Gagnon]

If there's anything you learned here that

[Christos]

you didn't know, I would love to know what that is. YouTube, Spotify. I read all the comments, so please don't hesitate to hit me up. I would love to know what you're thinking. Also, if you like religious content, I have great news. We have Religion Camp where we deep dive on every religion that's ever happened

[Mark Gagnon]

under and over the sun.

[Christos]

And if you like deep dives and other kind of crazy stuff going on right now, whether it's a cult, conspiracy, mystical, all that happens at Camp Gagnon. I also do great interviews with people way smarter than me that that actually know what they're talking about. And if you just like the history vibe. Well, great news. We drop these episodes every single week and I hope you subscribe, tune in and join us in the tent for another deep dive into everything that's ever happened. God bless you all. Thank you so much for making this show possible and I will see you in the future to talk about the past.

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