No. 1. "All foodstuffs" of Leningrad burned down at the Badayev warehouses
In fact, only 3,000 tons of flour and 2,500 tons of sugar were stored in the Badayev warehouses, which burned down as a result of the air strikes on September 8 and 10, 1941. According to the supply standards in force in Leningrad at that time, these reserves would have been enough for only three days. Moreover, about 1,000 tons of burnt flour and about the same amount of sugar were promptly collected at the site of the fire, which were processed at food enterprises and put into circulation.
No. 2. Stencil inscriptions in St. Petersburg “Citizens! This side of the street is most dangerous during shelling."
The original wartime warning notices have not survived. The currently existing memorial inscriptions were recreated in the 1960s-1970s as a tribute to the heroism of the blockaded Leningraders. By the way, the first such inscriptions appeared in the city during the Soviet-Finnish war in case of possible shelling from the Karelian Isthmus. After all, then the border with Finland passed only 21 kilometers (!) From Leningrad.
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№ 3. The Nazis were so confident in their victory that they printed in advance invitations to the gala dinner at the Astoria Hotel on the occasion of the capture of the city
Preparations for such a "banquet" were first discussed in the spring of 1942, and at the suggestion of journalists this legend turned out to be surprisingly tenacious. However, there is not a single "material" evidence (genuine copy of the invitation) to confirm it. But the special passes pre-printed by the Germans, giving the right to enter Leningrad, really survived. Including in museums.
No. 4. If the city had been surrendered to the Germans, the number of civilian casualties would have been several times less
It is difficult to talk about history in the subjunctive mood, but here are just two "telling examples." In the Nazi-occupied Pushkin (Tsarskoe Selo), in percentage terms, more people died from hunger and executions than in Leningrad. And in Gatchina, where almost 40 thousand people lived before the war, only about three hundred survived the fascist occupation.
№ 5. The Leningrad blockade lasted 900 days and nights
Using the calendar, it is easy to calculate that the blockade of Leningrad lasted 872 days (from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944). Subsequently, the "final" figure was simply rounded.
№ 6. Tanya Savicheva died in besieged Leningrad with her whole family
“Everyone died. There is only Tanya left”- this is a quote from the famous blockade diary of Savicheva. Tanya died of dystrophy on July 1, 1944 in the evacuation, in the village of Shatki, Gorky Region. She did not know that her older brother Misha survived, who by the beginning of the war lived in a village near Pskov (later he ended up in a partisan detachment and lived safely until the end of the war), and her sister Nina, who was evacuated from the besieged city on the last day of February 1942 together with the employees of the enterprise where she worked.
No. 7. The legendary Seventh Symphony by Dmitry Shostakovich was written in the besieged city
In fact, the composer began composing Symphony No. 7, later called "Leningrad", back in 1940. In the summer of 1941, in Leningrad, Shostakovich wrote the second part of it and began work on the third. However, on October 1, the composer and his family were taken out of Leningrad and, after a short stay in Moscow, went to evacuate to Kuibyshev. It was in this city that the famous "Leningrad" symphony was completed on December 27, 1941.
№ 8. The Finns, led by Mannerheim, in the months of the war reached exclusively the old Soviet-Finnish border, "taking their own", stopped, not claiming more
In fact, the Finns reached exactly the place to which the Red Army "allowed" them. Finnish troops occupied Soviet territory in the Olonets region up to the Svir River, and crossed the 1939 border on the Karelian Isthmus in the Lembolovo region, deepening 15 kilometers into Soviet territory. Moreover, by agreement with Germany, in the event of the victory of the Third Reich, the border of the future Finland was planned to be drawn even further - to the rivers Neva and Svir, and the city of Lenin was to simply be wiped off the face of the earth.