On September 18, the defenders of Leningrad saw in the distance the tanks of the German 4th Panzer Group being loaded onto trains for transport to the Moscow front. This was the first clear sign that there would not be a direct assault on Leningrad.
The bombing that was taking place was not something preparatory to an attack - it was the strategy.
‘Petersburg — the poisonous nest from which, for so long, Asiatic venom has spewed forth into the Baltic — must vanish from the earth's surface.’
Leningrad, almost completely encircled on the 8th September, would be besieged and bombed not in an attempt to make the city surrender but in order to kill the people within it.
