Know Thyself

Cutting off a city from supplies, food and water and waiting for its inhabitants to succumb and surrender is a brutally effective form of ancient warfare.  But the deadliest siege in history occurred in the modern era, when Operation Barbarossa brought thousands of Nazi tanks to the walls of Leningrad. They surrounded the city for 872 days, killing hundreds of thousands and forcing the inhabitants to survive any way they could. And in this case, there were thousands of literate inhabitants who kept journals, documenting first hand the horrors that ensued. A heart wrenching account of misery on the grand scale. Then we go back to 1098 at Ma'arra, when Christian Crusaders overran the Syrian city, only to realize there was not enough food to keep an army marching... Finally, there are times when Mother Nature lays siege on all of us. We summarize a few of the deadliest famines in history.