In addition, the German high command intended the deployment of troops in the region to cover the northern flank of the parallel offensive that the Third Reich was launching towards Moscow at that time and also to link up with the allied forces in Finland.

[1][3] Operation Barbarossa, the name given to the German plan to invade the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, was conceived as an eastward offensive in three directions: Leningrad, Smolensk and Ukraine.

[4] Four days later, Finland joined the German offensive, in response to Soviet preventive bombing and with the intention of recovering the ground lost in the Winter War of 1939-1940.

[6][7] After the capture of Shlisselburg on September 8, the city, besieged by Finns and Germans, had been separated from the rest of the Soviet Union, maintaining as its only link the waters of Lake Ladoga.

[8] Although Leningrad, cradle of the October Revolution, was in the eyes of Nazism an important symbolic objective to be destroyed, the Germans found themselves at the arrival of autumn weakened and unable to assault it, with an enemy refusing to surrender and still supplied both by air and via the Lake Ladoga.

[17] The maneuver planned for this group consisted of a strong advance on two axes: Malaya Vishera to the north and, further south, the route that crossed the Msta River to the east of Novgorod.

The group was disbanded on November 14, returning its units to the XXXVIII Corps of Friedrich-Wilhelm von Chappuis and bequeathing positions in the bridgehead difficult to maintain.

[22] The Stavka, before the advance to Tikhvin, ordered a new counterattack of the 4th Army, in which it would employ two shock groups of two divisions each, towards the increasingly closer mechanized forces of Schmidt.

The poor results and the difficult situation in Tikhvin forced the Stavka to redirect the effort of the 54th Army to the east, ending the hopes of lifting the encirclement before 42.

Reinforced, von Boeckmann maintained an attack from 28 October that succeeded in pushing the Soviet 4th Army eastward, separating it from the 54th, which was defending the axis to the Ladoga, and reaching the Volkhov suburbs on 8 November.

This change in the weather had transformed the situation on the front: roads muddied by the effects of rasputitsa were now icy, restoring operational mobility to the armies; rivers, once difficult to ford, had been frozen, allowing infantry to cross them.

[12][note 5] To this should be added the impact of the unexpected Soviet tenacity, the enormous human losses suffered and the poor winter material on the German morale, which was beginning to falter.

With better winter equipment and newly arrived reserves, the Red Army was, in this new situation, prepared to strike back in the form of a counterattack from all points against the German salient.

[28] It was at this time that the three shock groups of the 4th Army attacked Tikhvin, beginning a slow advance over the snow and in the face of a fierce German defense, which would reach the outskirts of the city on December 7.

[note 9] German units were precariously holding the axis to the city; but the situation, worsened by weather that was literally decimating their forces, had become desperate by early December: Meretskov had succeeded in penetrating the railroad line south of Tikhvin.

[28] After the assault on the eastern bank of the Volkhov in October, the Blue Division had managed to form a bridgehead of about 5 km and also connect with the German forces advancing further north, at Shevelevo.

The Spanish bridgehead, having stagnated since the heavy fighting in the unsuccessful assault on the fortified position of the "Barracks", grew again when it replaced the 30th Regiment of the 18th Motorized at Possad on November 8.

[28] The situation had become complicated for the Spaniards, as they now had to defend a position that could only be reached by crossing a 10 km road through a forest with a strong partisan and Red Army presence.

With most of the division defending the Volkhov and Lake Ilmen (which would soon be passable on ice), Agustín Muñoz Grandes, general of the 250th, could only count on two battalions for the defense of the surrendered positions.

[...] The mission of the army group is to defend this line to the last man, not to take a single step back, while continuing to besiege Leningrad.Faced with the impossibility of maintaining the positions in the sector, Wilhelm von Leeb ordered the withdrawal during the night of December 7, hours before Hitler gave his approval.

Meretskov would pursue Schmidt's motorized corps for the next few days, although the Germans would slow the pursuit by establishing a temporary defense in an intermediate marshy area near Budogosh.

The Red Army would spend the rest of the month trying, with little success, to form bridgeheads on the western bank of the Volkhov to prepare the ground for future offensives.

Although heavy casualties had been inflicted on the Red Army, the reality was that Leningrad remained under Soviet control and that the Wehrmacht had been unable to cut off the supply routes over Lake Ladoga.

Army Group North would spend the remainder of the war in the background of the eastern front, no longer conducting offensives and having low priority when it came to receiving reinforcements.

[36] Manstein, who had just been promoted to Marshal for his success in the siege of Sevastopol, would be caught up in a new Stavka attempt to liberate the city, the Sinyavino offensive, which would leave him unable to improve the situation in Leningrad.

[37][39] After the frustrated Lyuban offensive, the front would remain stable until 1944, when the Army Group North, now under the command of Walter Model, retreated west of Lake Peipus, behind the Panther line, abandoning the region due to the collapse of its defensive system.