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What if instead of taking on Sevastopol in June-July 1942 instead Operation Nordlicht, the attack on Leningrad that was planned but never executed, is run instead? As it was there was little reason to go after Sevastopol other than the prestige of taking it down and some irrational fears of it being used as a base for bombing Ploesti, but as a Russian poster mentioned on another forum that the water supply was running out for Sevastopol anyway and they'd have to surrender in about a month as it was, there was no point to do more than screen the fort until it quit, something the Romanians and a few German divisions could have handled with support from various Axis naval and anti-shipping air units. This of course is assuming Kerch has been secured as it was IOTL in May 1942.

After Sevastopol was taken down IOTL it took about a month to redeploy north starting in July of 4 divisions of Manstein's 11th army, which delayed the original planned attack on Leningrad from July until the end of August, but then a Soviet offensive preempted the German offensive on Leningrad. ITTL instead of waiting until July to start redeploying right after Kerch is secured by May 20th German forces start redeploying to Leningrad, so are in place and ready to attack by mid-July, 6 weeks before the Soviet offensive to relieve Leningrad (which failed IOTL, but caused Hitler to order 11th army to launch a counteroffensive against a bulge punched in German lines and ate up the resources for the Leningrad offensive). So no later than July 23rd the German offensive against Leningrad would start.

There is a great map of the planned offensive in the Osprey campaign book on the Leningrad siege, which I will attach, but the crux of it was that Manstein understood that Soviet forces in the Leningrad pocket were weakened badly by starvation, but were still too formidable to attack directly in the city, so his plan was to grab key terrain features so that he could cross the Neva River and capture the supply route linking Soviet defenders with supply over Lake Ladoga, which would very quickly starve out the city and force it to surrender or die en masse. It seemed like a solid plan that would have succeeded provided it could happen before the Soviets could launch their relief offensive and distract from the plan. With Leningrad falling in 1942 then, even if the Soviets launch their historical relief offensive in August, the Axis forces in the area would be too strong and the Soviet offensive would fail as per OTL. Then the Axis forces freed up from Leningrad, hundreds of thousands of men actually including the Finns and forces locked down fighting the Soviet fleet in the Baltic, could then cut off and take out Murmansk and permanently end the Northern Lend-Lease route as well as shut down the Finnish front; that would free up something like 300k Germans engaged in Karelia/Leningrad for other operations, plus given them great supply lines through Leningrad and all the quality airfields around Leningrad.

What impact would it have had on the rest of the conflict and on the Soviets to lose Leningrad (and Murmansk/Arctic route Lend-Lease, plus have Sevastopol surrender in July-August due to lack of water)?

I'm attaching a map of the plan for you all to critique
Nordlicht.jpg
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