Winter Battles

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The P-40B (Tomahawk II) enters combat with the Soviet 126th Fighter Aviation Regiment.

 

Soviet P-40 in 1942 "

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Soviet troops of 51st Army, 9th Independent Army and Separate Coastal Army holding the pocket at Odessa break contact with the Romanian troops surrounding the city and head to troop transports. This is the 72nd day of the siege, a far longer period of time than anyone expected.

 

Romanian troops entering Odessa October 1941

- Having successfully evacuated 86,000 troops so far, the Soviets bring off another 35,000 men from Odessa. Casulaties are between 40,000 and 60,000. Romanian losses are 17,729 dead, 63,345 wounded, and 11,471 missing.

 

Forţele Aeriene Române Heinkel operating in Bessarabia 1941

• With Romanian war aims achieved, expanded to take Odessa at German request, Romania will demobilize more than a third of the army in order to prevent collapse of the economy. Romania will develop its new 44,000 square kilometer Transnistria Governorate which has a population of 2.3 million, beginning a process of Romanization and deportation or killing of Jews and Romani people. 34,000 Jews will be killed in Odessa alone before the end of the month."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• XXXVIII and XXXIX Panzerkorps attack on the Volkhov Front, targeting the junction of Fourth and Fifty-second Armies.

• Soviet resistance ends in the Vyazma pocket, with 650,000 prisoners taken and 1,200 tanks plus 5,400 artillery pieces captured. One Sergeant who had been wounded and evacuated becomes obsessed with designing better weapons than the old rifles and short ranged submachine guns the men are using. Mikhail Kalashnikov will begin working on designs while recovering.

 

Red Army soldiers captured at Vyazma

 

"Kalashnikov and Eugene Stoner hold the rifles they designed, taken May 1990"

"• 4,500 Jews are killed in Lubny, Ukraine.

Jewish people awaiting their murder at Lubny Ukraine 16 October 1941"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Assuming that the German forces that took Kalinin NW of Moscow are reconnaissance units, Konstantin Rokossovsky orders the 21st Tank Brigade to counterattack and retake it at once. There will be no artillery or air support. Unfortunately for the Soviets, Kalinin is held by approximately 10,000 Germans, mostly from the 36. Infanterie Division along with two Panzer battalions and one assault gun battalion from 1. Panzer Division. The brigade commander orders Major Mikhail Lukin of the 21st Tank Regiment to make the assault with twenty-seven T-34 and eight T-60 tanks. A number of the tanks are the T-34/57 variant with a ZiS-4 high velocity 57mm anti-tank gun replacing the 76mm gun. No infantry support are available except for the few riding on the tanks. The brigade’s motorized infantry battalion and the other tank regiment (equipped with BT-2, BT-5, and BT-7 tanks) follow to protect the flanks. The Soviets encounter a German convoy of trucks and half-tracks bound for Kalinin, and Major Lukin orders his tankers to hold fire and follow, allowing them to get closer to Kalinin without raising the alarm. Once noticed, they open fire and shoot up the convoy while a two pronged attack is made on Kalinin. During this advance the Soviet tank riders are either thrown from the speeding tanks or bail out. One tank group overruns the airfield and wrecks sixteen aircraft, most of them Ju-52 transports. They are then counter-attacked by 660. Sturmgeschütz-Bataillon. Taking losses from artillery and anti-aircraft gun fire, and with his gun damaged, Lieutenant Dimitry Lutsenko rams a StuG-III at full speed, immobilizing both vehicles.

- The crew is captured and sent to a POW camp except for Lutsenko, who is taken aside by the Germans and summarily shot.

- The other group under Major Lukin encounters a screen of anti-tank guns and artillery. Lukin’s T-34/57 is knocked out by 105mm fire, trundling into a ditch. An estimated eight tanks make it into Kalinin itself, destroying at least one Panzer-III on the way and damaging the train station, but with no infantry are at a disadvantage with the large number of Germans in the buildings firing at them. With the position untenable, the survivors fall back to Grishkino. Soviet losses are twenty-one T-34s and one T-60.

 

Lutsenko's T-34-76 and the StuG-III he rammed

 

Major Lukins' T-34-57 after the battle."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• At Volokolamsk, the northwest end of the Mozhaysk defensive line, newly arrived Soviet 316th Rifle Division (composed of 90% Kazakh and Kirgiz troops) is key to halting the latest attack by 4. Panzerarmee. Meanwhile, German troops have fought into Mozhaisk itself and other formations are flanking the Soviet line.

• In Moscow, Lavrentiy Beria advises that the government should evacuate the capital “or they will strangle us like chickens”, but Stalin rejects it. He does authorize government organs to relocate but decrees that he, Molotov, Beria, and Malenkov will stay.

• The last Lisunov Li-2 rolls off the assembly line at Aircraft Factory No 84 at Khimki, just northwest of Moscow. The Soviet Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) had purchased nineteen DC-3 airliners from Douglas Aircraft in the mid-1930s and subsequently a license to build their own aircraft based on it with blueprints, technical support, and manufacturing guidance from Douglas. Designer Boris Lisunov travelled to the Douglas plant in Santa Monica California to study and on return began his conversion of the DC-3 to the Li-2 though more than 1,200 changes to the design, primarily the measurement conversions from Imperial to Metric and housing Soviet built Shvetsov engines.

 

- With the Germans approaching, the Soviets pack up the entire factory and rail transport it to Tashkent in Uzbekistan, more than 2,000 miles away. The first Li-2 will roll off the new line on January 7th, 1942, less than three months from now. During the transition Boris Lisunov will incorporate some design modifications making it extremely easy to produce variants on the same line, incorporating defensive turret and waist guns, bomb racks if desired, strengthened floor for troop carrying, photo-reconnaissance gear, etc. All total around 5,000 Li-2s will be built.

 

Li-2 Bomber Variant"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Stalin declares Moscow to be in a state of siege. "

 

[Around 80 years ago today] "• Exact date uncertain: The first draft of Professor Konrad Meyer’s ‘Generalplan Ost’ was presented to Heinrich Himmler in the summer of 1941. This month it is decided to expand it to facilitate destruction of Poland as a nation and a people.

- The Generalplan proceeds from the assumption that integration of Eastern European territory into Greater Germany requires the removal of the native populations, and not just the Jews and other undesirables. 83% of the population of Poland, 64% of Ukraine, 75% of Russia and Byelorussia, 50% of Estonia and Latvia, and 85% of Lithuania are to be “removed” over a 25 year period.

- These lands are to be settled by at least 10 million Germans in vast privately owned latifunda tracts worked mostly by slave labor.

Krychów forced labor camp in Poland.

- During discussions, Hitler will several times compare the Generalplan Ost to the United States’ ‘taming’ of the American West. He declares that the Volga will be Germany’s Mississippi River.

- The new draft of the plan is due at the end of the year."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• In an effort to combat the spread of venereal disease in the military, SS, Gestapo, and Wehrmacht units step up the kidnapping raids of Polish and Soviet women aged 15 to 25 for slave work in German military brothels. More than 34,000 women will be forced to work in these brothels."

 

From wikipedia: According to records, at least 34,140 European women were forced to serve as prostitutes during the German occupation of their own countries along with female prisoners of concentration camp brothels.^[1] In many cases in Eastern Europe, teenage girls and women were kidnapped on the streets of occupied cities during German military and police round ups called łapanka in Polish or rafle in French.^[3][4][5]

======

Just to keep an even hand, it should be notated that the US occupation forces in Japan kept some Korean slave brothels open for their own use into 1946, encouraged by the Japanese to prevent Japanese women from prostituting themselves to occupiers.

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• At Kharakov, the workers at the massive Kramatorsk heavy-machine factory finish packing the last of their factory onto rail cars for the journey east. The men unable to find places on the train walk 32 kilometers to the nearest railhead to find transport there. By that time the leading German elements are 11 kilometers behind them.

• During the evacuation from Odessa, the Soviets had destroyed and booby trapped much of the city. Today, a time bomb planted by the NKVD detonates in a large building deliberately left intact, killing the entire headquarters staff of the Romanian 10 Divisia Infanterie, including General–maior Ion Glogojeanu and four German naval officers. The building had been checked by military engineers but the explosives had not been detected. Blaming the Jews and communists, Romanian and German troops will round up and execute 5,000 civilians.

• Since entering the war, Romanian forces have captured more than seven hundred Soviet 45mm anti-tank guns [with improvements, this gun will remain the most numerous AT gun used by the Soviets through the rest of the war. While that seems amazing, considering that the gun could not penetrate the armor of most tanks of 1942 design or later, except at close range and/or with hyper-velocity ammo, the Germans also had trouble replacing their 3.7cm AT gun, which continued into 1944 as the most numerous AT gun in the German arsenal]. Factories in Romania begin manufacturing spare parts and ammunition to keep them in service to address this critical lack.

 

 

Odessa port after Soviet withdrawal.

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today from Wikipedia] "Subsequently, Viktor Vasilevich Talalikhin [famous for ramming a German bomber over Moscow and surviving] began flying the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3. On 27 October, he led a mixed group of two MiG-3s and six I-16s in an action over Podolsk, covering ground troops. Near the village of Kamenka, he descended to attack German positions, but the Soviet aircraft were ambushed by six Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters attacking from a higher altitude. Talalikhin claimed two Messerschmitt Bf 109s before being shot down and killed by another."

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Germans provide Finland with fifteen Do-17Z bombers. They will replace the Mark-I Blenheims in LLv.46 (46th Squadron), and conduct mostly night missions due to the vulnerability of the Dorniers to Soviet fighters.

 

Ilmavoimat Do-17Z

 

• Committed pacifist and conscientious objector Arndt Pekurinen, the founder of the Finnish Anti-militarist League, is executed without trial near the front-line after he refuses to wear a uniform and carry a rifle. The first two soldiers ordered to shoot him refuse, but the third complies. Today there is a park in Helsinki named in his honor.

 

Arndt Pekurinen and family"

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• With the sound of artillery audible in the distance, Stalin gives a speech in the Mayakovskaya Metro Station:

 

- In this speech or a later one today he also states:
 

• “The enemy has seized a large part of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldavia Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia and a number of other regions, has forced his way into the Donets Basin, hangs like a black cloud over Leningrad and is threatening our glorious capital, Moscow.”

• “Modern war is a war of machines. The war will be won by the one who has an overwhelming superiority on the output of machines. This is one of the fundamental reasons for the inevitable doom of the predatory Nazi imperialism. Our task is now revenge.”

• Soviet hospital ship Armenia evacuates the main naval hospital at Sevastopol, bringing out 5,498 wounded troops and medical personnel."

 

[Elsewhere]

 

"Jewish residents of Rivne, Ukraine who have been classified as "old and infirm" with their luggage on the way to collection points. They are to be taken to the Sosenki forest outside of Rivne and massacred over the next two days along with about 15,000-18,000 others"

[Vig]

On 10/12/2021 at 2:13 PM, cardboard_killer said:

[80 years ago today] "• The P-40B (Tomahawk II) enters combat with the Soviet 126th Fighter Aviation Regiment.

 

Soviet P-40 in 1942 "

I will trade you ten Wunderwaffen for one P-40B or C!

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• U-753 attacks Soviet minelayer Jushar at the entrance to the White Sea, but sinks escorting minesweeping trawler T-889 instead. There are no survivors.

• While working up in the Baltic, U-153 and U-583 collide. The latter sinks with all hands and U-153 is delayed entering service for about six months.

• With the ground freezing, the Germans renew the offensive on Moscow with 51 divisions.

Civilians digging ditches in Moscow, 15 November 1941

• Soviet battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna shells German and Romanian troops south of Sevastopol. She will repeat the bombardments on the 23rd, 25th, 28th, and 29th.

Parizhskaya Kommuna firing"

 

"Reich Commissioner for Ostland Hinrich Lohse [Lohse was sentenced in 1948 to 10 years in prison, but was released in 1951 due to illness; he died in 1964] writes to Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for Eastern Territories, about his recent activities:"

 

Quote

 

I stopped the wild shootings of Jews in Libau because it was done in an irresponsible manner. I must ask if your inquiry from October 31 is to be interpreted to mean that all Jews in the East should be liquidated? Should this occur without regard to age, gender, and economic considerations?...  

The elimination of Jews from the East is of course an urgent mission, but their liquidation must surely be reconciled with the necessities of the war economy.

 

 

 

[cardboard_killer]

 

• German Luftwaffe III./KG 4 arrived at Pskov [from the Mediterranean]

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• This British newsreel is shown in November and December, having been filmed earlier in the year [MiG-3, I-153, R-5, I-16, SB and a downed Ju-88 with grisly picture of German crewman]:

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Ambassador Constantin Smetanin and Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō confirm a tacit agreement that the Soviet Union and Japan will remain neutral towards each other in event of war between Japan and the Western Allies.

 

• Stalin approves the plan by Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov for the Soviet winter counter-offensive.

 

• SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger submits his report today, which is a tally sheet of actions by Einsatzkommando 3, noting that his Einsatzgruppen, operating in Lithuania, had killed 57,338 Jewish men, 48,592 Jewish women, 29,461 Jewish children, and 2,058 others since the 4th of July, 1941. Chronicling the travels from town to town and systematic murders, it is the most comprehensive report to have survived the late war document destructions of the Nazi regime.

 

- The report ends with: “I consider the Jewish action more or less terminated as far as Einsatzkommando 3 is concerned. Those working Jews and Jewesses still available are needed urgently and I can envisage that after the winter this workforce will be required even more urgently. I am of the view that the sterilization program of the male worker Jews should be started immediately so that reproduction is prevented. If despite sterilization a Jewess becomes pregnant she will be liquidated.”

 

- Tabulation can be found here: https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DocJager.htm

 

- Jäger will go underground as a farmhand, and not be caught until 1959. He will commit suicide while awaiting trial."

Edited December 1, 2021 by cardboard_killer

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Finnish submarine Vetehinen makes an attack on the last Soviet convoy evacuating troops from Hanko, but no hits are made. 7,500 ton transport Iosif Stalin is carrying 5,589 men when she is mined. The transport drifts into range of Finnish coast artillery and a 12” shell detonates an ammunition locker for the stern gun, blowing apart the stern. Soviet minesweepers attempt to tow the ship but are unable to make headway. Along with patrol boats, they rescue 1,740 of the survivors under fire during which minesweeper Virsaitis is mined and sunk, before the convoy is forced to continue on. Iosif Stalin drifts and grounds on the Estonian shore where an estimated 3,000 survivors are taken prisoner.

 

Иосиф Сталин aground"

[Robli]

1 hour ago, cardboard_killer said:

7,500 ton transport Iosif Stalin is carrying 5,589 men when she is mined.

 

I remember reading a story about this ship some time ago. According to that it ran into Soviet minefield and was struck by a mine that disabled it's rudder, then it just drifted deeper into the minefield and was struck by three more mines, so that it's bow and stern both fell off, but remained afloat, due to timely closing of water-sealing walls. Then it was also hit by Finnish coast artillery. Then there was big panic on the ship with lots of people jumping to water and also many being shot by ship's guard soldiers. 1740 were rescued by the Soviets and something like 1000-2000 drowned, exact number was unclear. Soviets did not want the ship with that name to be captured by Germans, so once rescue was no longer possible, the ship's captain got an order to open the water-sealing doors to sink the ship, but he refused to obey. Then Soviet submarines were ordered to sink the ship, but the order was cancelled at the last moment. During the 8 hour drift towards Estonia, some barges were made and some people left the ship on these barges. When the ship finally ran aground in Estonia, about 1800 people still on board were taken prisoner's of war. 400 of them were handed over to Finland to use for rebuild Hanko.

Captain of the ship was also one of the POW's and was held in a camp near Tallinn, Estonia. He was shot by the Soviets after the war for treason.

[cardboard_killer]

[Additionally, 80 years ago today] "• After discussions with his Generals, Hitler agrees to halt the drive on Moscow. The official reason given is to be because of winter weather. He orders 2. Fliegerkorps transferred from the Russian Front to the Mediterranean to help neutralize Malta and stop the ruinous attacks on Axis shipping. German intelligence indicates that the Soviets have no reserves left and will be unable to launch a counteroffensive.

 

Soviet Il-2s near Moscow - December 1941

 

KV-1 crossing the Volga at Kalinin NW of Moscow December 1941"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today]"• The Soviet Thirtieth Army cuts the Klin/Kalinin road, threatening to surround the 3. Panzergruppe. Soviet Sixteenth Army attacks Istra causing 4. Panzergruppe to fall back to prevent being trapped. German units began making hasty withdrawals to prevent encirclement, abandoning large amounts of immobilized equipment in the process.

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Soviet forces liberate Tikhvin, Venev, Fedorovka, and Yelets. 18. Armee is forced back to Volkhov, while 2. Armee loses contact with 2. Panzergruppe, creating a gap that is exploited by Soviet V Cavalry Corps.

 

- This newsreel will come out in January, but covers 1941 events including Leningrad coastal artillery, RAF No 151 Wing’s return to the UK, formation of Polish Armed Forces in the East, and the Soviet winter offensive:

 

 

 

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• German Einsatzgruppen and Latvian militia finish murdering the entire Jewish population of Liepāja, Latvia.

 

• German I Armeekorps and XXXVIII Armeecorps fail to prevent a Soviet bridgehead across the Volkhov south of Lake Ladoga."

Victims of the Liepaja massacre posing after having taken off their outer garments prior to execution. This picture was taken on 15 December 1941 by local Gestapo chief Hauptscharführer Karl Strott

 

"• The Soviet Twenty-ninth Army liberates Kalinin.

 

• North of Moscow, Soviet tanks cut the road West of Klin isolating 1st, 2nd, 6th, 7th Panzer and 14th Motorised Infantry Divisions (3. Panzergruppe). German troops take the only route out, cross-country to the Southwest, to avoid encirclement but leave most of their equipment behind.

 

• Soviet state offices begin returning to Moscow.

 

Soviet cavalry entering a Russian town 15 December 1941"

[Missionbug]

I find it so hard to imagine what those victims of the Nazis must have endured, how can anyone be so callous and treat other human beings with such disregard, how can anyone inflict such suffering on people just because they are different in some way, I find it so hard to grasp that people can be capable of such brutality, and yet we see it still on our news feeds each day even now so long after WWII it is still rife throughout the world.

 

Take care and be safe.

 

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Oberkommando der Wehrmacht assures Hitler than no invasion of Europe by the Western Allies will be possible in 1942.

 

• Hitler issues the Halt Order. “All German troops on Eastern Front are to be forced to put up a fanatical resistance in their lines; even when out-flanked and cut off by Russians. Such resistance will give time for transport of reinforcements from Germany and the West.”

 

• Von Manstein resumes the offensive against Sevastopol. In ten days of fighting XXX and LIV Armeekorps will make only minor gains.

 

• Soviet submarine M-59 is lost around this date in the Black Sea. She may have been sunk by Romanian destroyer Regele Ferdinand which reports depth charging a submarine south of Odessa on this date.

 

NMS Regele Ferdinand"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The German assault on Sevastopol forces the 40th Cavalry Division to fall back at Severnaya Bay, but Lieutenant General Ivan Petrov rushes reserves forward and stabilizes the front. This is the last success of von Manstein's December offensive.

Soviets at Sevastopol bring a wounded man back in late 1941.

 

• The ice on Lake Ladoga is now thick enough to support 45-ton KV tanks which are moved along the Road of Life to aid in the defense of Leningrad. Trucks bring in 687 tons of food, for the first time exceeding Leningrad’s daily consumption need of 600 tons. The Germans still do not know of the existence of this supply route."

 

"Having taken a somewhat leisurely drive from his former headquarters in Smolensk to East Prussia, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock arrives at the Fuhrer Headquarters in Rastenburg. After a brief visit with Hitler, during which the Fuehrer assures him that he understands the dire situation at the front, von Bock continues on to Berlin. It is an odd interlude because von Bock is not actually sick, but Hitler tells him to report back when he is "recovered."

 

In a driving snowstorm, Soviet 49th Army attacks at Tarusa and scores a quick breakthrough against the German Fourth Army. This separates the German 43rd Corps from the rest of the army and sets up a possible encirclement. The Army Group commander, Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge, follows standing orders and tells the corps to stand fast. However, von Kluge warns Fuehrer Headquarters of the danger. At Chekalin, Soviet sled troops surprise a German construction unit, which cannot be reinforced because of the snow and push it back. General Guderian spends the day at the front south of Moscow and is dismayed. He finds that the Soviets have broken through 296th Infantry Division at several points. He also warns Fuehrer Headquarters that he will lose the division entirely if it is required to hold its position.

 

I-15s being repaired, Moscow 22-Dec-41"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Hitler authorizes the transfer of 22 divisions from France and Germany to the Eastern front.

 

• As Soviet troops [re]enter Kerch  they encounter the first direct evidence of massacres by the Einsatzgruppen.

 

• By the end of December 1941, according to Wehrmacht records, 3.35 million Soviet prisoners have been taken on the Eastern Front. Of these, only 1.1 million are still alive and only 400,000 are in sufficiently good physical state to be capable of work. Of the 2.25 million that have died, at least 600,000 had been shot, falling victim to the Kommissar-befehl, which gave the German army and the SS Einsatzgruppen the licence to execute any Soviet citizens thought to be politically dangerous. The remaining 1.65 million are listed as having died of ‘natural’ causes."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Finnish Majuri Max von Hellens meets with US Military Attaché Colonel Georges Huthsteiner and passes information concerning German units around Leningrad and in Finnish territory. He passes nothing concerning Finland or Finnish defenses. After conducting further meetings, he will be arrested for treason in late 1942. His death sentence will be delayed due to American pressure and he will survive the war.

 

• In the pre-dawn darkness, Soviet submarines M-51 and ShCh-201 surface at pre-planned points and show lights off the German occupied town of Feodosiya west-south-west of Kerch. An advance party of 300 naval infantry sail in on patrol boats and minesweepers, occupying the harbor docks. Following this the cruisers Krasny Kavkaz and Krasny Krim enter the harbor with three destroyers escorting an assault force of 4,200 men from the 63rd Rifle Division.

 

- The German garrison wakes up and immediately flees the town, which is occupied without much fighting. By the end of the day 11,270 troops are landed and the transport force returns to bring in the 157th Rifle Division plus a battalion of lend-lease Stuart light tanks, an anti-tank battalion, and a regiment of field artillery.

 

- Von Manstein orders the depleted Romanian 4th Mountain Brigade to launch an immediate counter-attack. The outnumbered Romanians make some gains but the Soviets hit their exposed flank. They will fall back until reinforced by the Romanian 8th Cavalry Brigade and 3rd Rosiori motorized cavalry regiment. The Soviet offensive forces the Germans to delay the next assault on Sevastopol as three Armeekorps are moved to contain the Soviet landings.

 

- Von Manstein will blame the Romanians for the delay in taking Sevastopol despite the failure of the German 46. Infanterie Division to defeat a smaller Soviet force at Kerch itself.

 

- When Generalleutnant Kurt Himer, commanding 46. ID, learns of the Feodisiya landing, he immediately retreats rather than be cut off, losing most of the division's heavy equipment.  Himer will be relieved and the division stripped of all honors by Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Reichenau.

 

Soviet torpedo cutter providing anti-aircraft support at Feodosiya"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Soviet troops recapture Kaluga, northwest of Tula.

 

• A Romanian attack on the Soviet beachhead at Feodosiya is repulsed, in part as they have insufficient artillery and their expected air support was diverted to cover the retreating 46. Infanterie Division which is being pursued by Soviet forces landed at Kerch.

 

• Soviet battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna enters the harbor of beseiged Sevastopol and fires 179 twelve inch and several hundred 120mm shells at German and Romanian positions before embarking 1,025 wounded and departing.

 

Parizhskaya Kommuna in Sevastopol

 

• Between ten and fourteen thousand Jews, Krymchaks, and Romani are massacred in Simferopol, Crimea by Einsatzgruppen D, German army troops, and collaborationist militia."

[cardboard_killer]

"• Since Operation Barbarossa began, German losses have exceeded 830,000, more than a quarter of the men committed. Luftwaffe losses include 2,100 aircraft lost and 1,300 badly damaged or written off. Soviet losses exceed three million killed or captured, with around 10,000 aircraft and 20,000 tanks. Most of the tanks were the BT and T-26 series and most of the aircraft were obsolescent. Despite the Soviet losses, the Nazi objectives for the year have not been attained. [I'll note that this is putting it kindly. None of their strategic goals were accomplished on any front. And 1941 was the year of decision.]

 

• Soviet Tenth Army liberates Kozelsk, southwest of Moscow. The winter offensive slows as the need to supply and conduct maintenance increases. Almost all Soviet and Axis front line units on the Eastern Front are below strength.

 

• The 46. Infanterie Division retreats 120 kilometers through the snow in two days, with a large number of vehicles and guns abandoned due to a lack of fuel. Moving from Feodosia, the Soviet 63rd Mountain Rifle Division establishes this morning, and after a brief fight, the Germans veer off cross country, avoiding encirclement.

 

• Soviet freighter Krasnogvardeets is sunk by Axis aircraft at Feodosiya.

 

• An estimated 52,000 people perish of starvation, cold, and related illness in Leningrad during December, 1941.

 

• During the 2nd half of 1941:

 

- The first six Arctic convoys reach the Soviet Union without loss, delivering 600 tanks, 800 aircraft, and 120,000 tons of supplies. The German High Command did not forsee such an effort on the part of the Allies and is considerably embarrassed by it.

 

• In the USA, Edsel Ford congratulates the management of Ford Motor Company subsidiaries, since the profits of Ford-Werke in Germany are up 1.8 million Reichsmarks while those of Ford-France in occupied France are up 58 million Francs.

 

Ford-France AHN in SS Service

 

Ford-Werke V3000s Maultier halftrack version"

[Missionbug]

Three things really stand out, the death toll in this theater is appalling, hard to get your head around just how many died, it continuously sticks in your mind more so than the other events.

 

It is surprising for a subject I have always been interested in just how much I actually do not know, such a vast conflict I guess it is hard to take it all onboard.

 

The Ford Motor Company, W.T.F, posting huge profits from axis production of their vehicles!  The only winners in war are the Multinational Companies, same then as it is still today.

 

Sorry, a fourth, how little has changed in all this time.

 

I do enjoy reading these threads, really enlightening and always a fascinating read, thank you very much, really appreciated.

 

Take care and be safe.

 

Wishing you all the very best for the coming New Year, Pete.

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "A destroyed German train station in Maloyaroslavets, Russia, 2 January 1942. Soviet bombers destroyed this train. In the foreground is a German tank Pz.Kpfw.IV. On the second platform, a destroyed light tank Pz.Kpfw.II."

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Soviets are documenting war crimes evidence as they retake areas held by the Germans. Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov notes that the atrocities “did not consist of certain excesses of individual undisciplined military units, or individual German officers and soldiers. Rather it points to a definite system, planned far in advance and encouraged by the German Government and the German Army Command, a system which intentionally unleashed within their army the lowest animal instincts among the officers and men.”

 

• With Moscow secure, four fighter aviation regiments equipped with Hawker Hurricanes are released to support the Winter Offensive. They will be primarily used for air defense and escorting Il-2s and Pe-2s on ground attack missions. The Soviets will receive nearly three thousand Hurricanes. Later in the year two regiments will serve in the Stalingrad area, and as the regiments re-equip with P-39s, P-40s, and Soviet built fighters, the Hurricanes will be transferred from the Soviet Air Forces (VVS) to the secondary Soviet Air Defense Forces (PVO) and to Naval Aviation.

 

Soviet Hurricane

 

Hurricane monument at Murmansk"

 

[Disregarding STRAVKA advice to focus on decisively defeating German Army Group Center, Stalin orders a broad front offensive which begins roughly on 7-Jan. It is a tragic decision, as a decisive, annihilating victory against AGC could have radically shortened the war.]

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Soviets launched the Demyansk Offensive Operation last night with Volkhov Front making limited progress against II Armeekorps while today Northwestern Front inflicts heavy casualties on X Armeekorps (30, 290, and 3. SS “Totenkopf” Divisions).

 

• Soviet Kalinin Front launches the Rzhev-Vyazma Offensive Operation and quickly reaches the Volga threatening the flank 4. Armee at Mozhaisk and 9. Armee at Rzhev. To the south Bryansk Front launches its own offensive.

 

Soviet winter attack 1941-42

 

• Hitler gives Generalfeldmarschall Günther von Kluge permission to retreat Heersgruppe Mitte in the face of the Soviet offensive. It is around this time that von Kluge expands his 1941 order when commanding 4. Armee to the entire Army Group:  Soviet women captured wearing uniforms are to be shot."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "The Soviet General Offensive continues unabated on 15 January 1942. Third Shock Army crosses the vital Kholm-Demyansk Road, threatening both cities with encirclement. With his entire position south of Lake Ilmen at risk, Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb of Army Group North issues Adolf Hitler with an ultimatum. Either give me the necessary freedom of action, Leeb demands, or relieve me. Hitler does not have to think about this very long and has OKH chief of staff General Franz Halder call Leeb's chief of staff - not Leeb - General Brennecke with a message:

[P]ut all of the powers of the General Staff in motion... and extirpate this mania for operating. The army group has a clear order to hold.

In the Wehrmacht at this point, "operating" is a synonym for "retreating," which pretty much encapsulates the entire situation on the Eastern Front. Leeb technically remains in command for the time being, but it is common practice within the Wehrmacht at this point to simply bypass a general who is soon to be relieved.

 

On the Crimea, both sides are gearing up for their own offensives to break the stalemate at the Parpach Narrows. Neither side believes the other is strong enough to launch its own attack, so neither adopts a defensive posture. Both sides make their own moves today. The Soviets land 226 soldiers from destroyer Sposobnyi about 40 km southwest of Feodosia. This is intended as a diversion, but the Germans are not fooled and only divert one company of Panzerjäger to contain this small force. Red Army General Dmitry Kozlov, hearing reports of this incident and the seemingly desultory Wehrmacht response, wrongly concludes that the Germans have few troops nearby. In fact, the Germans have been transferring forces east from the perimeter at Sevastopol and have four full divisions at hand ready to launch their own offensive.

The Germans, however, have plans of their own and are not allowing themselves to be distracted. At daybreak on 15 January, the Luftwaffe begins attacking the Red Army line along the Parpach Narrows with Stukas and Heinkel He 111 bombers. The bombers hit the headquarters of the Soviet 44th Army, wounding its commander and leaving it leaderless. The German 213 Infantry Regiment jumps off following the Luftwaffe preparation and makes good progress. By mid-afternoon, the Germans are in possession of the ridgeline to the west of Feodosia and in a good position to launch an attack on the port within a couple of days. The German 30 Corps of General Fretter-Pico takes 500 casualties during the day but re-establish German dominance in the field of battle."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "

• Elements of the Soviet 54th Army liberate Shlisselburg from 18. Armee and establish a narrow land link with Leningrad.

 

• Soviet 4th Shock and 3rd Armies penetrate the German lines near Toropets, severing the supply route to II and X Armeekorps at Demyansk.

 

• In support of the winter counteroffensive, the Soviets drop elements of two battalions of the 201st Airborne Brigade from TB-3 bombers and converted DC-2 airliners to secure the airfield at Znamenka, already captured by partisans. Within a day a total of 2,081 paratroopers are dropped or airlifted in along with mortars and 45mm anti-tank guns. This force along with the partisans will disrupt the German sector south of Vyazma, but suffer heavy casualties until relieved by the XI Cavalry Corps (from the north) and I Guards Cavalry Corps (from the southeast) in February.

 

 - The footage is from an exercise in 1937:

 

Soviet paratroops jumping from the wings of a TB-3"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Soviet submarine K-22 enters the harbour of Berlevåg, Norway. She fires torpedoes and rounds from her deck gun against the 1,100 ton Norwegian merchant Mimona which runs aground and sinks the fishing cutter Vaaland with gunfire.

 

• Soviet submarine K-23 misses the Norwegian 900 ton Sørøy with torpedoes, then sinks her with gunfire off Sværholdt.

 

• The Barvenkovo–Lozovaya Offensive Operation gets under way, with the Southern and Southwestern Fronts goal being the liberation of Kharkov from Heersgruppe Süd.

 

• Soviet troops liberate the town of Mozhaisk from 4. Armee after house-to-house fighting. Germans retreating west towards Vyazma are harried at Borodino by cavalry, ski troops and aircraft.

Then and now photo of Mozhaisk"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Soviet 4th Shock Army pushes through the German lines and after several days with no supply, takes the German supply dumps at Toropets. They capture 6 tanks, 723 trucks, artillery with 450,000 shells, small arms with millions of rounds of ammunition, 1,000 drums of fuel and much food.

 

• With strategic matériel and wounded largely evacuated, the Soviets expand evacuation of Leningrad civilians via the Road of Life across frozen Lake Ladoga. 440,000 people will be carried to safety between now and the thaw in April."

 

"In the Crimea, the German 30th and 42nd Corps reach the Parpach Narrows after a brisk advance that already has recovered the port of Feodosia. The narrow front enables the Red Army troops under General Kozlov to hold here, and both sides quickly begin constructing fortifications. This ends the immediate sequence of events put into motion by the Red Army landings near Kerch in late December 1941. Both sides can claim a victory of sorts, but neither side has accomplished its main objectives (the Red Army to relieve Sevastopol, the Wehrmacht to clear the entire Crimea). Both intend to resume offensive operations after rebuilding their strength. Overall, over the last five days of the German counterstroke, the Red Army's 44th Army has lost about 6700 troops killed, lost 85 tanks, and lost about 10,000 prisoners and 177 guns. The Germans have lost 223 men killed or missing and 995 casualties overall. The recent battles have reinforced the general summer trend of the Germans winning limited objectives at a relatively small cost, but with the Red Army preventing far greater defeats at a very heavy cost. However, farther north around Moscow, the Red Army has completely turned the tables on the Germans and continues its counteroffensive."

 

[In a great defeat for humanity] "The Wannsee Conference (German: Wannseekonferenz) was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel (SS) leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference, called by the director of the Reich Security Main Office SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to occupied Poland and murdered."

 

"List of Jewish populations by country used at the Wannsee Conference, 20 Jan 1942 ww2dbase""

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Soviet 6th and 57th Armies are advancing on Barvenkovo, Ukraine.

 

• Elements of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army surround 5,500 German troops in the small town of Cholm. The pocket will hold out, supplied by air, until relieved in April. The Axis forces are largely in a fortified ‘hedgehog’ defenses, having destroyed all buildings not needed for garrison or defense.

 

"Winter Fritz"

 

Soviet ATR Team

 

Regia Aeronautica MC-200 in Ukraine early 1942"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today, as the winter counteroffensive and general offensive lose momentum and each side scrambles to air supply surrounded units] "• The Armenian Legion is formed under Wehrmacht command from captured Armenian soldiers of the Red Army who prefer to eat, leavened by a number of Armenian veterans of the First World War and the short lived Democratic Republic of Armenia, who had fought first the Ottomans and then the Bolsheviks. The Legion, which is never more than brigade sized, will participate in actions in the Crimea and Caucasus but the Germans do not trust them, partly due to desertions and partly to (accurate) rumors that the Armenians are helping to hide Jews. By late 1943 the Armenische Legion will be broken into separate battalions for garrison duty, primarily in the Netherlands and France.

Soldat Armenische

 

• Industrialist Fritz Todt, Reichs Minister for Armaments and Munitions and slave labor organizer, is returning to Berlin when his plane crashes on take-off. The Reich Air Ministry immediately rules out sabotage and deems an investigation as unnecessary. Albert Speer, who was originally scheduled to be on the same flight and knows that Göring has coveted Todt’s position, views this as “curious”. Hitler will appoint Speer as Todt’s replacement.

 

• Soviet 11th Army and 3rd/4th Shock Army meet at Zaluch’e, 30 miles West of Demyansk, encircling six German divisions as well as RAD, Police, Todt organization and other units, for a total of about 90,000 German troops and around 10,000 auxiliaries."

 

"The Luftwaffe already has an air supply to Demyansk in progress under the command of Luftflotte 1. Unlike some later and notorious airlifts, the Demyansk airlift (and the contemporaneous one to the smaller trapped garrison about 62 miles (100 km) to the south at Kholm) is successful. This is because it benefits from relatively short flights and a lack of concentrated Red Army anti-aircraft fire in the forested areas surrounding the pocket."

 

Soviet air boats

 

Demynask supply run

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Reichsminister for the Occupied Territories Alfred Rosenberg advises OkW head Wilhelm Keitel to improve the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war. With a quick end to the war not in sight, and an unexpected need for more slave labor, Germany cannot afford to simply let the POWs die of starvation and exposure as happened with most of the 3.6 million prisoners taken in 1941.

 

• Head of OkH Franz Halder notes in his diary that the campaign in the Soviet Union has thus far caused 1,005,636 German casualties, 202,251 of which were killed. He also notes that there have been 112,627 cases of frostbite.

 

• Stavka orders Second Shock Army and Fifty-fourth Army to surround German 18th Army near Lubansk as part of the overall offensive to relieve Leningrad. It will not be successful, with Second Shock under Andrei Vlasov itself cut off and surrounded.

 

T-26 knocked out on the Leningrad front"

Edited February 28, 2022 by cardboard_killer