Last Summer, beginning of the end

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Shortly after midnight, sixty German and Hungarian aircraft make a devastating raid on the air base at Poltava in Ukraine, destroying forty-four American B-17s, three P-51s and fifteen Soviet Yak-9 fighters. Two million liters of fuel are burned.

 

The night attack on Poltava.

 

• The Red Army has chosen the third anniversary of the German invasion to launch the Byelorussian Strategic Offensive Operation. Codenamed Bagration, it is named for the Czarist general who was mortally wounded fighting Napoleon at Boridino in 1812, and its object is to destroy Hitler's Army Group Centre.

 

- The Soviet buildup had not been detected until the end of May, and by the 14th of June an OKH Staff meeting chaired by Chief of the General Staff Kurt Zeitzler dismisses the buildup as a deception. Reinforcements continue to go to Walter Model in the south at the expense of Heersgruppe Mitte. OKW is briefed that a diversion can be expected against the center as a prelude to the main attack against Heersgruppe Nord Ukraine. Intensive partisan activities in Belorussia beginning on the 19th is perceived as reinforcing the fact that it is a deception. These partisan attacks have blown up railway lines, bridges and telephone cables in 10,500 separate places, effectively severing the Germans' supply and communications lines.

 

152mm howitzers during Bagration

 

- The Baltic Front and the First, Second, and Third Belorussian Fronts are assaulting the German Third Panzer, Fourth, and Ninth Armies. The initial assaults are probing attacks, seeking weak spots in the German lines prior to committing the main assault forces. This reinforces German opinion that it is all a deception or at most a feint.

 

Soviet troops during the Byelorussian strategic offensive operation"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The First Baltic and Third Belorussian Fronts attack northwest and southeast of Vitebsk. Northwest of the city, Sixth Guards Army, which had moved in undetected, takes 3. Panzer Armee completely by surprise. Heersgruppe Mitte has to release one of its reserve infantry divisions to bolster it, and Hitler directs Heersgruppe Nord to transfer another.

 

Soviet motorcycle troops are being used to assist tank formations in rapid exploitation of breaches in the German lines.

 

- The Army Group Commander, Generalfeldmarschall Ernst Busch, had been in Berlin in an attempt to get the LVI Panzerkorps transferred back to his Gruppe. It had been transferred after Walter Model convinced OKH that the Soviet offensive was going to be in the south. Busch flies back to his headquarters without waiting for his interview with Hitler.

 

- Hitler will sack Busch in a few days, replacing him with Model.

 

• German destroyer Z-39 is badly damaged by a Soviet A-20 in the Gulf of Finland. She is towed to Kiel and will be repaired in early 1945 but never returned to service.

 

• On the Maaselkä Isthmus, the Soviet troops of Filipp Gorolenko’s Thirty-second Army break through the Finnish II Armeijakunta defences at Karhumäki.

 

• The Soviet 70th Naval Infantry Brigade crosses Lake Ladoga and conducts an amphibious assault on Tuulos, behind the Finnish PSS-line. The Finns conduct desperate counterattacks to throw the Marines back into the lake, but the Soviets hold and will be reinforced with the elements of 3rd Naval Infantry Brigade. After several days, the beachhead will link up with the advancing Seventh Army.

 

Marines of the 70th Naval Infantry Brigade in training or preparation.

 

• Generaloberst Eduard Dietl of the 20. Gebirgs Armee in northern Norway is killed in a plane crash along with several of his senior officers, including General der Infanterie Thomas-Emil von Wickede, General der Gebirgstruppe Karl Eglseer, and Generalleutnant Franz Rossi. Dietl will be replaced by Austrian Generaloberst Lothar Rendulic.

 

• Two representatives (one Danish and one Swiss) of the International Red Cross and one representative of the Danish Red Cross visit Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in occupied Czechoslovakia for six hours; the prisoners give them positive reports about the living conditions as they were instructed to do by the camp administration.

 

• A major deportation begins at the Jewish ghetto at Łódź, Poland. Over the next three weeks 7,196 will be sent to Chelmno Concentration Camp where they will be killed."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years and one day ago] "• Konstantin Rokossovsky’s forces take Bobruisk, Slutsk and Lyuban, with 70,000 German troops surrendering. They also cross the Berezina. Bobruisk was key to the now smashed “Fatherland Line”, and the road is now clear for an envelopment of the Byelorussian capital of Minsk.

 

Inspecting two destroyed Pz-IVs of 20 Panzer Division at Bobruisk

 

German-prisoners Belarus June 1944"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "

• Generalfeldmarshall Model informs Hitler that he can hold a line from Baranovichi to Molodechno, getting some advantage from the earthworks and trenches left there from the First World War, but he will need several divisions transferred from Heersgruppe Nord.

 

• Soviet troops advance through Borisov. The roads leading to Minsk are crammed with fleeing service troops and vehicles, and ripe for air attack.

 

German column strafed by Soviet aircraft Byelorussia 1944"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Soviet Dniepr Flotilla (consisting of gunboats, fast airboats, minesweeping boats, and patrol boats) races up the Pripyat behind the German lines to Pińsk (formerly Poland, now Belarus) and lands troops on the waterfront under fire, taking light losses from the surprised Germans. The garrison withdraws from the city and a large number of riverine vessels are captured intact, including three steamers, two dozen tugs and dozens of barges and small boats. The haul will be useful for supporting the Red Army advance.

 

NKL-5 of the Dniepr Flotilla

 

• In Latvia, the German 16. Armee is attacked by the Third Shock and Tenth Guards Armies. Within two days, there will be a fifty mile breach in the German lines.

 

• The Soviet Thirty-ninth Army commences an attack towards Kaunas, Lithuania.

 

SU-122 crew between attacks - July 1944"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 Years ago today] " The Soviet Fifth Army and Polish Home Army have taken Vilnius. Elements of the Second Baltic Front overrun Idritsa, on the rail line to Riga.

 

ara Ginaite is a Jewish Lithuanian partisan who took part in the liberation of Vilnius as a member of a Communist group. This photo was taken by a Soviet officer. After the death of her husband in 1977, she will emigrate with her daughters to Canada and teach at York University on World War II History and Social Science, writing “Resistance and Survival: The Jewish Community in Kaunas, 1941–1944”. She will pass away in 2018 at age 94 in Toronto.

 

• A German counterattack on Pińsk results in two Soviet armored motor gunboats being sunk by artillery fire as the captured river vessels are taken downstream for refitting by the Soviets to support future river operations and supply."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• After being repulsed by German and Hungarian troops the day before, Konev shifts the attack of the First Ukrainian front further south and collapses the line held by the German 349. and 357. Infanterie Divisions. The Soviets advance towards the towns of Zolochiv and Sasiv, driving a wedge between XIII Armeekorps and the neighboring XLVIII Panzerkorps. German artillery from both corps and the 18. Artillerie Division saturate the breakthrough area, which the Soviets dub the Koltiv Corridor. A rapid counterattack by the 1. Panzer Division and the 14. SS Grenadier Division throws back the leading elements of the Soviet forces.

 

- Konev halts the counterattack with the help of the Second Air Army, whose Il-2 Sturmoviks inflict severe losses on Axis vehicles and artillery.

 

• The Soviet Tenth Guards Army liberates Opochka, Russia.

 

• U-679 enters the Bay of Vyborg/Viipuri to attack Soviet supply ships, but is discovered and attacked by three torpedo cutters. The submarine runs on the surface, damaging TK-57 with her 3.7cm flak gun, and dodges torpedoes, one of which passes just ahead of the bow. The Soviets break off when the submarine comes under the cover of Finnish artillery at Ristniemi.

 

• A-20s of Soviet Naval aviation torpedo and sink the German 2,200 ton Hochsee in the Baltic."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• After the see-saw battles in western Ukraine during the Lvov-Sandomierz operation, Ivan Konev takes a risk and commits Lieutenant General Pavel Rybalko’s Third Guards Tank Army to the southern assault. This means that the Army will have to travel through the narrow Koltiv Corridor, constantly under artillery fire and fierce German counterattacks. The Third Guards Tank tilts the balance of the battle and the Axis troops are forced to fall back to the Prinz-Eugen-Stellung, a series of unmanned defensive positions built in June 1944 which runs partly along the Strypa river about 35 km west of Ternopil.

 

- The Soviets closely follow the withdrawing Axis troops and Rybalko commits a reserve formation of IS-2 heavy tanks which puts the Axis forces to flight and the Soviets begin piercing the new defense line before it is even fully manned. Despite repeated warnings from his subordinates, the XIII Armeekorps commander, General der Infanterie Arthur Hauffe, does not order further withdrawal, condemning his three divisions and Korps-Abteilung C in the Brody salient to being trapped.

 

• In Belarus, the Soviet LXIX and LXXXI Rifle Corps storm Grodno while the Third Army takes Volkovysk from the German LV Armeekorps.

 

• Soviet units have been withdrawn from the Karelian front in order to reinforce the Operation Bagration forces. Today, after repelling an assault by the Soviet 114th and 272nd Rifle Divisions at Nietjärvi, the Finnish 5 Divisioona counterattacks with armor and air support, completely destroying the 762nd Rifle Regiment. The Finns have lost 500 dead with 700 wounded, while the Soviets have 2,200 killed or captured, 4,000 wounded, and 37 tanks lost.

 

• The Soviets have been searching out the last Finnish coast defense "battleship" for sinking as a prestige blow to help bring Finland to the peace table. Today, a report is made that the Väinämöinen has been spotted at Kotka. The 51st Mine-Torpedo Aviation Regiment of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet makes a strike, sinking the target for the loss of one A-20. The ship sunk is actually the German anti-aircraft cruiser Niobe (the former Dutch protected cruiser Gelderland, launched in 1898) which had been dispatched to strengthen the AA defenses of Kotka. Marinefährprahms F-198 and F-273 and Vorpostenboot Wiking 4 are also sunk.

 

 

Flakschiff Niobe

 

Soviet Naval Aviation A-20s"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• U-479 torpedoes and blows the bow off Soviet sub chaser MO-304 in Vyborg Bay. The chaser will be towed in and repaired.

 

• Soviet aircraft sink Marinefährprahm F-498 in the Baltic.

 

• The Polish First Army and Eighth Guards Armies break through the Fourth Panzer Army lines north of Kovel.

 

• Thirteenth and Thirty-Eighth Armies envelop 45,000 troops of German XIII Armeekorps at Brody. A relief attack by the XLVIII Panzer Corps will fail over the next few days.

 

- By the 22nd, resistance will cease. Konev will be elated at the unexpected success of the operation. Heersgruppe Nord Ukraine is falling back in disarray; 4. Panzer Armee to the Vistula River and 1. Panzer Armee along with First Hungarian Army to the Carpathian Mountains.

 

- The Soviets now concentrate on the objective of Lvov."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "

• The Brody pocket is eliminated in Ukraine, with the Soviets taking 17,000 more prisoners.

 

• Soviet forces driving on Lublin occupy Chełm.

 

• With significant territory recovered in Poland from the Germans, the Soviet backed Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN for Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego) is officially proclaimed in Chełm, and declares itself to be "the only legitimate Polish government", thus formally rejecting the London based Polish government in exile.

 

- Headed by Chairman Edward Osóbka-Morawski with deputies Wanda Wasilewska and Andrzej Witos, the PKWN rejects the Polish Constitution of 1935 as unlawful and fascist, claiming that the Constitution of 1921 (which had been overthrown by military coup) is the only legal constitution of Poland.

 

- The Soviet Union will transfer administrative power in the Soviet-controlled areas of Poland to the PKWN, but actual control will remain in the hands of the NKVD and the Red Army.

 

• Seventy-six P-38s and fifty-eight P-51s of US Fifteenth Air Force attack airfields in Romania, claiming destruction of 56 enemy planes, and land at Soviet bases."

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

From one occupation to another. 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Soviet aircraft sink minelaying Marinefährprahm F-273 in the Baltic.

 

• As the Soviet 29th Tank Brigade of the Fourth Tank Army reaches the outskirts of Lvov, the Polish Home Army launches the Lvov Uprising against the Germans. The Germans withdraw into the fortified city center and Poles are able to liberate much of the remainder, including seizure of an arms depot. After the Germans are defeated, the NKVD and Red Army will round up the Polish fighters, imprisoning some and conscripting most into the Polish forces of the Red Army.

 

• The Soviet Forty-second Army liberates Pskov, the last major town of the pre-war Soviet Union in German hands.

 

• With Soviet forces moving towards the camp, the German, Cossack, and Ukrainian camp guards at Treblinka execute the last of the Jewish “Sonderkommando” slave-laborers who had been destroying incriminating evidence.

 

• The Eighth Guards Army and Second Tank Army attack the 4. Panzer Armee at Lublin. The initial assault liberates the Majdanek Concentration Camp. The guards had expected more time to destroy the camp and this makes Majdanek the best preserved of the holocaust camps. SS-Obersturmführer Anton Thernes and five staff are captured by the Soviets, and will be hanged as war criminals in December, 1944. Another sixty-three camp personnel will be charged post-war.

 

Majdanek in June 1944"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• In Poland, Lublin falls to Rokossovsky.

 

 

• The 1. Panzer Armee still holds Lvov and its front to the south, but four Soviet tank and mechanized corps from the First Tank Army, Third Guards Tank Army, and the Cavalry-Mechanized Group Baranov are closing on the San River between Jarosław and Przemyśl. Today the 4. Panzer Armee retreats 25 miles to a 40-mile front on the Wieprz River southeast of Lublin. A Second Tank Army spearhead reaches the outskirts of Siedlce at nightfall.

 

- To defend Siedlce, Warsaw, and the Vistula south to Puławy, Walter Model reinforces 9. Armee with the Hermann Göring Division, SS Totenkopf Division, and two infantry divisions.

 

• In Ukraine, Third Guards Tank Army liberates Yavorov."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Soviet submarine V-1 (ex HMS Sunfish) is en route Murmansk from the UK when she is sunk with all hands by a Coastal Command Liberator with no survivors. The aircrew claim she was out of her proper area and that they couldn’t see any recognition flares.

 

- A subsequent investigation reveals that V-1 was in the designated safe lane for Allied submarines and the aircraft was 80 miles off course. The Soviets are not informed of the results.

 

• Troops of the Second Byelorussian Front capture Białystock. The Second Baltic Front, under Yeremenko, takes Daugavpils and Rezekne. The 3rd Guards Mechanized Corps of the First Ukrainian Front captures Šiauliai, which had been held by a scratch force led by Hellmuth Mäder.

 

Wrecked German armor in Byelorussia

 

Soviets force German POWs to view the Majdanek death camp"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• General of the Army Ivan Chernyakhovsky of the Third Byelorussian Front launches the Kaunas Offensive with the aim of destroying the German concentration on the western bank of the Neman River (remnants of 3. Panzer Armee fleeing Operation Bagration), the liberation of Kaunas, and reaching the boundaries of East Prussia."

 

Edited July 28, 2024 by cardboard_killer

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• As the 3. Panzer Armee’s flank collapses, the Soviets advance to Mariampol, twenty miles from the East Prussian border. Between Mariampol and Kaunas the front is shattered. In Kaunas and in the First World War fortifications east of the city two divisions are in danger of being ground to pieces as the Soviets swing in behind them from the south. Generaloberst Georg-Hans Reinhardt requests permission to withdraw, which is refused by Generalfeldmarschall Model. Reinhardt replies, “Very well, if that is how things stand, I will save my troops”; at ten minutes after midnight he orders the corps holding Kaunas to retreat to the Nevayazha River ten miles to the west.

 

- Reinhardt will not be punished, and in August receive command of Heersgruppe Mitte.

 

• German submarine U-250 attacks the Soviet MO-105 with a homing torpedo on the north side of the Koivisto strait in the Gulf of Finland. The sub chaser blows up with 19 killed and 7 survivors, but the explosion brings MO-103 to the scene. Senior Lieutenant Aleksander Kolenko makes one pass on a sonar contact with five depth charges and inflicts light damage on the U-boat. A second pass blows a hole in the engine room and the submarine sinks in 27 meters of water. Kapitänleutnant Werner-Karl Schmidt along with five other crewmembers in the control room manage to escape and reach the surface to be captured.

 

- The Soviets are thrilled to have a German U-boat captain alive and a sunken U-boat in shallow waters. Soviet divers soon begin operations to raise the boat, covering salvage operations with smoke generators, light forces, and aircraft as Finnish and German torpedo boats make attacks on the site.

 

- In September the Soviets bring U-250 to the surface with air tanks lashed alongside and tow it to the dry dock at Kronstadt for examination.

 

U-250 after being raised, showing the fatal damage.

 

- The Soviets recover homing torpedoes, radar detectors, and other information. The Type VIIC will serve briefly in the Soviet Navy as TS-14.

 

• U-481 fires several homing torpedoes into a group of Soviet 26 ton coastal minesweepers off Narva, sinking KT-804 and KT-807, and damaging KT-806. She is subsequently attacked by an Il-2 and damages it so badly with flak that it has to ditch."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The First Baltic Front seizes Jelgava near the Gulf of Riga, with the Fifty-first Army reaching the Baltic coast west of Riga, cutting off the German Sixteenth and Eighteenth Armies to the north.

 

• The Third Belorussian Front enters Kaunas (Kovno). The First Belorussian Front advances toward Warsaw. The sound of the Red Army's guns can be heard clearly in Warsaw today as Soviet tanks enter Wolomin, just 12 miles east of the Polish capital.

 

• These latest Soviet successes are the culmination of a remarkable tank drive across the Polish plain following the liberation of Minsk. The Russians have covered 450 miles in five weeks. They have destroyed Model's Army Group Centre, killing or capturing 31 of the group's 47 corps and divisional commanders. However, the very success of the drive has meant that the Red Army's lines of communication have become over-extended. At the same time, German resistance has stiffened, reinforcements have arrived, and the Germans have thrown back Rokossovsky's attempts to cross the Vistula close to Warsaw.

 

- Unable to seize the city "on the run", the Soviets will have to call a halt to bring up supplies and replenish manpower for a carefully-planned assault. Meanwhile the Armia Krajowa (Polish Home Army) in Warsaw is preparing to rise against the Germans; Major Generał Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski is anxious to take the city to provide a liberated base for the London government-in-exile."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years and one day ago] "• In Warsaw, three German attack groups start their advance westward along Wolska and Górczewska streets towards the main East-West communication line of Jerusalem Avenue. Behind the lines, special SS, police and Heer groups begin carrying out Heinrich Himmler's orders. They go from house to house, shooting the inhabitants regardless of age or sex.

 

- Over the next week, between 40,000 and 50,000 Polish civilians will be slaughtered by German and collaborationist troops (mostly Cossacks, Turkmenis, and Azerbaijanis of the Azerbaijani Legion, and Russians of Waffen-Sturm-Brigade RONA) in what is known as the Wola Massacre. Himmler’s objective is to crush the uprising through terror tactics, but by the 12th, he becomes convinced that the massacres are only stiffening Home Army resolve. After that date, captured civilians are evacuated to concentration camps for labor.

 

- Some Polish civilians will be formed into Verbrennungskommandos ("burning detachments") by the SS and forced to hide evidence of the massacre by burning victims' bodies and their homes. The men put to work in such groups are later executed.

 

- From the account of Wanda Lurie:

 

“I came last and kept in the background, continuing to let the others pass, in the hope that they would not kill a pregnant woman, but I was driven in with the last lot. In the yard I saw heaps of corpses three feet high, in several places. The whole right and left side of the first and biggest yard was strewn with bodies. We were led through the second. There were about twenty people in our group, mostly children of ten to twelve. There were children without parents, and also a paralysed old woman whose son-in-law had been carrying her all the time on his back. At her side was her daughter with two children of four and seven. They were all killed. The old woman was literally killed on her son-in-law’s back, and he along with her. We were called out in groups of four and led to the end of the second yard, to a pile of bodies. When the four reached this point, the Germans shot them through the back of the head with revolvers. The victims fell on the heap, and others came. Seeing what was to be their fate, some attempted to escape; they cried, begged and prayed for mercy. I was in the last group of four. I begged Vlasov’s men (General Andrey Vlasov is leader of the collaborationist Russian Liberation Army) to save me and the children, and they asked if I had anything with which to buy my life. I had a large amount of gold with me and I gave it to them. They took it all and wanted to lead me away, but the German supervising the execution would not allow them to do so, and when I begged him to let me go he pushed me off, shouting, ‘Quicker!’ I fell when he pushed me. He also hit and pushed my elder boy, shouting, ‘Hurry up, you Polish bandit!’ Thus I came to my place of execution, in the last group of four, with my three children. I held my two younger children by one hand, and my elder boy by the other. The children were crying and praying. My elder boy, seeing the mass of bodies, cried out, ‘They’re going to kill us!’ and called for his father. The first shot hit him, the second me; the next two killed my two younger children. I fell on my right side but the shot wasn’t fatal. The bullet penetrated the back of my head from the right, then exited through my cheek. I spat out several teeth. I felt the left side of my body growing numb, but I was still conscious and saw everything that was going on around me.”

 

- Wanda Lurie was to survive for over 36 hours on the pile of bodies, pretending to be dead even when her wristwatch was taken from her. Eventually she was able to crawl away, one of the few survivors from around 10,000 people murdered on this day alone.

 

Polish women and children of the Wola district being sent to death in early August 1944

 

Spoiler

Wola massacre victims

 

Spoiler

Polish slaves of Verbrennungskommando Warschau disposing of corpses during the Wola massacre"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 Years ago today] "• Two Soviet river gunboats engage four German auxiliary minesweepers on Lake Peipus on the border with Estonia. KM-08 is disabled by gunfire, rammed, and sunk with the other Germans withdrawing.

 

Soviet armored river gunboat.

 

• Soviet A-20s aircraft sink German torpedo training ship TF-11 off the Lithuanian coast.

 

• In Warsaw, the Bureau of Information and Propaganda of the Home Army begins showing locally made newsreels in the Palladium cinema on Złota Street. Headed by Antoni Bohdziewicz, the group will record over 30,000 meters of film documenting the uprising. In addition to films, newspapers are being printed and distributed while Polskie Radio is using the Błyskawica long-range radio transmitter in the city centre, broadcasting news and appeals for help in Polish, English, German, and French (not Russian). John Ward, a war correspondent for The Times of London, is also using the transmitter.

 

Cameramen filming the uprising

 

- Infuriated by the transmissions and by Polish flags prominently flying in Warsaw, the Germans go to great efforts to knock the radio off the air. The Poles are usually able to resume broadcasting but signal strength will be degraded."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• British, Polish, and South African squadrons of the RAF begin airdropping supplies to the Polish Home Army in Warsaw. 230 tons of supplies will be dropped by 21 September, but much of it will not reach the insurgents as the flames in Warsaw make it difficult to identify the flare-marked drop zones. 39 aircraft will be lost in the low-level missions.

 

- The Soviets will not allow Western Allied aircraft to use their airfields until September, reducing the amount of cargo that can be carried.

 

- Soviet aircraft will begin aerial supply missions in September, dropping 50mm mortars, anti-tank rifles, sub-machine guns, rifles with ammunition, hand grenades, 131 tons of food and 515 kg of medical supplies. Losses are unknown.

 

- The USAAF will conduct a single high altitude drop in September with B-17s but most of the supplies will land in German areas. Two B-17s will be lost.

 

• Below: Captured German SdKfz-251 from the 5. SS Panzer Division “Wiking”, pressed into service with the 8th “Krybar” Regiment. The soldier holding an MP-40 submachine gun is commander Adam Dewicz, 14 August 1944.

 

German Flakvierling 38 anti-aircraft gun in Warsaw August 1944"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 Years ago today] "• German fleet torpedo boats T-22, T-30, and T-32 are en route to lay mines in the Gulf of Finland when they stray into a German minefield and are sunk with the loss of 394 sailors.

 

• Sandomierz, on the west bank of the Vistula in southern Poland, falls to troops of the First Ukrainian Front.

 

German Pak40 anti-tank gun in Poland July or August 1944

 

• In Lithuania, 3. Panzerarmee and 16. Armee continue the relief thrust towards Riga, Latvia, pushing back Soviet Second Guards and Fifty-first Armies.

 

- XXXIX Panzerkorps opens an assault from Tauragė northward, supported by 8” artillery fire from heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. Escorted by three destroyers and two fleet torpedo boats, she will provide gunfire support for two days. The Germans will reach trapped forces from Heersgruppe Nord by the end of the day.

 

- Fifth Guards Tank Army moves to block this German offensive from retaking Šiauliai, Lithuania.

 

• Ernst Thälmann, chairman of the Communist Party of Germany and veteran of the Battles of the Somme, Champagne, Aisne, Soissons, Cambrai, and Arras, has been in prison since 1933. Today he is executed on Hitler’s orders. The Nazis announce that he was killed in an Allied bombing raid."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Soviet naval aircraft sink German schnellbotte S-26 and S-40 off Constanța.

 

• Soviet submarine M-201 torpedoes and sinks German patrol vessel V-6112 off the Persfjord north-west of Vardø, Norway.

 

• Soviet torpedo cutters attack a German convoy off Kirkenes, Norway. TKA-219 sinks German freighter Colmar while escorts sink TKA-203. Armed trawler V-6102 is sunk in the action, but it is undetermined by whom.

 

• In a radio broadcast, puppet Prime Minister Jüri Uluots of Estonia calls on Estonians to volunteer for the German army to hold the Soviet Armed Forces back.

 

• The advance of Soviet Third Shock Army is halted east of Riga by a counterattack from three divisions of 18. Armee.

 

• Over the next few days, the corridor between Heersgruppe Mitte’s 3. Panzer Armee and Heersgruppe Nord’s 18. Army will be enlarged to 18 miles in width. The operation fails in its more ambitious objectives of retaking Šiauliai or of cutting off the Sixth Guards Army threatening Riga. This is generally considered the end of Operation Bagration (Byelorussian Strategic Offensive Operation).

 

- During the assaults since late June, the Axis have lost at least 150,000 killed and a similar number captured, with more than 100,000 wounded. The Soviets have lost 180,000 killed and 590,000 wounded or sick.

 

- The Operation liberated a vast amount of Soviet territory whose population had suffered greatly under the German occupation. The advancing Soviets found cities destroyed, villages depopulated, and much of the population murdered or deported by the occupiers, greatly stoking the rage within the Red Army. The German Army will never recover from the materiel and manpower losses sustained, having lost about a quarter of its Eastern Front manpower, similar to the percentage of loss at Stalingrad (about 17 full divisions).

 

• Tomorrow the rested and replenished 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts will launch the Jassy–Kishinev Offensive, targeting Iași and Chișinău. The goals are to force Romania from the war, open the way to Bulgaria, and threaten the rear of Axis forces in Greece and Yugoslavia.

 

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Buna-Werke, the I.G. Farben industrial complex located adjacent to the Auschwitz III forced labor camp is bombed by American aircraft. It will be bombed three more times in 1944.

 

• The Soviet Black Sea Fleet launches a raid by 62 bombers and 80 fighters against Constanța, the main Axis naval base on Black Sea. German submarine U-9, minesweeper R-37, schnellboote S-42, S-52, and S-131 as well as Romanian torpedo boat Năluca are sunk while U-18 and U-24 are both damaged.

 

• Soviet artillery lays down heavy barrages on two fairly narrow sectors in Romania, one northwest of Iași, the other south of Tiraspol. South of Tiraspol Tobhukin’s Thirty-seventh and Fifty-seventh Armies plus two mechanized corps strike the boundary between the German 6. Armee and Armata a 3-a Română.

 

- Northwest of Iași, Malinovsky’s Sixth Tank Army and Twenty-seventh Armies drive southwards. On the flank, the Forty-sixth Army splits its forces to envelop the Romanian Corpul III Armata on the lower Dnestr.

 

- By the end of the day, Heersgruppe Sudukraine commander Johannes Frießner is feeling that the battle is developing about as expected and he confidently expects to cut off and destroy the Red Army spearheads.

 

- What he doesn’t know is that OKH intelligence has been misled by Soviet deception operations showing that units have been transferred north, and Soviet strength is actually twice what is being reported. He also doesn’t know that the Romanian forces have no intention of fighting to annihilation. They offer resistance to the Red Army but refuse to conduct costly counterattacks and begin giving ground. In any event, by this stage the Romanians are ill-equipped to fight effectively against the modern Red Army.

 

Romanian infantry 1944

 

T-34 of 23 Panzer Division in Iași area mid-1944"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Polish Home Army commits their new Kubuś armored car to combat in an unsuccessful assault on German held Warsaw University. The Chevy-157 chassis was modified with steel plate by Home Army personnel in a car repair shop in just thirteen days. It is armed with a Soviet DP light machine gun and a Home Army built K-pattern flamethrower.

 

The vehicle will survive the war but looted by the Germans. It will be restored and placed in the the Polish Army Museum. A full scale working replica will be built for the Warsaw Uprising Museum.

 

• In Bucharest, King Mihai (Michael) I of Romania summons Marshal Ion Antonescu to a meeting with loyal guards and pro-Allied politicians, including the banned Communists, who have been relaying messages to and from the Soviets. When Antonescu refuses a royal command to sever the alliance with Germany, he is arrested. The King appoints General Constantin Sănătescu as Prime Minister with a directive to take Romania out of the war and pledge its loyalty to the Allies.

 

- In the meantime, Romanian military forces are ordered to separate from German forces, withdraw from Soviet forces, and to defend against German and Soviet attacks.

 

- A furious Hitler is unable to intervene with the disintegrating forces of Heersgruppe Sud Ukraine but orders Bucharest to be bombed by the Luftwaffe.

 

- Forces of the Soviet Second and Third Ukrainian Fronts are able to concentrate on encircling the German 6. Armee (again).

 

- Ion Antonescu will be executed by a Romanian court in 1946. King Mihai I will be awarded the Soviet Order of Victory "for the courageous act of the radical change in Romania's politics towards a break-up from Hitler's Germany and an alliance with the United Nations" but he will function as little more than a figurehead under the communist régime and will finally be forced to abdicate and leave the country in December, 1947.

 

- He will live in Switzerland until the overthrow of the communists, and have his Romanian citizenship restored in 1992. He will create an incident with the Russian Federation by lobbying for Romanian entrance into NATO and the European Union.  The last reigning monarch of the House of Hohenzollern, he will alternate between homes in Switzerland and Romania until his death from cancer at age 96 in 2017."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Soviet submarine ShCh-215 torpedoes and sinks the Bulgarian 180 ton sailing vessel Vita north of Cape Emine, Bulgaria.

 

• Soviet troops capture Kishinev in Moldova.

 

Entrained T-34s in Moldova or Romania during the Jassy–Kishinev offensive.

 

• Hitler orders Heersgruppe Nord Ukraine commander Johannes Frießner to smash the Romanian "Putsch," arrest the King and court, and turn the government over either to Antonescu or, if he were no longer available, to a suitably pro-German general. In the meantime, German staff in Bucharest have been placed under guard in the legation. Unable to physically attack with the bulk of his disintegrating 6. Armee, Frießner dispatches a column of 6,000 Heer, Luftwaffe and SS troops from the defense of Ploești in the belief that the anti-German coup is not supported by the people or the bulk of the Romanian military.

 

- New Prime Minister Sănătescu warns the Germans that attacks will be met with force. As the German kampfgruppe enters the suburbs of Bucharest they are met by sharp resistance centered around the Romanian Royal Guard and halted. By the end of the day they have been unable to advance and not a single Romanian general can be found who will go along with the Germans.

 

• Because of the Romanian break, Hitler informs OKW that Greece should be considered an outpost line to be evacuated if the Americans and British invade there.

 

• SS Panzergrenadiers and Fascist Italian militia massacre 162 Italian civilians in several villages around Fivizzano in Tuscany. SS Major Walter Reder and Colonnello Giulio Lodovici will be charged post-war. Lodovici will be released due to insufficient evidence. Reder will receive a life sentence for this and other massacres but receive amnesty in 1985.

 

• Finnish submarine Iku-Turso tries to attack Soviet shipping in Lavanaari harbour but hits a net obstacle and is damaged by proximity mine explosion. The boat returns to Helsinki. This is the last Finnish submarine mission of the war.

 

• Soviet submarine S-15 torpedoes and damages the German 6,000 ton Dessau off the Tanafjord.

 

• Two days after damaging escort carrier HMS Nabob and sinking frigate Bickerton, U-354 is sunk with all hands in the Barents Sea British sloops Mermaid and Peacock, frigate Loch Dunvegan, and destroyer Keppel."

 

Edited August 24, 2024 by cardboard_killer

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Most of the Romanian oilfields are now in the hands of the Soviets and Soviet units cautiously enter Bucharest, where Romanian troops have halted and surrounded the German kampfgruppe that had attempted to reinstall Antonescu’s right-wing government. There is no armistice yet between the Soviets and Romanians but active combat has ceased between them.

 

Soviet and Romanian troops in Bucharest, 30 August, 1944.

 

- Most large Romanian formations remain encircled by Soviet forces, essentially hostage to good behavior from the Romanian government.

 

• The Slovak National Uprising gains momentum with insurgent fighters capturing Banská Bystrica. It had been planned that when the uprising began, the two strongest Slovak divisions which had been deployed to the eastern part of the country would fortify the Dukla Pass (joining Poland and Slovakia through the Carpathian Mountains) and hold it until Konev’s First Ukrainian Front could arrive. The plan fails when the senior officers instead of following this plan, fly to a Soviet airfield in Poland along with the entire Slovakian Air Force and surrender to the Soviets. Left leaderless, the two divisions are quickly disarmed and interned by the Germans.

 

 

- This leaves the uprising mostly in the hands of partisan fighters with a smattering of Slovak military units elsewhere in the country that mutiny against German command. The insurgents are well prepared however and quickly empty armories with the collusion of Slovakian troops. Konev will launch an offensive against Dukla Pass within ten days but the Germans will be able to bog his forces down over two weeks of heavy fighting. The insurgents will receive air support and supplies by air from the Soviets, but there is contention between fighters who want a communist Slovakia and those that want a restored Czechoslovakia as per the Atlantic Charter.

 

- The right-wing government of Father Jozef Tiso remains in power in Bratislava, urging Slovaks to not break faith with the Nazis.

 

• The Soviet Union and Polish Committee of National Liberation unveil a monument to the unknown Soviet soldier in Lublin.

 

• The Soviets found the Air Force of the Polish Army near Lublin. Having been equipping and training since 1943, the 1st Fighter, 2nd Bomber, and 3rd Ground Attack Aviation Regiments are combined into the 1st Polish Air Division and committed to combat. The Polish Air Force will triple in size by the end of the war in Europe.

 

Polish Pe-2 and Il-2 at the Polish Army Museum"

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Romanian troops enter the German legation in Bucharest to intern the diplomats and intelligence staff. Minister Manfred Freiherr von Killinger, who is complicit in the holocaust, runs amok shooting junior members of his staff while shouting “We must all die for the Führer!” He then kills himself.

 

• Soviet minelayer T-410 Vzriv is sailing with Romanian minelayer Amiral Murgescu when the Soviet vessel is torpedoed and sunk by U-19 southeast of Constanța; she is the last victim of the U-boats in the Black Sea. Since Romania had only recently declared war on Germany and the Romanian ship was not sunk, the Soviets accuse the Romanians of treachery. They will cite this as an excuse for the seizure of the Romanian fleet three days from now.

 

• The remnants of German forces surrounded in the Kishinev pocket surrender to the Red Army.

 

• The Finnish parliament votes to accept Soviet conditions to begin negotiations, which are to break relations with Germany and compel all German troops to leave Finnish territory by 15 September.

 

• Chief of OKH Generalfeldmarschall Keitel proposes to OKW that “Malingerers and cowardly shirkers, including officers” should be executed immediately.

 

• Slovakian Defence Minister Ferdinand Čatloš had advocated for Slovakian withdrawal from the war in August. Priest Prezident Jozef Tiso had him placed in “honorary custody”. Today he escapes and attempts to join the uprising. His services are declined and he will receive five years in prison after the war for his activities in support of the Tiso regime.

 

• The Slovak military remaining loyal to Father Tiso is being closely watched by the Germans and the clerical-fascist Hlinka Guard. The Germans officially form the SS-Heimatschutz Slowakei, a militia of ethnic German Slovaks to defend the German minority from partisan attacks.  8,000 will be conscripted and along with the Hlinka Guard and SS, conduct a "white terror" after the collapse of the uprising.

 

• Solvakian pilot František Cyprich, flying an Avia B-534 in support of the Slovakian National Uprising, shoots down a Hungarian Ju-52 which is on its way to Poland. This is the last confirmed kill by a biplane during the war.

 

- Pilots of the Slovak Air Force who flew to Soviet airfields at the beginning of the uprising are being retrained on Lavochkin La-5s and integrated into the VVS 1st Czechoslovak Independent Fighter Regiment which is being redeployed to provide support to the uprising. Parachutists from the elite 2nd Czechoslovak Airborne Brigade will be flown in to liberated airfields and act as a mobile reserve to the insurgent forces. The Soviet Union will supply the Slovakian uprising with 639 tons of supplies delivered by air.

 

Slovakian Avia B-534"

 

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Lavochkin La-7 enters service with the Soviet Air Forces. An improvement of the La-5, the first thirty are provided to the First Baltic Front for its September offensive. During this time their pilots will make 462 individual sorties and claim 55 aerial victories while losing four aircraft in combat. Four other La-7s are lost to non-combat causes, mostly related to the initially low slung air intakes ingesting dirt. A total of three pilots are killed during the trials to all causes.

 

La-7.  Improvements will be made immediately and more than six thousand, including two-seat trainer versions, will be built. La-7 pilots consider it the equal of any German piston engine fighter.

 

• German Type IIB submarines U-19, U-20, and U-23 are in the Black Sea with no remaining port. After Turkey refuses to purchase the U-boats, they are scuttled off the Turkish coast near Istanbul, with the crews swimming ashore to be interned. The wrecks will be discovered by a Turkish marine engineer in 2008.

 

• Soviet submarines begin using radar for the first time.

 

• Soviet Forty-seventh Army is fighting in the Warsaw suburb of Praga on the east bank of the Vistula. The Germans have cleared the Polish Home Army from the west bank.

 

• At Krosno, Poland, 1. Panzer Armee blocks an advance by Soviet Thirty-eighth Army towards the Slovakian border.

 

• US Eighth Air Force begins the last of its shuttle-bombing missions. 75 B-17s escorted by 64 P-51s attack armament plant at Chemnitz, Germany, and proceed to bases in the USSR."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Soviet Fifty-third Army counterattacks into the Arad-Timisoara area of Romania, driving back German and Hungarian units.

 

• This newsreel is released around this time:

 

 

• The Soviet 6th Guards Tank Brigade, 33rd Guard Tank Brigade, and 63rd Guard Tank Brigade are assigned T-44 prototype medium tanks for training and evaluation purposes.

 

• Soviet torpedo cutters attack a Petsamo-Kirkenes convoy but score no hits, losing TKA-13 to the defending escorts.

 

• Twenty-eight RAF Lancasters operating from Yagodnik airfield in the Soviet Union attack the German battleship Tirpitz in Altafjord, Norway, with 12,000 lb ‘Tallboy’ bombs. They are forced to bomb blind due to smokescreens but one direct his is scored, hitting the forecastle, disabling the forward turret, going through the bottom of the ship and detonating, breaking the keel and flooding the bow. German freighter Kehrweider is sunk in this attack.

 

- At an OKM conference, it will be decided that Tirpitz cannot be repaired in Norway and towing her to Germany in the face of Allied air superiority would be suicidal. The Tirpitz will be towed south to Håkøya and moored as a floating battery to defend Tromsø from Allied attack. This will bring her within range of heavy bombers based in Scotland."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• U-315 attempts to penetrate the Kola Inlet in order to sink the Soviet battleship Arkhangelsk (ex HMS Royal Sovereign) and duplicate U-47s sinking of sistership Royal Oak five years earlier as a great propaganda coup. The schnorchel equipped boat becomes fouled in an anti-submarine net and only gets free as the sky is lightening at dawn. Oberleutnant Herbert Zoller decides penetration is impossible and returns to base.

 

• Troops of Third Baltic Front overrun Valga on Estonian-Latvian border.

 

• As the Red Army advances, the Germans are desperately trying to destroy the evidence of the mass torture and murder that they have inflicted on occupied countries. With the Soviets on the brink of liberating the Klooga concentration camp, the Germans [more likely Estonians that were part of the SS] slaughter 2,900 forced labourers (Jews, Estonian political prisoners, and Soviet POWs). Once the area is taken, no captured Germans or local people will own up to knowing anything about the camps in their midst."