October 1941

October

• 01

  • The camp at MajdanekFrom 1 October 1941 the SS was to build a camp near Lublin for 50,000 Soviet prisoners of war. So began Majdanek, where nearly 80,000 people died.
  • The Yom Kippur actions in the Wilno GhettoOn Yom Kippur, 1 October 1941, Germans and Lithuanians seized thousands of Jews in both Wilno ghettos. By 21 October the whole small ghetto lay dead at Ponary.
• 02

  • Key eventOperation TyphoonOn 2 October 1941 Army Group Centre advanced on Moscow. Within days Bock’s tanks broke through and were encircling Soviet armies at Vyazma and Bryansk.
• 03

  • Gandhi and individual satyagrahaIn autumn 1941 Gandhi kept up his individual satyagraha against India’s part in the war. Begun on 17 October 1940, it put thousands of participants in jail.
• 05

  • The Germans take the Estonian islandsOn 5 October 1941 Saaremaa fell after three weeks of fighting, and Hiiumaa on 21 October. The Germans took the islands from which bombers had flown to Berlin.
• 08

  • The Battle of the Sea of AzovOn 8 October 1941 the Germans took Mariupol. Kleist trapped the Soviet 18th and 9th Armies by the Sea of Azov; General Smirnov died in the Chernihivka pocket.
• 10

  • The Vyazma and Bryansk pocketsIn early October 1941 the Germans encircled the main forces of three fronts defending Moscow at Vyazma and Bryansk. On 9 October Berlin proclaimed victory.
  • The Luxembourg censusOn 10 October 1941 Gauleiter Simon meant a census to prove Luxembourgers were Germans. The answer “three times Luxembourgish” made him abandon it.
• 12

  • Bloody Sunday in StanisławówOn 12 October 1941 German police shot between 10,000 and 12,000 Jews – men, women and children – in the Jewish cemetery in Stanisławów.
• 13

  • Fighting on the Mozhaisk LineIn mid-October 1941 the Germans attacked the Mozhaisk Line, taking Kaluga, Kalinin, Mozhaisk and Volokolamsk, but by late October they stalled before Moscow.
• 16

  • The Moscow panicOn 16 October 1941, after the decision to move the government to Kuybyshev, panic gripped Moscow. Stalin stayed; on 19 October a state of siege was declared.
• 17

  • The torpedoing of USS KearnyOn 17 October 1941 U-568 torpedoed the US destroyer Kearny while she was defending convoy SC 48. Eleven sailors were killed; the ship limped to Iceland.
• 18

  • The arrest of Richard SorgeOn 18 October 1941 Japanese police in Tokyo arrested Richard Sorge, the Soviet spy who for a month had been reporting that Japan would not attack the USSR.
  • Key eventHideki Tōjō becomes Prime MinisterOn 18 October 1941 General Hideki Tōjō, the War Minister who had refused to withdraw troops from China, became Prime Minister of Japan after Konoe resigned.
• 20

  • The assassination of Karl HotzOn 20 October 1941 communists shot Lieutenant Colonel Karl Hotz in Nantes. Two days later the Germans executed 48 hostages, 27 of them at Châteaubriant.
• 21

  • Before Operation CrusaderIn autumn 1941 the British readied the Eighth Army in Egypt to relieve Tobruk. New Zealanders trained in the desert; Fort Capuzzo was still held by the Axis.
• 22

  • The Odessa massacreOn 22 October 1941 a mine destroyed the Romanian headquarters in Odessa. In reprisal Romanian troops murdered 25,000–34,000 Jews within a few days.
• 24

  • The Germans take KharkivOn 24 October 1941 the German Sixth Army took Kharkiv. Its tank and aircraft plants had gone to the Urals; famine, terror and the murder of Jews followed.
  • The yellow permits actionOn 24 October 1941 an action began in the Wilno Ghetto against people without yellow work permits. Within a week several thousand of them were killed at Ponary.
• 27

  • Manstein in the CrimeaAt the end of October 1941 Manstein’s Eleventh Army broke the Soviet defences at Ishun and burst into the Crimea. On 30 October it stood before Sevastopol.
• 28

  • The first action in BolechówOn 28 October 1941 the Stanisławów Gestapo and Ukrainian police seized about 1,000 Jews in Bolechów. Next day several hundred were shot in Taniawa forest.
• 30

  • Lend-Lease for the USSROn 30 October 1941 Roosevelt approved the supplies agreed in Moscow and offered Stalin an interest-free credit of a billion dollars under Lend-Lease.
• 31

  • The sinking of USS Reuben JamesOn 31 October 1941 Erich Topp’s U-552 sank the US destroyer Reuben James escorting convoy HX 156. About a hundred men died, including all the officers.