Tuesday 4 November 1941

The Hunt Class destroyer HMS BROCKLESBY, passing a target towed by HMS ELLESMERE. 4 November 1941 (© IWM (A 6228)).

Eastern Front: The situation on the central and northern sectors of the Eastern Front on 4 November 1941 is fairly quiet. The mud of the Rasputitsa (change of seasons) has paralyzed most German advances, while the Soviets are calibrating their defenses around Moscow and Leningrad by shifting troops around. At Tula, the buildup by both sides continues, as the Wehrmacht sends elements of German 31st, 131st, and 296th Infantry Divisions forward while the Soviets send the 413th Siberian Rifle Division (Maj. Gen. Aleksei Dmitrievich Tereshkovo) south from Moscow by train. The Soviet forces defending Tikhvin north of Moscow launch another attack with the 60th Tank Division and the 4th Guards Rifle Division against General Harpe's 12th Panzer Division, but are repelled after heavy fighting.

A soldier using a Degtyaryov antitank rifle, November 1941 (Plenik, Bruno, Federal Archive Bild 101I-141-1273-24A).

In the southern end of the Eastern Front, though, the Rasputitsa has not hit as hard as in the north, so the Germans have a somewhat easier time advancing. In the Crimea, OKH Chief of Staff Franz Halder notes in his diary:

Eleventh Army continues its advance although the mountainous terrain around Sevastopol is affording the enemy greater opportunities for resistance.

While General von Manstein's 11th Army is finding that Sevastopol is going to be a hard nut to crack, further east the 170th Infantry Division expands the German hold on the Crimea by taking Feodosiya at the base of the Kerch peninsula. The Soviets have withdrawn in good order to a short line defending Kerch which leaves Sevastopol in the west completely isolated. However, both Red Army redoubts are well-garrisoned and easy to defend due to natural terrain features.

Test pilot Ralph Burwell Virden. On 4 November 1941, he perishes while testing the first Lockheed YP-38 Lightning, US Army Air Force serial 39-689. The plane breaks apart during a power dive as it approaches supersonic speeds and crashes in Glendale, California. The design overcomes its early issues and becomes the successful P-38 Lightning fighter with over 10,000 built (Los Angeles Times, 5 November 1941, page 1, column 6 and page 2, column 5).

Elsewhere in the Army Group South sector, the problem for the Germans is not so much the Soviets as the weather. The Soviets are retreating everywhere, which Halder sees as both an opportunity and a problem. The opportunity is obvious:

Despite the overwhelming difficulties of movement, we must find means to occupy the areas evacuated by the enemy.

The problems are a little more subtle:

Viewed as a whole, the situation is determined by railroad capacity and flow of supplies. There is no point in pushing operations onward before we have not, step by step, established a solid foundation for them. Failing to do that inevitably would bring fatal reverses down upon us.

These words would be well worth remembering in late 1942 when Soviet retreats will also create tempting opportunities.

General Auchinleck, Commander in Chief of the Middle East Forces, decorating Lieutenant Colonel Howard Karl Kippenberger with the Distinguished Service Order during a presentation of awards to members of a New Zealand brigade in the Western Desert. Taken at Baggush on 4 November 1941 by an official photographer.

In the far north, the Axis also accomplishes a major objective that has mixed longer-term implications. The Soviets have occupied the Finnish port of Hanko, given to them at the conclusion of the Winter War in early 1940, throughout the conflict to date. However, ultimately the position is untenable, so before dawn today the Soviets finally evacuate the small garrison. Soviet destroyers Smetlivy and Surovy carry the Soviet troops out before dawn, with Smetlivy being hit by Finnish coastal artillery that causes it to sink on the way back to Leningrad. Several hundred people perish. The Finns then occupy Hanko, solidifying Axis control of the eastern Baltic and achieving one of their war aims. Such successes, however, reduce the Finnish incentive to continue fighting because their entire reason to fight is to recover lost territory. Now that is it is recovered... why keep fighting?

Jacques Doriot at a meeting in Paris on 4 November 1941. Doriot is a former communist who became a fascist in the 1930s. He is a strong collaborator and a founder of the  Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF), a French unit of the Wehrmacht, with which Doriot fights in 1941 on the Eastern Front (Federal Archives 4 November 1941 Figure 183-M0706-502).

Of course, as the Germans can persuasively argue, the Finns aren't truly safe until the Soviet Union is defeated, but the Finns increasingly feel that this is solely a German responsibility. The Finns also are concerned about warnings from Great Britain and the United States about fighting Stalin. The bottom line is that as the Finns chalk up successes at places like Hanko, a sort of paralysis settles over their military effort. It is not that they stop fighting, as the Finns fight hard throughout the war. Rather, it is a growing desire for the war to just go away and for the men to go home. The Red Army, however, lurks just over the horizon and it has no intention of letting the Finns enjoy their conquests for long.

"A mechanic attaches the cable of a trolley-accumulator to a Hawker Hurricane Mark IIB of No. 81 Squadron RAF on the waterlogged airfield at Vanga, as a section of three Hurricanes flies overhead." Vanga, Russia, September/November 1941 © IWM (CR 38).

November 1941

November 1, 1941: Finns Attack Toward Murmansk Railway
November 2, 1941: Manstein Isolates Sevastopol
November 3, 1941: Japan Prepares to Attack
November 4, 1941: German Advances in the South
November 5, 1941: Last Peace Effort By Japan
November 6, 1941: Stalin Casts Blame in an Unexpected Direction
November 7, 1941: Stalin's Big Parade
November 8, 1941: Germans Take Tikhvin
November 9, 1941: Duisburg Convoy Destruction
November 10, 1941: Manstein Attacks Sevastopol
November 11, 1941: Finland's Double Game Erupts
November 12, 1941: T-34 Tanks Take Charge
November 13, 1941: German Orsha Conference
November 14, 1941: German Supply Network Breaking Down
November 15, 1941: Operation Typhoon Resumes
November 16, 1941: Manstein Captures Kerch
November 17, 1941: Finland Halts Operations
November 18, 1941: British Operation Crusader
November 19, 1941: Sydney vs. Kormoran Duel
November 20, 1941: The US Rejects Final Japanese Demand
November 21, 1941: Germans Take Rostov
November 22, 1941: Kleist in Trouble at Rostov
November 23, 1941: Germans Take Klin, Huge Battle in North Africa
November 24, 1941: Rommel Counterattacks
November 25, 1941: HMS Barham Sunk
November 26, 1941: Japanese Fleet Sails
November 27, 1941: British Relieve Tobruk
November 28, 1941: Rostov Evacuated, German Closest Approach to Moscow
November 29, 1941: Hitler Furious About Retreat
November 30, 1941: Japan Sets the Date for its Attack

2020

Sunday 14 September 1941

Soviet bombers attacked the military port facility in Helsinki on September 14, 1941. The raid caused this explosion.

Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht began Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941 with a strength of over 3 million men. However, its units have taken significant casualties to go along with massive territorial gains. On 14 September 1941, OKH Chief of Staff Franz Halder sets forth in his daily war diary the true state of the German Army (Heer) in the East.

Halder notes that the army has an "average actual strength" of 3.4 million men. Naturally, with an army that large, a large proportion of the army is devoted to logistical support and is not on the front lines.

Halder sets forth figures for the entire army:

• 11,125 officers and 328,713 others wounded
• 4,396 officers and 93,625 others killed
• 387 officers and 21,265 others missing.

The total for all war-related (and not medical) casualties is:

• 15,908 officers and 443,603 others
• A total of 459,511 total casualties.

Halder calculates this as 13.5% of the Eastern Army that has been killed, wounded, or is missing.

A Denver caboose train car, 14 September 1941 (Otto Perry, Denver Public Library).

Halder does not end there. He also gives figures for the tank strength of General Guderian's Panzer Group 2, which has led the way for Army Group Center and now has a critical mission to encircle Kyiv:

• Third Armored Division 20% fit and 80% lost/under repair
• Fourth Armored Division 29% fit and 71% lost/under repair
• Seventeenth Armored Division 21% fit and 79% lost/under repair
• Eighteenth Armored Division 31% fit and 69% lost/under repair

Halder does not comment on the figures. However, he puts them right after a highly optimistic comment that:

There are some indications that the enemy might be passing to the defensive on the entire front. His aggressive effort on the central front has markedly decreased, but we have no evidence that he is moving elements out of the line to shift them to the south.

The casualty figures are not alarming at first glance. Operation Barbarossa has been going on for almost three months, and one must expect losses in a hard-fought campaign. However, this was supposed to be an easy campaign, a "kick the rotten door in and take over" campaign as Hitler said. It is not turning out that way.

Several Royal Canadian Air Force Band members in Halifax, September 14, 1941 (Canadian Museum of Immigration).

However, from a larger perspective, the Heer's casualty figures are alarming. The war in the East was supposed to be easy, and by the most optimistic projections, it already was supposed to be over. However, none of the three German Army Groups has achieved its objective yet. While Leningrad is all but encircled, it shows no signs of yielding. Kyiv is close to being captured, but there are a million Soviet troops defending it and subduing them will take some time. Moscow remains far off the Army Group Center front and an entire campaign will be necessary just to approach it.

Looking at the details also shows some warning signs. It may accurately be said that the German panzer divisions are the greatest offensive weapon in the world. However, while the front-line forces of the Heer are broad, they are not deep. The Germans have their best forces at the front and maintain few reserves. A loss of efficiency of the panzer arm inevitably must slow the entire German offensive. General Guderian's have lost about 75% of their effective strength and their most important battles remain to be fought.

A crowd gathers at 10th & U Street NW on Sunday, September 14, 1941. The crowd of about 2000 people is there to protest police brutality in Washington, D.C. Specifically, they are protesting the recent deaths of four African-Americans at the hands of police. The signs include slogans such as "Old Jim Crow Has Got To Go," "Protect Our Civil Rights," and "Police Brutality is a Disgrace to the Nation's Capital." (Source: D.C. Public Library).

Another unwelcome development from the German perspective is the sudden appearance of RAF Hurricanes flying from Vaenga in the Far North of Russia. There are two squadrons, Nos. 81 and 134, which arrived at Archangel on 7 September 1941. The Hurricane pilots attack the German Stuka dive bombers which heretofore have had little opposition. Stukas are no match for Hurricanes and this greatly inhibits their assistance to the army's attacks on Soviet defenses.

For what was supposed to be a quick and easy campaign, the Eastern Front is turning into an endless quagmire.

On 14 September 1941, Reich Minister Dr. Dorpmüller, Reich Minister Todt, and the Danish Minister of Public Works Gunnar Larsen attend a groundbreaking ceremony for a new bridge over the Fehmarn Sound in Denmark. It is the "Vogelfluglinie." Due to the war and subsequent political divisions, the Vogelfluglinie will not be completed until 1963. (Federal Archive Figure 183-L20175).

2020