02-08 August 1941

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02 August 1941

Norway : All civilian radios in Norway were confiscated by the German occupation
Eastern Front : Red Army launches a counter offensive to capture Yelnya salient
Tobruk , Libya : Two Australian companies attacked Italian positions near Tobruk, Libya with the support of over 60 field guns. The attacks were repulsed after suffering heavy casualties. This particular attack represented the last Australian attempt to regain positions lost in early May 1941.
Mediterranean Sea : German dive bombers attacked an Allied convoys off Libya, but they were driven away by British fighters; about 3 German aircraft were shot down at a loss of 3 British Hurricane fighters. Italian submarine Tembien was rammed and sunk on the surface by Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hermoine
Baltic Sea : The Soviet submarines M99 and S11 were sunk by German mines in the Baltic Sea
Washington , USA : US goverment decided to extend Lend Lease Aid to USSR

03 August 1941

Atlantic Ocean : Lieutenant Robert Everett RNVR of British No. 804 Squadron Fleet Air Arm became the first pilot launched from a CAM ship (fighter catapult vessel HMS Maplin) to shoot down a German Focke-Wulf Condor aircraft which had sighted the Atlantic convoy SL81 en route from Sierre Leone, British West Africa. German submarine U-401 was detected and sunk with depth charges by Royal Navy destroyers HMS Wandarer and HMS Hydrangea off Ireland.
Ukraine : General Nicolae Ciuperca’s Romanian 4th Army crossed the Dniester River in Ukraine.

04 August 1941

Eastern Front : Adolf Hitler visited Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Center headquarters in the Soviet Union and ordered Hermann Hoth’s 3rd Panzer Group to aid Wilhelm von Leeb in the north and Heinz Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group to assist Paul von Kleist in the south.
Atlantic Ocean : German blockade runner Frankfurt scuttled herself off Azores when she was intercepted by Royal Navy ocean boarding vessel HMS Covina off Azores. Elsewhere British cargo ship Tunis was bombed and sunk by Luftwaffe Condor aircraft

05 August 1941

Eastern Front : Romanian troops arrived in the vicinity of Odessa, Ukraine. German Army Center officially declared elimination of Smolensk pocket and remains of two Russian armies in it.
Atlantic Ocean : Battle of convoy SL81 starts. German submarine U-75 torpedoed and sunk British cargo ships Cape Rodney and Harlingen. Meanwhile U-372 also torpedoed and sunk British cargıo ships Belgravian and Swiftpool. And U-74 torpedoed and sunk British cargo ship Kumasian

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06 August 1941

Iceland : US Navy aircraft based in Reykjavik, Iceland began routine patrols of the North Atlantic.
Mediterrranean Sea : Italian cargo ship Nita was torpedoed and sunk off Lampedusa by Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Swordfish topedo bombers off Lampedusa

Hitler is Army Group Center HQ in Rusia and With him was Walther Hewel fro German Foreign Ministry , who noted in his diary: ‘Ruined monastery church. Opened coffins, execution, ghastly town. Many Jews, ancient cottages, fertile soil. Very hot.’ Hitler flew back to his headquarters at Rastenburg. On the following day, the German police commander in the central sector, von dem Bach Zelewski, reported to SS headquarters in Berlin that his units had carried out 30,000 executions since their arrival in Russia. The SS Cavalry Brigade also sent in a report to Berlin that day, to say that it had carried out 7,819 ‘executions’ to date in the Minsk area. To ensure maximum secrecy, both reports were sent by the most secure radio cypher system available, the Enigma. As a result, both were read by British Intelligence. Hitler too must have read these reports; five days earlier the Gestapo chief, Heinrich Müller, had written from Berlin to the commanders of the four Special Task Forces, including SS General Nebe of Task Force B , that ‘the Führer is to be kept informed continually from here about the work of the Special Task Forces in the East’.

The work of these task forces was continuous and comprehensive. Operational Situation Report No. 43, compiled in Berlin on August 5, spoke of measures in twenty-nine towns ‘and other small places’ in which the units had ‘rendered harmless’ people in the following categories: ‘Bolshevik Party officials, NKVD agents, active Jewish intelligentsia, criminals, looters, partisans etc.’. The partisans could not, however, be so easily rooted out.

07 August 1941

Stalin promoted himself to Generalissimo of the Soviet Army.
Mediterranean Sea : Royal Navy destroyer HMS Severn located , depth charged and sunk Italian submarine Michelle Bianchi off Gibraltar
Germany : After dark, 84 bomber aircraft from RAF Bomber Command were launched to attack Essen, Germany (108 tons of high explosive bombs and 5,720 incendiary bombs were dropped, damaging the Krupp coke oven batteries), 31 launched against Hamm (damaging rail marshalling yard), 32 launched against Dortmund, 88 launched against Kiel (104 tons of high explosive bombs and 4,836 incendiary bombs were dropped, damaging Deutsche Werke Shipyards), and a number of bombers were launched against Hamburg (poor visibility and results were not observed).

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08 August 1941

Yugoslavia was dissolved, with Italy annexing large areas.
Eastern Front : The Romanian General Staff issued Directive No. 31 calling for the capture of Odessa and the defeat of Soviet forces between the Dniester River and the Tiligulskiy Estuary in Ukraine. As Russian troops and civilians fled from the Black Sea port of Odessa, orders arrived from Moscow: ‘The situation on the land front notwithstanding, Odessa is not to be surrendered.’
Ukraine : The 6th and 12th Soviet Armies in the Uman Pocket in Ukraine were wiped out by German troops from Army Group South ; over 100,000 Soviet prisoners were taken.
Brussels : Pro-Nazi Rexist (Belgian fascits) party leader Leon Degrelle leads his volunteer "Walloon Legion to Eastern Front to fight at the side of Axis.
Baltic Sea : Soviet destroyer Karl Marx was bombed and sunk by Luftwaffe JU-88 bombers off Loksa Bay

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