As another huge German encirclement developed in southern Russia, the Red Army grew increasingly desperate. The Soviet system allowed little imagination among officers, and they were often compelled to mount futile attacks. The Germans had become famili…

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Russian prisoners of war were beginning to die in the tens of thousands in the ‘camps’ in the German-occupied territories in the east.

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From 19th September, Jews in Germany and occupied countries were required to wear the Star of David in public.

I myself feel shattered, cannot compose myself.

For Jews living in Germany, the Nazi racial laws had produced much hardship. Only a minority of Jews had been sent to concentration camps so far. But the overt violence that was s…

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While Escort Carriers were being hurriedly built and pressed into service, an even more desperate measure was already seeing action.

Convoy HG72 had left Gibraltar on the 2nd September bound for Liverpool. HMS Maplin a 'CAM ship' - was among the escorts. She …

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The Royal Navy struggled to counter the U-boat menace, even as it began receiving assistance from the US Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy. It lacked enough ships to escort convoys. And there were few aircraft to challenge the Luftwaffe's long-range FW200 Condors that were not only bombing ships but also radioing the location of convoys to the U-boats.

That began to change with the introduction of ‘escort carriers’ - ordinary ships hastily adapted to become crude aircraft carriers. The Royal Navy’s airborne branch - the Fleet Air Arm ( FAA) - provided the men and aircraft to fly from these carriers.

Lieutenant Eric Brown of 802 Naval Air Squadron sailed with HMS Audacity on 13th September on her first outbound convoy to Gibraltar.

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Roosevelt and Churchill had promised Stalin that they would provide the Soviet Union with as much material support as they could to fight the Nazi invasion. Stalin had wanted Spitfires but, still fearing that an invasion of Britain was in prospect, the British felt that they could only spare Hurricanes. 151 Wing RAF was dispatched to Russia on one of the first of the Arctic convoys that would supply the Soviet Union with munitions until the end of the war. The RAF personnel were not told of their destination until they were en route. As a ruse to maintain secrecy about Operation Benefict, they were ordered to pack tropical kit, including mosquito nets, before boarding.

By the time they arrived in Russia, the weather was turning chilly, with snow flurries, but the first snow of the winter would not arrive until the end of the month. The first Hurricane aircraft flew off the Escort Carrier HMS Argus, but many more arrived in crates, soon to be flown by pilots of the Red Army Air Force. 151 Wing RAF provided direct fighter support for Soviet bomber operations and familiarised Red Army personnel, both ground crew and pilots, with the Hurricane.

The Luftwaffe pilots would soon be surprised to encounter very experienced pilots flying a relatively modern, well-armed fighter. It was not long before the Hurricane pilots were in action. In their first action in Russia, Flight Sergeant Ibby Waud1 was scrambled to intercept five Me 109s escorting a Henschel 126 observation plane. He was flying alongside Sergeant Wag Haw:

A great deal happened in seconds. The damned fools turned away from us instead of turning in towards us. They must have been straight out of Operational Training Unit or maybe they’d been sent to the Russian front for being continually pissed. I was flying next to Wag as he opened fire on a 109. It burst into flames immediately, an appalling great ball of flame. I found myself catching up with Wag’s 109 as it rolled over on to its back. It was an awesome sight, the 109 drifting along inverted with flames and debris pouring out of it. Black crosses, flames and smoke, one could almost smell them. The pilot must have been dead in the cockpit.

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Around half the population of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius was Jewish at the beginning of the war, some 70,000 people. At the beginning of September, the process of herding the Jews into two small ghettos had begun, organised by the Reichskommissar for the Ostland, the new Nazi authority in the east.

There was an ongoing dispute between the Reichskommissar - the ‘civilian authority’ - who wanted to restore industrial production and the Einsatzgruppen leader who wanted ‘ a radical treatment of the Jewish question’.

The Nazis soon realised that there was insufficient room in the old Jewish quarter of the city to accommodate half the city’s population. On the 2nd September, a proportion of the Jews were marched off to the Lukiszki prison and then taken in the direction of Ponary, where there was a railway station.

Then around 7,000 Jews - men, women, and children - were marched off to Lukiszki prison under brutal conditions. Here a proportion of men - doctors, engineers and skilled workers - were separated out and sent back to the ghetto.

The remainder remained in the prison. Sima Katz and her three children were amongst them:

At Lukiszki we were kept outside for two days and then put into cells. We learned that the previous inmates had been sent to Ponary, but no one thought that all of them had been killed.

We remained there until Thursday [11th September 1941]. At two a.m. the prison square was suddenly illuminated with floodlights. We were put aboard trucks, fifty to sixty women in a truck. In each vehicle there were armed Lithuanian sentries. The trucks headed for Ponary. We came to an area of wooded hillocks and were dumped among them.

Still, the mind would not keep pace with reality. We were arranged in rows of ten and prodded toward some spot, from which came the sound of shooting. The Lithuanians then went back for more batches of people.

Suddenly the truth hit us like an electric shock. The women broke out in piteous pleas to the sentries, offering them rings and watches. Some fell to the ground and kissed the sentries’ boots, others tore their hair and clothes to no avail.

The Lithuanians pushed one group after another to the site of the slaughter. By noon, when it became clear that there was no escaping this fate, the women fell into a kind of stupor, without any pleading or resistance. When their turn came, they went hopelessly to their death.

‘I held my breath and strained my ears. Moans and sounds of dying people, and from above came the amused laughter of the Lithuanians. I wished myself dead so that I would not have to hear the sounds. Nothing mattered. It did not dawn on me that I was unhurt.’

Suddenly we saw a group of men. At their head was an aged rabbi, wrapped in his prayer shawl; passing us he called out "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people." We were seized with trembling. The women broke into moans, and even the Lithuanians took notice. One of the guards ran up and hit the rabbi with the butt of his rifle.

My daughters and I were on the ground. Other women did not wait to be led away but broke from the rows and went on. The rows were broken. The women sat down and waited for a miracle to halt the massacre. I had one thought in mind: to be among the last.

Our turn came at five-thirty. The guards rounded up the remaining women. I felt my older daughter's hand in my own... .

When I came to, I felt myself crushed by many bodies. Feet were treading on me, and the acrid smell of some chemical filled the air. I opened my eyes; a young man was sprinkling us with quicklime. I was lying in a huge common grave.

I held my breath and strained my ears. Moans and sounds of dying people, and from above came the amused laughter of the Lithuanians. I wished myself dead so that I would not have to hear the sounds. Nothing mattered. It did not dawn on me that I was unhurt.

A child was whimpering a short distance away. Nothing came from above. The Lithuanians were gone. The whimper aroused me from my stupor. I crawled toward the sound. I found a three-year-old girl, unharmed. I knew that if I survived, it would be thanks to her.

I waited for darkness to fall; then, holding the child in my arms, I wriggled up to the surface and headed for the forest. Not far in the interior, I came upon five other women who had managed to survive. Our clothes were smeared with blood and burnt from the quicklime. Some of us had nothing but our underclothes on our skin.1

Katz joined the five other women who had survived. After hiding for two days in the forest, a local peasant eventually helped them.

The SS reported that they killed “993 Jews, 1,670 Jewesses and 771 Jewish children” in this action.

The corvette HMCS Moose Jaw was one of two Canadian ships involved in the sinking of U-501 on the 10th September 1941. Moose Jaw was newly commissioned and still working up when she was urgently ordered to sea. Ul…

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In North Africa, the Luftwaffe focused on the port of T…

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Roger Moorhouse has written several books about the war but adopted a wide ranging approach with this unusual history of the Nazi regime. The Third Reich in 100 Objects follows several other popular histories in a “100 objects” format, but this is an insightful history.

By examining a diverse range of objects, … Pervitin, Hitler’s Mercedes, jackboots, concentration camp badges, a 1932 election poster, Wehrmacht mittens, Hitler’s grooming kit, the Tiger Tank, fragments of flak, the swastika and Mein Kampf are amongst them … the reality of life under the Nazis at peace and at war is brought to life.

It helps perhaps that the Nazis were so concerned with projecting a particular image and that many of these images have gained iconic status, even if it is a matter of grim fascination these days.

But the text tells the whole story, and such objects as the Judenstern - the Jewish yellow star - and Zyklon-B canisters are included here. So a well-rounded picture emerges, and even avid historians of the period are likely to learn something. It's available for Kindle, but the hardback is of very good quality.

The following two passages are representative of the approach taken:

32 Elastolin Toy Figure

54 Stick Grenade

In the years after World War I, the stick design was revived in Germany as the M24 grenade. Essentially the same as the original, it had a smaller explosive head and a longer handle, thereby making it easier to use and throw. Also, as with the 1917 version, its detonator cord was safely stowed behind a metal screw cap in the base of the handle, so that it could not be set off accidentally.

Further versions would later be developed, such as the M39 ‘egg grenade’, and the simplified M43, which dispensed with the hollow wooden shaft and so was better suited to mass-production. But it was the M24 stick grenade that would become a staple weapon of German soldiers after 1939.

Over 75 million examples were manufactured - some containing a smoke charge and others with an additional fragmentation sleeve for maximum effect. In the field, a number of M24 grenades could be connected together to make an improvised 'bundle charge’, for use against larger targets such as tanks or buildings. Used in every theatre, the M24 stick grenade was ubiquitous, even iconic. It can often be seen in contemporary photographs, tucked into German soldiers’ belts or into the tops of their boots, ready for action.

© Roger Moorhouse 2017, ‘The Third Reich in 100 Objects.’ Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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On the Eastern Front, as the main thrust of the German Panzer armies moved south into the Ukraine, other German units fell back to the defensive. Parts of the front had become quite static, where trench warfare developed. Nevertheless, with crude tactics, incredibly wasteful of men, the Soviet army continued to mount fierce counter-attacks in many areas.

One German was keeping a diary of his experiences with the anti-tank battalion - the Panzerjagers - of the 299th Infantry Division during Barbarossa. Once again, Hans Roth found himself on the front line under artillery fire:

6 September

Changing guard at B-position at 0300 hours. Six men move into the lonely position. It is quiet despite our expectations. Well, at least what we call quiet: sporadic shell fire and the rattling of a single machine gun.

Wet fog hangs over our positions, it is abysmally cold. At least it provides good cover; the enemy is unable to see us walking through the barbed wire barriers as we carefully and slowly crawl through the minefield. Thirty minutes later we reach the forward trenches of B-position.

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On the 4th September the Soviet Ambassador to Britain, Ivan Maisky, met Churchill to discuss an urgent telegram from the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. Received in Britain on the 4th, Stalin’s message was a desperate plea for help:

I think the only way is to open a second front this year somewhere in the Balkans or in France, one that would divert 30-40 German divisions from the Eastern Front, and simultaneously to supply the Soviet Union with 30,000 tons of aluminium by the beginning of October and a minimum monthly aid of 400 aeroplanes and 500 tanks (of small or medium size).

Without these two kinds of aid the Soviet Union will be either defeated or weakened to the extent that it will lose for a long time the ability to help its Allies by active operations at the front against Hitlerism.

Churchill did his best to tell Maisky that this was impossible. Britain was itself weakened and in no position to mount offensive operations, however much it wanted to assist Russia.

One cannot exclude the possibility that the denouement may have to be postponed until 1944.

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The escalation of tension between Germany and the United States was almost inevitable as the US provided ever closer assistance to the Royal Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic. The facts of the 'Greer incident' - when the U-652 unsuccessfully attempted to torpedo the USS Greer and was then itself subjected to an unsuccessful depth charge attack were subject to some interpretation by both sides. But it was the first time in the war that a US ship had attacked a German vessel.

In his ‘fireside chat’ radio address to the American public on the 11th September, President Roosevelt was to state:

The Greer was flying the American flag. Her identity as an American ship was unmistakable. She was then and there attacked by a submarine. Germany admits that it was a German submarine. The submarine deliberately fired a torpedo at the Greer, followed by another torpedo attack.

In spite of what Hitler's propaganda bureau has invented, and in spite of what any American obstructionist organisation may prefer to believe, I tell you the blunt fact that the German submarine fired first upon this American destroyer without warning, and with the deliberate design to sink her.1

‘if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril’

As a direct consequence, Roosevelt announced what became known as his "shoot-on-sight" order:

The aggression is not ours. [Our concern] is solely defense. But let this warning be clear. From now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril. . . . The sole responsibility rests upon Germany. There will be no shooting unless Germany continues to seek it.

However, Roosevelt's account of the incident did not quite tell the whole story. It was some time later that Admiral Stark provided a full account of the incident after the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs2 looked into the matter:

At 0840 that morning, Greer, carrying mail and passengers to Iceland, "was informed by a British plane of the presence of a submerged submarine about 10 miles [(16 km)] directly ahead. . . . Acting on the information from the British plane the Greer proceeded to search for the submarine and at 0920 she located the submarine directly ahead by her underwater sound equipment.

The Greer proceeded then to trail the submarine and broadcasted the submarine's position. This action, taken by the Greer, was in accordance with her orders, that is, to give out information but not to attack."

The British plane continued in the vicinity of the submarine until 1032, but prior to her departure the plane dropped four depth charges in the vicinity of the submarine. The Greer maintained [its] contact until about 1248. During this period (three hours 28 minutes),the Greer maneuvered so as to keep the submarine ahead.

At 1240 the submarine changed course and closed the Greer. At 1245 an impulse bubble (indicating the discharge of a torpedo by the submarine) was sighted close aboard the Greer. At 1249 a torpedo track was sighted crossing the wake of the ship from starboard to port, distant about 100 yards [(100 m)] astern. At this time the Greer lost sound contact with the submarine.

At 1300 the Greer started searching for the submarine and at 1512 . . . the Greer made underwater contact with a submarine. The Greer attacked immediately with depth charges.

There were many, not just in Germany, who believed that Soviet Russia could not last more than a few months under the Nazi onslaught. In Britain, where the invasion scare had been at its …

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Stalin was already pleading for Britain to open up a second front. But for the moment the only location where British ground forces were in constant contact with the Wehrmacht was a broken-down Libyan port on the coast of North Africa.

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Huge numbers of prisoners were being taken by the Germans in the encirclement battles, where whole armies were captured. The Wehrmacht was totally unprepared to handle them all, and a very high proportion of those captured in the early battles would die by the end of the year - from starvation, sickness, maltreatment, exhaustion from the long marches, and exposure to the elements.

For some, the end was much swifter - perhaps, with hindsight, mercifully swift. Erich Stahl was fighting with the Waffen-SS at this time, and his brutally honest memoir gives plenty of examples of what was going on at this time:

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Many aspects of Operation Barbarossa remain opaque to this day. German military operations were conceived on an unprecedented scale and unfolded over a vast area, causing immense casualties to the Red Army and the ordinary people of the Soviet Union. The scale of the barbarism is beyond comprehension.

But the Russian first-person accounts that survive give us only a brief glimpse of what happened. Many reasons explain why the Soviet perspective is limited: most participants did not survive the battles of annihilation of this period. The Soviet system also permitted only an authorised narrative of events to survive until long after the war.

There are also huge gaps in the German account of events - because most of the German participants were also killed - eventually. Over 3 million Germans were involved in the initial invasion. Over 5 million Germans would die on the Eastern Front during the course of the war. So the accounts that the survivors left behind are only a small part of the story.

These reservations especially apply to naval operations. While naval battles in the West of equivalent size and significance are now well documented, many details of what unfolded in the East are probably lost for all time. Danish Naval officer Poul Grooss, a Russian-speaking intelligence officer and veteran of NATO operations in the region during the Cold War, managed to fill in many of the gaps during his research for The Naval War in the Baltic, 1939-1945, an impressive accomplishment. So at least we now have a one-volume overview of events, including the ‘Soviet Dunkirk’:

The evacuation of Tallinn: the ‘Soviet Dunkirk, or the mine battle at Tallinn

On 7 August, German troops reached the city of Kunda on the Estonian north coast, 50 miles/8okm east of Tallinn. This meant that Soviet units in Tallinn were then unable to retreat over land. They could now only be evacuated by sea. This applied to those remaining from three divisions, the 1oth Division, the 16th Division and the 22nd Division, and units from the Marine Corps. The attackers knew immediately how to exploit the situation.

During the next fourteen days, German and Finnish forces laid a large number of mines in the Juminda minefield, which in reality consisted of nineteen separate minefields. Cape Juminda is one of the northernmost points on the Estonian coast and the German army set up a 6.5in/170mm coastal battery here.

Initially, the minefield consisted of 1,370 mines and a similar number of explosive buoys laid as minesweeping obstacles, but in the following days, further mines were laid. The minefield went across the Gulf of Finland from the Estonian coast to Söderskär, off the Finnish coast. The operation was intended to prevent the Soviet units in Tallinn harbour from escaping back to Leningrad. The Soviet Union decided to evacuate Tallinn, and sent two hospital ships eastward on 10 August with the injured from previous battles. There were a total of 6,500 people on board the two ships. One of the ships hit a mine, but managed to reach Kronstadt under its own power. The other was sunk with almost no survivors.

German forces launched the attack on the city on 19 August. The Soviet naval forces sought to hide behind a heavy smokescreen, but German air raids and artillery fire became fiercer by the day. The cruiser Kirov and the Soviet destroyers used their artillery fire to keep the German forces at bay, so that the large number of merchant ships and warships could be made ready for departure from the harbour. The commander-in-chief of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, Admiral Tributs, had informed Stalin just a few days earlier that Tallinn would not fall to the advancing German troops. Now he was forced to take a flight to Leningrad to explain himself, and Vice-Admiral Valentin Petrovich Drozd on board the destroyer Stoikiy (Steadfast) took command of the overall forces.

The decision-making process under Stalin was dangerous. Few dared to make decisions themselves because of reprisals. As a rule, they had to be either taken or approved in Moscow, so decisions on withdrawals and evacuations were often delayed for such a long time that they could not be implemented as originally proposed. Local commanders often had a better understanding of the situation, but the Soviet leadership was racked with suspicion and indecision. Furthermore, the local commanders sometimes had to embellish the situation a little, in order not to fall out of favour.

On 27 August, the Soviet units were finally ready to evacuate Tallinn in about 170 ships divided into four convoys, of which twenty-nine ships were over 6,000 tonnes. The relatively concentrated air defence on the ships in the harbour area could keep the German aircraft at a distance, but as soon as the convoys were formed up out to sea, they were subjected to threats from mines, submarines, aircraft, torpedo boats and shore batteries. The distance to Leningrad was about 160 nautical miles (300km). The weather was bad and the minesweepers in the force could not immediately set out their minesweeping equipment because of the heavy seas.

When the convoys reached Cape Juminda, the fighting began in earnest. When the first mine detonated, the progress of the entire Soviet force was stopped. At the same time, the German coastal battery opened fire and seven Junkers Ju 88s launched a bombing raid. The cruiser Kirov fired some very precise counter-battery shelling with her 7in/18omm guns at the German coastal battery on Cape Juminda, which was destroyed.

Some ships in the convoy tried to force their way through the minefields, while others dropped anchor for the night and prepared themselves to continue the next morning. Five of the nine Soviet destroyers were sunk. Four of them were older Soviet destroyers from 1915, now named after political VIPs (Yakov Sverdlov, Kalinin, Artem and Volodarsky). The fifth was the brand new Skoryi (Rapid), built in 1941. In addition, two of the three frigates, Sneg and Tsiklon (Cyclone), were sunk. Of the twelve submarines, S-5 and Shch-301 were sunk. Twenty-five of the twenty-nine larger merchant ships were sunk, three were put aground, and only one of them reached Leningrad.

Approximately two-thirds of the convoy’s ships reached Leningrad, but it was mainly the small vessels that successfully negotiated the voyage. The two largest of the sunken merchant ships, Ivan Papanin and Vtoraya Pyatiletka (Second Five-year Plan), each had more than three thousand soldiers on board. In the Stalinist system, the rule was that in the case of failure, some scapegoats were required. Among the few rescued persons were individual ship’s captains who had been fished out of the water and brought to Leningrad. Most of them had behaved very heroically in the situation, but they were nevertheless put on trial and executed. They were rehabilitated in 1962.

Germany called the subsequent battle Die Minenschlacht von Reval (the mine battle at Tallinn), and regards this as the most successful mining operation in the history of naval warfare. Altogether, 2,828 mines and 1,487 explosive buoys were laid. The official number of Soviet casualties during the voyage of the convoy from Tallinn to Leningrad was set at 10,000 immediately after the war, but is now estimated to be 14,000 people. Sixty-five ships went down, but about 28,000 people and 60,000 tonnes of equipment reached their destination.

The Soviet defence was not very well organised in 1941, but the forces, and not least the Baltic Fleet, fought fiercely and succeeded in inflicting a number of losses on the German forces. Their inferiority in equipment was often offset by personal heroism, patriotism, fighting spirit and tenacity. The regime had also ensured, primarily with the help of Communist Party functionaries and NKVD units (the secret police, which also included border troops), a reduction in the possibilities for desertion, speaking out in defeatist terms, and similar.

Soviet historiography during and just after the war painted a rosy picture of a united people who were behind all the decisions of the Party and fought against hunger, cold and superior power. A somewhat more nuanced picture of the abuses of the system against its own citizens, criminality, cannibalism, and much more, is slowly becoming available to historians, but a number of Soviet archives are still inaccessible.

The more recent statistics show, for example, that starvation did not take nearly as many victims among members of the Communist Party elite, NKVD personnel and employees of the food industry as in the general population. The general picture of the city’s leadership, like so many other places in the Soviet Union at that time, is characterised by incredibly bad leadership, lack of sense of responsibility, poor, slow planning, corruption and nepotism. For example, there is anecdotal evidence that Party Secretary Zhdanov, in the middle of the worst of the famine in 1942, had fresh peaches flown in by courier plane.

© Poul Grooss 2014 & Seaforth Publishing 2017, ‘The Naval War in the Baltic, 1939-1945’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.

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