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WWII On This Day: August 21

What happened on August 21 during World War II? This date brings together 7 events from 1941, 1942 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1941
Heinz Guderian inspecting a panzer regimental command post on the Eastern Front in August 1941; the wartime release is dated 20 August.
Heinz Guderian inspecting a panzer regimental command post on the Eastern Front in August 1941; the wartime release is dated 20 August. Bundesarchiv Bild 183-L19885 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Source
Operation Barbarossa

Hitler orders the central mobile forces toward the flanks

Hitler's decision of 21 August rejected the Army High Command's proposal for an immediate concentration on Moscow. The principal pre-winter objectives were defined as the Crimea and Donets region in the south and the isolation of Leningrad in the north; Second Panzer Group was directed south against Southwestern Front. Guderian's formations turned across the front and drove toward the Desna and the rear of the Kyiv salient, aiming to meet First Panzer Group advancing north from bridgeheads on the lower Dnieper. The movement created a long exposed eastern flank that…

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Heavy seas breaking around HMS Sheffield while she escorts Arctic convoy JW 53 toward Russia in February 1943.
Royal Navy official photographer · Imperial War Museums A 14890 · Public domain
The Arctic Convoys

Dervish opens the Arctic supply route

Convoy Dervish sailed from Iceland for Arkhangelsk with six merchant ships, an oiler and a layered escort. It reached northern Russia on 31 August without loss, before Germany had organised a sustained air, submarine or surface campaign against the route. The first voyage established that a northern sea lane could deliver war material quickly to the Soviet Union. Its success did not prove the route was safe. The convoy passed during a short period in which German forces in Norway were still adjusting to the new Allied supply commitment, and…

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1942
Red Army soldiers carrying a Soviet flag through the ruins of Stalingrad in 1943.
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R76619 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Battle of Stalingrad

Sixth Army forces the Don and prepares the dash east

German infantry forced crossings of the Don north of Kalach and engineers expanded the bridgehead for the mobile formations that would follow. The river crossing placed Sixth Army on the last major natural barrier before Stalingrad, but every formation sent east also depended on bridges and roads running back through a narrow logistical corridor. XIV Panzer Corps concentrated for the eastward thrust while LI Corps and other formations widened and protected the bridgehead. Soviet armies were still trying to rebuild a coherent defence after the battles west of the Don,…

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A German tank commander in southern Soviet territory in June 1942, shortly before the opening of Case Blue.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-218-0528-30 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Case Blue and the Drive to the Caucasus

A flag on Elbrus

On 21 August a detachment of German mountain troops reached the summit of Elbrus and planted German flags. The climb produced striking propaganda images and demonstrated how far Army Group A had penetrated into the high Caucasus. The summit itself controlled no operational route. The significant fighting lay in the passes west and east of the mountain, where troops, ammunition and food often had to move by pack animal or on foot through terrain unsuitable for ordinary motor transport. The event therefore belongs in the chronology as a contrast between…

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1944
Allied landing craft off the Île d'Or at Le Dramont, Camel Beach, during the landing in Provence, August 1944.
Landing craft off the Île d'Or at Le Dramont, Camel sector, August 1944 · Public domain · Source
Operation Dragoon

Task Force Butler reaches Montélimar

Butler's column covered more than 200 miles in three days, through Digne, Sisteron and Gap, and came down onto the Rhône road north of Montélimar. It was now sitting across the only escape route of an entire German army, unsupported, out of fuel and short of ammunition. The 36th Infantry Division was ordered up to join it. The battle that followed lasted a week and is the one part of Dragoon that did not go to plan.

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The Polish 1st Armoured Division in Normandy, August 1944.
The Polish 1st Armoured Division in Normandy, August 1944. IWM B 8460 · IWM Non-Commercial Licence Source
Operation Overlord

The Falaise pocket is closed

Canadian, Polish, British and American forces closed the gap between Trun and Chambois. The Polish 1st Armoured Division held Hill 262, known as Maczuga or the Mace, astride the escape route for two days, cut off and attacked from both directions, without resupply. Around 50,000 German troops were captured in the pocket and perhaps 10,000 killed. Between 20,000 and 50,000 escaped east, mostly on foot; almost all their tanks, guns and transport were left behind. Eisenhower, walking the ground afterwards, described a scene that could only be adequately described by…

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Tanks and half-tracks of the French 2e Division Blindée pass the Arc de Triomphe through crowds on the Champs-Élysées, 26 August 1944.
Jack Downey, US Office of War Information · Library of Congress · Public domain · Source
The Liberation of Paris

Rol-Tanguy rejects the truce

The FFI command and the Paris committee of liberation repudiated the ceasefire and ordered the fighting resumed. Rol-Tanguy's position was that a rising that stops is a rising that has surrendered its claim. The political argument was now explicit. The Resistance intended Paris to be liberated by Parisians, and de Gaulle intended it to be liberated by the French Army under his government.

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