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WWII On This Day: August 26

What happened on August 26 during World War II? This date brings together 6 events from 1943 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1943
Red Army troops crossing the Dnieper on the Kyiv axis in 1943.
Yefim Kopyt · Russian archival photograph · Public domain
The Dnieper Crossings

The advance toward the Dnieper opens

Central, Voronezh, Steppe, South-Western and Southern Fronts pressed west across a front extending through much of Ukraine. Their immediate problem was to keep contact with retreating German forces while supply columns, artillery and engineers followed over roads already strained by months of fighting. Army Group South had limited reserves available to restore a continuous front. Soviet pressure across several axes reduced the freedom to concentrate armour at one threatened point, but the further the Red Army advanced, the more its own fuel, ammunition and bridging equipment lagged behind.

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1944
Fort Faron above Toulon, one of the positions the French Army had to take from the landward side.
Fort Faron above Toulon, one of the positions the French Army had to take from the landward side. Wikimedia Commons · Creative Commons Source
Operation Dragoon

Toulon falls

The Toulon garrison surrendered after a week of fighting for the forts and the arsenal, with the formal capitulation completed on 28 August. Around 17,000 prisoners were taken. The harbour had been thoroughly demolished, with cranes destroyed and blockships sunk across the entrances, and it took weeks of clearance before it could take shipping.

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

The march down the Champs-Élysées

De Gaulle laid a wreath at the Arc de Triomphe and then moved down the Champs-Élysées through an immense crowd, accompanied by figures from the provisional government, the Resistance and the armed forces. Tanks and half-tracks of the 2e Division Blindée passed through the same avenue. Jack Downey's Office of War Information photograph records the armoured procession and the crowd on 26 August.

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Crowds on the Place de la Concorde scatter under gunfire during the victory procession on 26 August 1944.
Crowds on the Place de la Concorde scatter under gunfire during the victory procession on 26 August 1944. Verna, US Army · NARA 111-SC-193008 · Public domain Source
The Liberation of Paris

Gunfire scatters the victory crowd

As the victory procession crossed central Paris, gunfire sent people on the Place de la Concorde flat onto the pavement and scrambling for cover. A US Army photographer caught the moment. More firing was reported around the procession and near Notre-Dame. Wartime captions described isolated snipers, but the identity of individual shooters was never established with certainty amid the confusion of an armed city just after surrender.

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OSS officers with Draža Mihailović at Pranjani on 6 September 1944 during Operation Halyard.
Unknown photographer · Pranjani, 6 September 1944 · Public domain (PD-Yugoslavia)
Operation Halyard

More Pranjani lifts collect newly arrived airmen

The main evacuation did not empty the network. Downed crews continued reaching Chetnik-held areas, and additional C-47 missions returned to Pranjani in late August and early September. The official Air Force history groups the later Pranjani missions together and records another seventy-five American airmen recovered. Foundation and veteran schedules identify lifts on 26–27 August, 27–28 August and 5–6 September; the page therefore avoids manufacturing a single precise total for each individual night.

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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

The last raid

German aircraft bombed Paris during the night of 26 to 27 August, striking eastern districts after two days of liberation celebrations. The raid killed dozens of people and damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings. The city's surrender had ended the German garrison's battle, but it had not placed Paris beyond the reach of the war.

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