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WWII On This Day: August 5

What happened on August 5 during World War II? This date brings together 6 events from 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1941
General Georgy Zhukov near Yelnya in 1941.
General Georgy Zhukov near Yelnya in 1941. Mil.ru · CC BY 4.0 Source
Operation Barbarossa

Army Group Centre pauses

By early August the principal Smolensk pockets had been reduced, while Soviet attacks continued around Yelnya and elsewhere on the central front. Mobile formations that had covered hundreds of kilometres since 22 June required maintenance, replacements and renewed supply stocks. Infantry remained in combat, rail conversion crews pushed east and road organisations tried to move the logistical base closer to the front. The panzer groups were temporarily less capable of another immediate deep operation than they had been at the frontier. The strategic debate over Moscow, Leningrad and Ukraine therefore…

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1942
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

The Caucasus front opens wide

In the first week of August Army Group A spread rapidly south from the lower Don. Mobile formations reached Stavropol while the western wing moved through Tikhoretsk toward the Kuban and Black Sea approaches. The movement no longer aimed at one closing ring. First Panzer Army, Seventeenth Army and the mountain corps were beginning to acquire different destinations: the Terek and Grozny axis in the east, Novorossiysk and Tuapse in the west, and the high passes between them. Every new axis reduced the ability to shift a reserve quickly from…

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1943
Troops of the 89th Guards Rifle Division in recently recaptured Belgorod, 5 August 1943.
Troops of the 89th Guards Rifle Division in recently recaptured Belgorod, 5 August 1943. Russian Ministry of Defence (Mil.ru) · CC BY 4.0 Source
Battle of Kursk 1943

Orel and Belgorod are retaken on the same day

Soviet forces entered Orel during Operation Kutuzov and Belgorod during the Belgorod–Kharkov offensive on 5 August. The two captures occurred on different operational fronts but marked the disappearance of both German starting shoulders around the former Kursk salient. Moscow celebrated the victories with an artillery salute. On the ground the Soviet offensives continued: German forces were withdrawing west from Orel, while the southern battle moved beyond Belgorod toward Bogodukhov and Kharkov.

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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

Churchill's last attempt to stop it

Churchill argued to the end for the troops to be used in northern Italy and towards Trieste and the Ljubljana Gap, with an eye on where the Red Army would stand at the end of the war. Eisenhower refused, on the grounds that the armies in France needed a working deep-water port more than they needed a new front. He gave way five days before the landing. He then went to sea to watch it, from the destroyer HMS Kimberley off the Var coast.

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Heinz Reinefarth, second from right, at his Wola command position during the Warsaw Rising in August 1944. The Commons record does not give an exact day.
Heinz Reinefarth, second from right, at his Wola command position during the Warsaw Rising in August 1944. The Commons record does not give an exact day. Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-695-0411-03A / Josef Gutermann · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Source
The Warsaw Rising

The Wola assault and massacre

German police, SS and attached formations under the western suppression group attacked eastward through Wola on 5 August to reopen the route from the western approaches toward central Warsaw and the Vistula. The advance was accompanied by organised mass executions of civilians in houses, hospitals, factories, courtyards and improvised killing sites. The Institute of National Remembrance places the Wola death toll at roughly 38,000 to 65,000, with the largest executions from 5 to 7 August. The killing was part of the German suppression policy ordered after the Rising began and…

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Soldiers of the Zośka Battalion at Gęsiówka on 5 August 1944, the day the camp was liberated.
Soldiers of the Zośka Battalion at Gęsiówka on 5 August 1944, the day the camp was liberated. Juliusz Bogdan Deczkowski · Public domain (Poland) Source
The Warsaw Rising

Zośka liberates the camp

Zośka Battalion attacked the KL Warschau camp at Gęsiówka with infantry and one of the captured Panthers. The tank broke through barriers and engaged German positions. Several hundred prisoners, most of them Jews from different European countries, were freed. Many joined the insurgents or assisted the wounded and civilians.

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