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WWII On This Day: December 16

What happened on December 16 during World War II? This date brings together 6 events from 1941, 1942 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1941
A Soviet 122 mm A-19 gun crew firing during the defence of Moscow on 3 December 1941.
RIA Novosti archive #46802 / Viktor Temin · 3 December 1941 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source
The Battle for Moscow

Hitler restricts retreat as the German command is reorganised

As Soviet armies pushed west, Hitler ordered the eastern armies to hold positions and resist further withdrawal. The written directives issued during 16–18 December sought to stop a retreat from becoming an uncontrolled flight and required strongpoints to be held while reserves and supplies were brought forward. The battlefield crisis was accompanied by a command crisis. Fedor von Bock left Army Group Centre and Günther von Kluge took over; Walther von Brauchitsch resigned as army commander-in-chief, and on 19 December Hitler assumed direct command of the Army. The new command…

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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

Little Saturn breaks into the Italian Eighth Army

On 16 December Southwestern and Voronezh Fronts opened the reduced version of Operation Saturn against the Italian Eighth Army on the middle Don. Soviet rifle armies broke the front and mobile formations drove toward Axis rear areas, airfields and communications farther west. The offensive did not strike the Stalingrad pocket directly. Its importance for the relief operation lay in the threat it created to Army Group Don’s wider rear and to German forces along the Chir. Reserves that might have reinforced Winter Storm were required elsewhere, while the entire southern…

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1944
Men of the 101st Airborne Division moving toward Bastogne on 19 December 1944 as Allied reserves enter the Ardennes battle.
101st Airborne Division on the road between Bastogne and Houffalize, 19 December 1944 · US Army Signal Corps SC 329953 · NARA · Public domain · Source
The Battle of the Bulge

The barrage opens

At 05:30 on 16 December German artillery opened across the Ardennes front. Infantry moved forward under low cloud, fog and snow before the main armoured columns could exploit the penetrations. Sixth Panzer Army attacked in the north, Fifth Panzer Army in the centre and Seventh Army in the south. Their tasks were not identical. The northern SS army carried the principal route toward Liège and Antwerp; Manteuffel's Fifth Panzer Army sought the central crossings and roads toward the Meuse; Seventh Army protected the southern flank. The weather denied the Americans…

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The Battle of the Bulge

Eighteen men at Lanzerath

Near Lanzerath, Lieutenant Lyle Bouck's 18-man intelligence and reconnaissance platoon of the 394th Infantry, reinforced by artillery observers, occupied prepared positions overlooking one of the routes needed by the northern German attack. The platoon repelled repeated assaults by a much larger German parachute force through the day before being surrounded and captured after dark. Its defence delayed the regiment immediately in front of it and added hours to an advance already struggling to clear the Losheim approaches. Lanzerath deserves its place in the chronology without carrying the whole northern campaign…

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The Battle of the Bulge

Allied command begins moving reserves

During the first day reports reaching Allied headquarters were fragmentary and often contradictory. What was initially unclear was whether the attack was a large spoiling operation or the opening of a strategic offensive. Eisenhower and the army-group command nevertheless began moving armoured strength toward the threatened shoulders rather than waiting for a complete picture. The ability to redirect formations from quieter sectors became one of the Allies' principal advantages as the scale of the penetration emerged. The response did not erase the surprise. Units already in the path of the…

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Infantrymen of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division rest on a slope in the Hürtgen Forest on 18 November 1944.
U.S. Army Signal Corps / National Archives · 18 November 1944 · Public domain · Source
Aachen and the Hürtgen Forest

The dam attack is suspended

The Ardennes offensive opened south of the Hürtgen sector and forced First Army to suspend the ground drive toward the dams. Formations and attention shifted toward the German breakthrough. The same forested and broken terrain that had constrained the American advance also helped screen German movement behind the West Wall during the assembly for the Ardennes offensive.

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