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WWII On This Day: December 17

What happened on December 17 during World War II? This date brings together 7 events from 1939, 1941, 1942 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1939
Finnish ski troops moving through forest during the Winter War.
Imperial War Museums, HU 52936 · Public domain · Source
The Winter War

Kollaa becomes a fixed battle on the Ladoga front

Soviet forces pressed the Kollaa sector north of Lake Ladoga as Finnish troops organised a defensive line around the river and the limited road approaches. The sector drew repeated infantry and armoured attacks through December and into the new year. The terrain allowed Finnish units to hold a relatively narrow frontage while sending patrols through the surrounding forest. Soviet T-26 tanks supplied direct fire on the approaches, tying the infantry battle to the roads and crossings that could support armour. Kollaa became one of the campaign's enduring defensive sectors and…

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1941
German troops in the ruins of Sevastopol, 1942.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-231-0703-27 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Sevastopol and the Crimea

Eleventh Army opens its December assault

The main German assault struck across the Outer Perimeter on a front of roughly twenty-seven miles, with the heaviest pressure north of the city toward the Mekenzievy Gory and Severnaya Bay. By 22 December German infantry had reached parts of the Rear Line, yet the fortress still possessed reserves and seaborne support. Events at the eastern end of Crimea then forced Manstein to divert attention away from the siege.

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1942
Child survivors of Auschwitz, wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, stand behind a barbed wire fence.
USHMM
The Holocaust: Timeline and Evidence

The Allies publicly condemn the extermination of Europe's Jews

The governments of the Allied United Nations issued a joint declaration on 17 December 1942 stating that German authorities were carrying out a policy intended to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe. The declaration followed reports from occupied Poland, Jewish organisations, underground couriers and intelligence channels. By late 1942 the systematic mass murder of Europe's Jews had therefore been accepted publicly at the level of Allied governments.

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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 Malmedy massacre

At the Baugnez crossroads on 17 December, Kampfgruppe Peiper encountered a column from the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. After the Americans surrendered, prisoners were assembled in a field beside the road. SS troops opened fire on the prisoners. Eighty-four American dead are conventionally counted from the massacre; survivors escaped or survived among the bodies and later gave accounts to U.S. investigators. The killings became the best-known of several war crimes committed by units moving with or behind Peiper's column. News spread rapidly among American troops, but claims that the…

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The Battle of the Bulge

The Wereth eleven

Elsewhere on 17 December, eleven African American soldiers of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion became separated from their unit and reached a farmhouse near Wereth, where civilians gave them shelter. After their presence was reported, men from the 1st SS Panzer Division took the soldiers away. Their bodies were recovered later; the evidence showed that they had been tortured and killed after capture. U.S. investigators documented the case but did not pursue it with the attention given to Malmedy. The difference belongs in the history of the battle because it…

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The Battle of the Bulge

Greif and Stösser

Two special operations added uncertainty behind the American front. Operation Greif sent small teams using captured vehicles, equipment and American uniforms to disrupt signs, communications and traffic. Operation Stösser dropped German paratroopers behind the northern front. Neither operation achieved the operational effect originally imagined. The parachute force scattered badly and could not seize its objective, while the Greif teams were too few to reorganise Allied movement on a large scale. Their psychological effect was larger. Checkpoints proliferated and rumours spread about disguised Germans and assassination teams. That confusion consumed time…

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The Battle of the Bulge

The reserve is committed

On 17 December Eisenhower released the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, the SHAEF reserve then refitting after the Netherlands campaign. Orders sent them toward the two parts of the German penetration that were becoming most dangerous. The 82nd moved toward the northern shoulder; the 101st was directed toward Bastogne. They did not arrive as self-sufficient solutions. Both had to be transported over crowded winter roads and integrated with armour, artillery, engineers and survivors already fighting in the sector. The decision mattered because it put experienced infantry into the road network…

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