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WWII On This Day: May 8

What happened on May 8 during World War II? This date brings together 8 events from 1942, 1943, 1944 and 1945, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1942
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

Operation Trappenjagd breaks the Crimean Front

After artillery and air preparation, Eleventh Army concentrated the main ground attack on the southern sector of the Parpach line. The breakthrough opened space for mobile forces to turn north behind the Soviet forward armies. VIII Air Corps held a major advantage over the battlefield and struck headquarters, artillery, movement routes and reserves. The Soviet front lost the ability to reorganize before the German advance reached the Kerch crossings.

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1943
British Churchill tank and military vehicles parade through Tunis on 8 May 1943, one day after Allied troops entered the city.
British Churchill tank and military vehicles parade through Tunis on 8 May 1943, one day after Allied troops entered the city. Sgt Palmer / IWM NA 2880 · UK Government public domain Source
Operation Torch and the Tunisian Campaign

Allied troops parade in captured Tunis

Allied vehicles and troops paraded through Tunis on 8 May, the day after British forces entered the city. An Imperial War Museums photograph shows a Churchill tank among the vehicles in the streets. Further fighting continued outside the city, where Axis units were being disarmed and taken prisoner. The parade recorded the recovery of the capital while the last formations in Tunisia still had to surrender.

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1944
Sevastopol and the Crimea

Hitler authorizes evacuation after the breakthrough

With the Sapun position lost and the perimeter collapsing, permission to evacuate Seventeenth Army was finally given during the night of 8 May. The decision came after months in which earlier withdrawals had been rejected. The available shipping now had to load under Soviet air and artillery pressure from exposed beaches around Cape Khersones. Several convoys reached Romania, while others returned underloaded or could not reach the shore.

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1945
Displaced persons are processed at the former Blohm & Voss forced-labour camp in Hamburg on 18 May 1945 before transfer to national camps and repatriation.
Displaced persons are processed at the former Blohm & Voss forced-labour camp in Hamburg on 18 May 1945 before transfer to national camps and repatriation. Sgt J. Mapham / No. 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit / Imperial War Museums, BU 6658 · public domain (UK Crown) Source
Nazi Forced Labour

Allied armies find 11.3 million forced labourers

When the German forces surrendered in May 1945 the Allied armies found 11.3 million forced labourers in Germany. The UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, operating under Allied military control with more than 300 teams in the field by mid-1945, helped to repatriate some seven million people between May and September. Soviet authorities treated many returning workers with suspicion, and the returnees carried marks on their papers that followed them for years.

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

Nazi rule ends in Europe

Germany's unconditional surrender brought the Nazi state and its camp system to an end in Europe. Allied armies had already overrun concentration camps and forced-labour sites across Germany, Austria and occupied territory. Survivors faced disease, displacement, destroyed families and communities, lost property and continuing antisemitic violence. Tracing relatives, documenting crimes and deciding where to rebuild a life became part of the immediate postwar history of the Holocaust.

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A converted cable ship laying pipeline across the English Channel, 1944.
Pipeline laying in the Channel, 1944 ·
Operation PLUTO

Useful output, limited share

By the end of the European war, DUMBO was a functioning high-pressure supply route and the submarine lines were operating ahead of the capacity of parts of the continental system. The official postwar accounting credited PLUTO with approximately 370,000 long tons, about eight per cent of petroleum products sent from Britain to the Allied expeditionary force.

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People displaced by war wait beside their belongings for onward transport in Berlin, June 1945.
Unknown photographer / Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1977-124-30 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE
Refugees, Expulsion and Postwar Displacement

Germany surrenders with millions still displaced

Germany’s surrender found millions of foreign labourers, former prisoners and camp survivors in its territory. Many had been deported from elsewhere in Europe and needed emergency accommodation and transport. Military administrations gave returning citizens priority, while relief organisations provided clothing, food and tracing services. The National WWII Museum estimates about eleven million people in the immediate postwar displaced-person category, including approximately eight million in Germany. The broader number of people uprooted across Europe includes additional groups and must not be mistaken for a DP camp register.

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Exhausted Soviet prisoners arriving at Stalag X B Sandbostel in northern Germany, probably autumn 1941, some supporting companions unable to walk.
Unidentified German guard photographer / Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2005-0146 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE
Soviet Prisoners of War in German Captivity

The war ends; survivors face repatriation and screening

With the German surrender, Allied forces and Soviet authorities faced the task of locating and repatriating surviving prisoners from an extensive network of camps, hospitals and work detachments. Many men were severely debilitated after years of starvation and forced labour. Soviet security authorities examined returned prisoners for possible collaboration. Some were arrested, assigned to penal or labour service or otherwise punished; many more were cleared and returned to civilian life or the armed forces. The treatment of survivors remained a further chapter of the war’s human consequences.

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