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WWII On This Day: November 22

What happened on November 22 during World War II? This date brings together 4 events from 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
Child survivors of Auschwitz, wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, stand behind a barbed wire fence.
USHMM

The Oyneg Shabes archive begins documenting the ghetto

Historian Emanuel Ringelblum organised a clandestine group to collect diaries, official notices, ration cards, drawings, essays and testimony from across occupied Poland. The archive was hidden in metal boxes and milk cans. Two caches were recovered after the war. The surviving documents record German policy and the responses, choices and daily lives of the people subjected to it.

Continue in The Holocaust: Timeline and Evidence →
1941
Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance photograph of a section of the Leningrad ice road, about 60 km east of the city, 1941–43.
Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance photograph of a section of the Leningrad ice road, about 60 km east of the city, 1941–43. Unknown Luftwaffe photographer · Public domain Source
The Siege of Leningrad

The first truck convoy crosses Ladoga

A column of sixty GAZ-AA trucks left the western shore of Lake Ladoga on 22 November, establishing the first regular motor convoy on the developing ice road. The crossing soon became part of a larger military road system with traffic control, repair teams, anti-aircraft positions and medical points; routes shifted as ice thickness and cracks changed.

Continue in The Siege of Leningrad →
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

Soviet armour seizes the bridge at Kalach

Before dawn on 22 November, an advance detachment from XXVI Tank Corps reached the Don crossing at Kalach and captured the bridge before German defenders could destroy it. Surprise and the speed of the Soviet approach secured the key crossing largely intact. The bridge gave the northern mobile forces a direct route across the Don toward the southern pincer. German headquarters west of Stalingrad were being displaced or overrun, and communications between Sixth Army and the rear were breaking down faster than a coherent withdrawal plan could be organised. Inside…

Continue in Battle of Stalingrad →
1944
A German 15 cm sIG 33 heavy infantry gun fires in the Hürtgen Forest during the defence against American attacks on 22 November 1944.
A German 15 cm sIG 33 heavy infantry gun fires in the Hürtgen Forest during the defence against American attacks on 22 November 1944. Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J28303 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Source
Aachen and the Hürtgen Forest

Barton sends the division forward again

After four days of limited gains, General Barton renewed the 4th Division's attack. The 8th, 12th and 22nd Infantry Regiments fought toward Hürtgen, Grosshau and the eastern forest edge. Regiments advanced by small envelopments through woods and clearings. Losses among company officers and non-commissioned officers steadily reduced the ability of replacements to operate.

Continue in Aachen and the Hürtgen Forest →