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WWII On This Day: September 26

What happened on September 26 during World War II? This date brings together 5 events from 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1941
A German infantryman beside a burning Soviet BT-7 tank and a dead Soviet soldier, June 1941.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-020-1268-36 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Operation Barbarossa

The Kyiv operation ends

By 26 September organised resistance in the principal Kyiv pocket had been crushed, although scattered groups continued trying to escape. German headquarters claimed approximately 665,000 prisoners from the operation. The captor figure encouraged German assessments that another enormous Soviet force had been removed from the war. Soviet commands were already rebuilding the front farther east and north with new and surviving formations. Second Panzer Group now began turning back toward the Moscow axis. The Kyiv operation had destroyed much of Southwestern Front and secured the central army group's southern flank,…

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1942
Aerial view of Stalingrad during the heavy fighting, September 1942.
Aerial view of Stalingrad during the heavy fighting, September 1942. Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B22176 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Source
Battle of Stalingrad

German forces reach the Volga in the central sector

By 26 September German forces had occupied much of southern and central Stalingrad and reached the Volga at several points. The advance divided the Soviet-held western bank into increasingly separate sectors, leaving 62nd Army dependent on several small crossing and supply areas along the river. German success in the centre still left major Soviet positions intact around Mamayev Kurgan and the northern industrial district. Sixth Army’s infantry strength was falling, and every new riverbank lodgement had to be cleared, protected and supplied through the same ruined city. Paulus consequently shifted…

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1943
Soviet troops preparing river-crossing craft during the 1943 Dnieper campaign; the sign reads 'To Kyiv!'. Commons dates the image broadly from late August to November 1943.
Soviet troops preparing river-crossing craft during the 1943 Dnieper campaign; the sign reads 'To Kyiv!'. Commons dates the image broadly from late August to November 1943. Unknown Soviet war correspondent · Public domain Source
The Dnieper Crossings

A second Kyiv bridgehead forms at Lyutezh

38th Army established and enlarged a bridgehead north of Kyiv around Lyutezh. It was initially smaller than Bukrin and had to be supplied across the same river obstacle, but its position offered a more favourable approach toward Kyiv and the roads west of the city. For the moment Vatutin still expected Bukrin to carry the main effort. Lyutezh nevertheless gave the front an alternative axis, and its value increased as the October attacks from Bukrin ran into prepared German positions.

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1944
Allied transport aircraft and gliders overhead while paratroops descend over the Netherlands during Operation Market Garden on 17 September 1944.
U.S. Army Air Forces / National Archives, NAID 531308 · Public domain in the United States · Source
Operation Market Garden

The Arnhem bridgehead is gone

By morning the organised bridgehead north of the Nederrijn had been abandoned. About 2,100 men of 1st Airborne Division had been ferried back during the withdrawal, while roughly 7,500 of the Arnhem force were dead or prisoners according to the National Army Museum's accounting. The Allies retained a salient running through Eindhoven and Nijmegen, but no bridgehead across the Lower Rhine. Market Garden had therefore opened much of the intended corridor without securing the objective that was meant to carry the advance beyond Arnhem.

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Operation Market Garden

The northern Netherlands remain occupied

The Allied salient liberated parts of the southern Netherlands, but Arnhem and much of the country north of the major rivers remained under German occupation. The Dutch railway strike called in support of the Allied advance was followed by German transport restrictions and reprisals. Food movement then deteriorated under occupation measures, military disruption, fuel shortages and the severe winter of 1944–45. The resulting Hunger Winter affected the western Netherlands until Allied food relief and liberation in the spring of 1945.

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