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WWII On This Day: September 30

What happened on September 30 during World War II? This date brings together 5 events from 1941, 1943 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

Guderian opens Operation Typhoon on the southern wing

Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group attacked on 30 September from the southern wing of Army Group Centre. Its immediate purpose was to rupture the Bryansk Front, turn the Soviet line from the south and create the conditions for the larger encirclement operation west of Moscow. The attack began before the main Army Group Centre assault and quickly exposed the vulnerability of the Soviet southern flank. German mobile strength was still formidable, although three months of campaigning had already reduced vehicle serviceability and stretched the transport system supporting the advance.

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German soldiers surrender near Vitovka on the Bryansk Front, 30 September 1941, as fighting opened on the Operation Typhoon axis.
German soldiers surrender near Vitovka on the Bryansk Front, 30 September 1941, as fighting opened on the Operation Typhoon axis. RIA Novosti archive, image #491037 / Anatoliy Garanin · CC BY-SA 3.0 Source
Operation Barbarossa

Second Panzer Group opens Operation Typhoon

On 30 September Second Panzer Group attacked toward Orel and Bryansk, two days before the main Army Group Centre offensive began. The movement marked the transition from the summer campaign into Operation Typhoon. German forces entered the new offensive after the destruction of major Soviet formations at the frontier, Smolensk, Uman and Kyiv and after the isolation of Leningrad by land. Soviet mobilisation, government and military reconstruction had continued through all of those defeats. The strategic problem facing Army Group Centre had therefore changed from the one assumed in December…

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1943
General Bernard Montgomery at Eighth Army headquarters in Italy on 30 September 1943; the photo records the command during the advance up the peninsula.
General Bernard Montgomery at Eighth Army headquarters in Italy on 30 September 1943; the photo records the command during the advance up the peninsula. IWM TR 1388 / War Office official photography · Public domain Source
The Italian Armistice and the Landings at Salerno

Montgomery prepares the next stage of the Eighth Army advance

By the end of September Eighth Army headquarters was planning further movement up the Adriatic side of Italy as its forces occupied the Foggia area. Montgomery’s formations had covered the long routes north from Calabria while Fifth Army fought at Salerno. A British official photograph records Montgomery at headquarters in Italy on 30 September. Allied logistics and the different coastal road systems would continue to shape the pace of the advance.

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1944
U.S. Fifteenth Air Force B-24 bombers flying over a smoking oil refinery at Ploiești, Romania, on 31 May 1944.
Richard R. Ganczak / USAAF · Library of Congress cph.3b43591 · Public domain (US)
The Oil Campaign

Synthetic-fuel output reaches a new low

By September 1944 the combined output of the major German synthetic plants had collapsed. The postwar U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey gives an average of roughly 316,000 metric tons per month at the opening of the attacks, 107,000 in June and only about 17,000 in September. Those figures measure synthetic-plant output, rather than every source of German fuel. Remaining stocks, natural crude production, refining and rationing still influenced what the armed forces could use. Yet the fall in current production made it increasingly difficult to replace daily consumption. The sharp contraction…

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Polish insurgents march into German captivity after the capitulation of Żoliborz on 30 September 1944.
Polish insurgents march into German captivity after the capitulation of Żoliborz on 30 September 1944. Unknown photographer · Public domain (Poland) Source
The Warsaw Rising

Żoliborz surrenders

German attacks continued through 30 September and compressed Żoliborz into a shrinking pocket. An intended evacuation across the Vistula was delayed by weather, and negotiations with German commanders produced surrender terms during the afternoon. At about 18:00 Lieutenant-Colonel Mieczysław Niedzielski's district capitulated. Home Army units laid down their weapons and entered captivity, leaving northern and southern Śródmieście as the remaining organised insurgent area.

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