Battle of Crimea : Crossing The Isthmus Of Perekop. This is a re-enactment of the battle by a historic group. To watch the full video of the battle, click on the link within the text.
By: Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
On October 24, 1941, Kharkiv, Ukraine, an industrial and mining center, falls to German Army Group South.
The British battleship HMS Prince of Wales sets sail from England for the Far East on October 25. It is to become the flagship of the Royal Navy’s Far East Fleet, to be commanded by Vice Adm. Sir Tom Phillips. In Minsk, Belorussia, the Germans conduct the first public hangings of captured partisans.
In the Crimea, German forces on October 26 break through the Isthmus of Perekop, a three- to four-mile-wide strip of land that links the Crimean Peninsula with the Ukrainian mainland. To watch a brief re-enactment of the battle, click on this link. In the U.S., automakers are told by the government that, effective December 15, scarce materials — such as chrome, nickel and aluminum — may no longer be used for decorative purposes on the vehicles they manufacture.
German Army Group South reaches Sevastopol, in the Crimea, on October 27. In the north, German forces are slowed — even stopped in places — by muddy roads, although lead tanks are close to Moscow.
As of October 28, cold weather, muddy conditions and lengthy supply lines slow the German advance towards Moscow. In a Luftwaffe air raid on the Soviet capital, a bomb lands on the Bolshoi Theatre, damaging its lobby. German police in Bolekhiv, Ukraine, gather some 1,000 prominent Jews — rabbis, doctors, civic leaders and wealthy people — torture them for two days, then execute them in a nearby wood. Some are buried alive.
On October 29, the first of the Red Army’s Siberian reinforcements take up positions in defensive lines west of Moscow; they have arrived from Asia earlier in the month. In Lithuania, the Kaunas Massacre takes place, the largest mass murder of Lithuanian Jews during the war. In one day, an SS-Sonderkommando (special unit) kills some 2,000 men, almost 3,000 women and more than 4,200 children — roughly one-third of the population of the Kaunas ghetto.
In Washington, D.C., on October 30, President Roosevelt approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union. At Madison Square Garden in New York City, Charles Lindbergh addresses an America First Committee rally, claiming that President Roosevelt is using “dictatorship and subterfuge” in order to draw the U.S. into the war. In the Crimea, the Germans begin a siege of Sevastopol.
