August 20th, 1941 (WEDNESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Minesweeper HMS Ilfracombe is commissioned.
FRANCE: Paris: 5,000 foreign born Jews are arrested and sent to the deportation camp at Drancy.
50,000 people are arrested in occupied and Vichy France as a hunt goes on for railroad saboteurs.
GERMANY: Adolf Hitler authorizes the development of the V-2 rocket.
FINLAND: General der Infanterie Waldemar Erfurth, the representative of the OKW at the Finnish Supreme Headquarters, informs Mannerheim that Hitler wishes that the Finns would encircle Leningrad from the north with as many troops as possible. Mannerheim rejects the proposal and says that he has to negotiate with the President and cabinet first. Erfurth gets the impression that the Finns don't want to have anything to do with Leningrad.
U.S.S.R.: Leningrad: Marshal Voroshilov orders its defenders to fight to the death.
The German 11th Army of Heeresgruppe Süd captures Cherson on the Black Sea, the gateway to the Crimea.
German XXXXII A. K. (Gen. d. Pio. Walter Kuntze) begins an attack on Tallinn. (Jeff Chrisman)
The Red Army, pursuing Stalin's scorched-earth policy, have blown up the Lenin-Dnieproges Dam at Zaporoje, on the Dnieper, one of the Soviet Unions' greatest achievements.
The dam was the world's greatest hydro-electric power complex. Completed in 1932, it was proudly shown to foreign visitors as an example of Communist efficiency, although American engineers designed and built most of it.
It consisted of nearly half a mile of ferro-concrete, and contained huge sluices and docks which enabled cargo ships to pass along the river. The importance of the dam to Soviet industry cannot be over-estimated. The industries of the Dnieper valley, including the iron mines at Krivoi Rog, captured by the Germans, depend on the power it produces. Kharkov, a vital part of the Soviet defence industry, with its tractor works and machine-tool factories, is heavily dependent on the dam's power. The Russians claim that new factories now coming into operation east of the Urals will compensate for the loss.
This will deprive the Germans of much of the riches of the Ukraine.
At Belaya Tserkov, two German army chaplains informed the First General Staff Officer of the 296th Infantry Division, Lieutenant Colonel Helmuth Groscurth, of the pitiful plight of children brought to their attention by soldiers who had heard them crying in a school in which they had been locked for days without food. At the school, Groscurth was informed by an SS Sergeant that the children were to be shot, as their parents had been. Groscurth arranged for a postponement while he appealed the decision. When he telephoned the staff of Army Group South he was referred to the headquarters of the Sixth Army, from which he elicited a promise that a decision would be sought by evening from the army's commander.
Reichenau promptly decided that the action should be effectively concluded, but contacted Blobel and ordered it postponed because it had not been properly handled. He directed that the SS-colonel go with a representative of the Sixth Army High Command to Belaya Tserkov the following morning. The next day the children were executed. In a letter to his brother a few months later, Groscurth wrote of Reichenau and his like: "One can't view the responsible people with anything but the deepest contempt. Because this is so, Germany will be destroyed; I no longer have the slightest doubt of that" (pp. 107-111). (246)
MEDITERRANEAN SEA: On 6 August 1941 HMS P 33 sailed from Malta with orders to intercept an Italian convoy bound for Libya. On 18 August HMS P 32 reported hearing a prolonged depth charge attack that lasted for two hours. When the attack was finally over P 32 attempted to contact P 33 but received no response and it is almost certain that P 33 had perished in the attack. P 33 was reported overdue today when she failed to return to Malta. However the Italians claim that she was sunk by the torpedo boat Partenope off Pantelleria on the 23 August.
U.S.A.: In baseball, Larry MacPhail, General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, stages a fashion show before a Ladies Day crowd at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. Such promotions, as well as the Dodgers pennant race, will push the home gate to over one million fans.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: Minesweeping trawler HMS Lorinda is sunk after a fire near Freetown.