September 12th, 1941 (FRIDAY)
FRANCE: Paris: The Germans shoot 12 of the Jewish hostages taken on 8 September.
GERMANY: Rastenburg: Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the chief of the German army's High Command, today issued an explicit directive to his troops on how they should treat Jews in the USSR. headed "Jews in the newly occupied eastern territories", Keitel's directive says: "The struggle against Bolshevism demands ruthless and energetic measures, above all against the Jews, the main carriers of Bolshevism."
NORWAY: Boy Scouts and other youth organizations are banned by Quisling in Norway. In their place the youth sections of the Nasjonal Samling Party exist and boys are required to join.
U.S.S.R.: The 2nd and 3rd Panzer Armies under General Ewald von Kleist, Commander of 1st Panzer Army, and Guderian join up at Lokhvitsa, near Rovno, completing the encirclement of Kiev and a pocket of 600,000 Soviet soldiers to the east of the city Chernigov on the Desna is evacuated under German attacks.
An early snowfall hits most of the front in the Soviet Union turning the landscape into mud. The Germans, completely unprepared for the poor weather are completely incapable of dealing with the situation, call a temporary halt to the attacks by their mechanized forces. Hitler halts the advance in the Leningrad area and orders the bulk of the armored and mechanized forces in Army Group North, to move south and prepare for the attack on Moscow.
LITHUANIA: A SS Einsatzkommando [action squad] murders 3,434 Jews at Ponary, outside Vilna.
ITALY: Flying from bases in Britain and North Africa, British bombers struck at Italy's industrial north and at targets in Sicily, in the south, tonight. The British based Stirlings took advantage of the longer nights to fly 1,200 miles across France and the Alps and bomb the royal arsenal at Turin, where at least nine large fires were started.
More fires were started at Messina and Palermo - both major supply ports for the Italian army in Libya - with crews reporting hits on merchant ships, oil tanks and a power station.
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: Nine USAAF B–17 Flying Fortresses completed a weeklong flight from Hickam Field, Territory of Hawaii, to Clark Field by way of Midway Isalnds; Wake Island; Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea; and Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.
GREENLAND: The USCG gunboats USCGC Northland (WPG-49) and USCGC North Star (WPG-59) seize the Norwegian trawler Buskoe in MacKenzie Bay. The crew of the Buskoe is attempting to establish and service German weather stations in Greenland. This the first capture of a belligerent ship by the U.S. in WWII.
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from http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/n6/northland.htm
Northland sighted the German-controlled Norwegian sealer Buskoe 12 September and sent a boarding party to investigate. Buskoe was taken to Mackenzie Bay, on the Greenland coast, where she became the first American naval capture of the period of emergency that preceded U.S. entry into the war. It was believed that she had been sending weather reports and information on Allied shipping to the Germans. Her capture also led to the discovery of a German radio station about five hundred miles up the Greenland coast from Mackenzie Bay. A night raiding party from Northland captured three Nazis at Peter Bregt, with equipment and code, as well as German plans for other radio stations in the far north.
U.S.A.:
Stimson protests to cabinet Roosevelt’s gift to
the USSR of 5 B-17's as these were needed for the Philippines. Roosevelt apologizes but the gift stands. (Marc Small)
The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) authorises the creation of the USNs first photo interpretation (PI) school. (William L. Howard)