Battle of the Atlantic

• The German steamer Memelland (542t) is sunk by a mine south of Helsinki.
• The German steamer Nordeney (3667t) scuttles herself when she is intercepted by the British light cruiser Despatch and the armed merchant cruiser Pretoria Castle northeast of the Amazon Estuary.

Diplomatic Relations

Stalin receives a message from Churchill and Roosevelt suggesting a joint meeting in Moscow. They would like to send delegations to Moscow 'to arrive at speedy decisions as to the apportionment of our joing resources.'

The Polish-Soviet Military Agreement is signed in Moscow which provided for the formation of a Polish army in the USSR to embrace all Polish citizens fit for military service.

Eastern Front

Sortavala falls to the Finnish 7th Infantry Division of the I Corps after heavy fighting. The defending 198th and 168th Rifle Divisions retreat after heavy losses. East of Viipurii the Finns penetrate across Lake Vuoksa, endangering the rear of the 23rd Army.

Finnish Troops Entertained by Soviet Troops

Finnish troops, having recently liberated Sortavala, are entertained in the streets by the last of the surrendered Soviet troops, 15 August 1941.

Manstein's LVI Panzer Corps gives up its hard fought positions on the Luga line to Lindemann's L Corps and march north in order to support the XLI Panzer Corps' attack from its bridgehead at Kingisepp. As soon as he is on the move, Manstein is ordered to backtrack and march his entire force south to aid the X Corps near Lake Ilmen. Manstein moves his corps back to dno to strike the 34th Army.

The bloody struggle on the Luga has yielded Army Group North 21,000 prisoners and the destruction or capture of 300 tanks and 600 artillery pieces.

With the situation in the south becoming increasingly acute, the South Front rushes the II Cavalry Corps up to Krivoi-Rog to prevent the early German capture of the town. The corps, however, becomes embroiled in bitter fighting as it attempts to aid the difficult withdrawal of the 18th and 9th Armies to the Ingulets River. Most of the 18th Army is already on the east bank and is pulling back upon Snegirevka. The 9th Army is fighting fierce defensive battles around Nilolayev.

Heinrich Himmler Looks at a Young Soviet Prisoner

The Nazi-German state depicted the war against the Soviet Union as a racial war between German "Aryans" and subhuman Slavs and Jews. From the very beginning the war against the Soviet Union included the brutal treatment of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) by the Germans, in violation of every standard of warfare, and the killing of POWs on a massive scale. During World War II, some 5.7 million Soviet army personnel fell into German hands. By January 1945, the German army reported that only about 930,000 Soviet POWs remained in German custody. The German army had released about one million Soviet POWs to serve as pro-German auxiliaries in the war and about half a million Soviet POWs had escaped German custody or had been liberated by the Soviet army as it advanced westward through eastern Europe into Germany. The remaining 3.3 million, or about 57 percent of those taken prisoner, were dead by the end of the war. Second only to the Jews, Soviet prisoners of war were the largest group of victims of Nazi racial policy. Heinrich Himmler looks at a young Soviet prisoner during an official visit to a prisoner-of-war camp in the vicinity of Minsk.