Air Operations, Europe

Stettin and Hamburg are bombed in night raids by the RAF.

Arctic

Leaving from Reykjavik, Iceland the convoy PQ-1 passes to Archangel with 10 merchant ships escorted by 1 cruiser and 2 destroyers. There is no German attack. This convoy arrives in Archangel October 11. At the same time QP-1 passes from Archangel to Scapa Flow. This is the start of the regular traffic.

Czechoslovakia, Home Front

Prime Minister Elias, the puppet prime minister of the Bohemia-Moravia 'Proctectorate', is arrested by Heydrich. He is deported to Berlin. He is sentenced to death October 1, but is later reprieved. There are many strict measures taken at Heydrich's order and he quickly gains a justly vile reputation.

Black Sea

Soviet submarine SC-211 sinks the Italian tanker Superga (6154t) near Varna in the Black Sea.

Eastern Front

In the southern sector the Germans enter the Doubas region, the important coal basin of the Don River.

German forces are almost ready to start Operation TYPHOON. The 9th Army and the 3rd Panzer Group will drive to the north of the city, and the 2nd Panzer Group and 2nd Army will attack from the south. In this way Moscow will be enveloped by a double pincer movement, with the panzer formations forming the outer pincers. In the center the 4th Army and 4th Panzer Group will prevent Soviet units striking the flanks.

The composition of the German forces is as follows: 3rd Panzer Group - XLI and LVI Panzer Corps and 9th Army; 4th Panzer Group - XL, XLVI and LVII Panzer Corps and 4th Army; 2nd Panzer Group - XXIV, XLVII and XLVIII Panzer Corps, XXXIV and XXXV Corps and 2nd Army, and 2nd Air Fleet and VIII Air Corps of the 4th Air Fleet. This force numbers 1,929,000 troops, 14,000 artillery pieces, 1,000 tanks and 1,390 aircraft.

Opposing this juggernaut are Konev's Western Front: 16th, 19th, 20th, 22nd, 29th and 30th Armies (558,000 troops); Budenny's Reserve Front: 24th, 31st, 32nd, 33rd and 49th Armies (448,000 troops); and Eremenko's Bryansk Front: 3rd, 13th and 50th Armies (244,000 troops). In total the Red Army musters 1,250,000 troops, 7,600 artillery pieces, 990 tanks and 670 aircraft for the defense of Moscow.[MORE]

Soviet Union, Home Front

A German SS unit, Sonderkommando 4a, working in conjunction with Ukrainian auxiliary police, begins the mass murder of Kiev's Jews at Babi Yar ravine. At the end of the day the bodies are covered by a thin layer of soil. In 2 days of shooting, 33,771 Jews are murdered. Tens of thousands of others will be slaughtered at Babi Yar during the coming months.

Babi Yar, 29 September 1941

As the German blitzkrieg raced across the Ukraine in the fall of 1941 there was little to slow them down. One thing the Nazis always had time for was to stop and slaughter local residents. Babi Yar is a ravine near Kiev. The Jewish population of Kiev was brought to Babi Yar, herded into the ravine, and shot. All 33,000 of them. Similar massacres were performed throughout the Soviet Union. The victims were also Gypsies, communists, and Russian POWs.