Timeline of World War II (1941) - August 1941

August 1941

• 1: The US announces an oil embargo against "aggressors."
  : Japanese occupy Saigon, Vietnam.
• 2: All civilian radios in Norway confiscated by the German occupation.
• 5: German armies trap Red Army forces in Smolensk pocket and take 300,000 soldiers; Orel is taken.
• 6: Germans take Smolensk.
  : American and British governments warn Japan not to invade Thailand.
• 9: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet at NS Argentia, Newfoundland. The Atlantic Charter is created, signed, and released to the world press.
• 11: Malta is relieved by a convoy.
  : Chungking, the nominal capital of Nationalist China located far up the Yangtze River, suffers several days of heavy bombing.
• 12: Hitler, against the advice of his generals, shifts some forces from the Moscow front to Leningrad and the Crimean offensives.
• 18: Adolf Hitler orders a temporary halt to Nazi Germany's systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and handicapped due to protests. However, graduates of the Action T4 operation were then transferred to concentration camps, where they continued in their trade.
• 20: German 250th Infantry Division, nicknamed "Blue Division" and consisted of Spanish volunteers, was formed and began to move to Poland.
• 22: German forces close in on Leningrad; the citizens continue improvising fortifications.
• 25: British and Soviet troops invade Iran to save the Abadan oilfields and the important railways and routes to Soviet Union for the supply of war material.
• 27: Another U-boat is forced to surface off Ireland and its Enigma machine is captured.
• 28: German forces with the help of Estonian volunteers take Tallinn from Soviets.
• 30: The Shetland bus begins operations
• 31: The first signs appear that a Leningrad "siege" is beginning.