Timeline of World War II (1941) - October 1941

October 1941

• 2: Operation Typhoon - German "Central" forces begin an all-out offensive against Moscow. Leading the defense of the capital is General Georgi Zhukov, already a Hero of Soviet Union for his command in the conflict against the Japanese in the Russian Far East and at Leningrad.
• 3: Mahatma Gandhi urges his followers to begin a passive resistance against British rule in India.
• 7: Heavy RAF night bombings of Berlin, the Ruhr, and Cologne, but with heavy losses.
• 8: In their invasion of the southern Soviet Union, Germany reaches the Sea of Azov with the capture of Mariupol. However, there are signs that the invasion is beginning to bog down as rainy weather creates muddy roads for both tanks and men.
• 10: German armies encircle about 660,000 Red Army troops near Vyasma (east of Smolensk); some make a glowing prediction of the end of the war.
• 12: HMS Ark Royal delivers a squadron of Hurricane fighter planes to Malta.
• 13: Germans attempt another drive toward Moscow as the once muddy ground hardens.
• 14: Temperatures fall further on the Moscow front; heavy snows follow and immobilize German tanks.
• 15: The Germans drive on Moscow.
• 16: Soviet Union government begins move eastward to Samara, a city on the Volga, but Joseph Stalin remains in Moscow. The citizens of Moscow frantically build tank traps and other fortifications for the coming siege.
• 17: The destroyer USS Kearney is torpedoed and damaged by U-568 near Iceland, killing eleven sailors. They are the first American military casualties of the war.
  : The government of Japanese prime minister Prince Fumimaro Konoye collapses, leaving little hope for peace in the Pacific.
• 18: Red Army troop reinforcements arrive in Moscow from Siberia; Stalin is assured that the Japanese will not attack the USSR from the East.
  : General Hideki Tōjō becomes the 40th Prime Minister of Japan.
• 19: An official "state of siege" is announced in Moscow; the city is placed under martial law.
• 20: Lt. Col. Fritz Hotz, the German commander in Nantes, is killed by Resistance; 50 hostages are shot in reprisal. The incident will become a model for future occupation policies.
• 21: New Zealand troops land in Egypt and take over Fort Capuzzo.
  : Negotiations in Washington between the US and Japan seem headed toward failure.
• 23: Heavy desert fighting in Libya as Rommel thwarts "Operation Crusader" near Tobruk.
• 24: Kharkov, an important mining and industrial centre in Ukraine, falls to the German Army Group South forces.
• 27: German Army Group South forces reach Sevastopol in the Crimea, but the tanks of the "Northern" forces are slowed or stopped entirely by mud. The leading tanks are on the outskirts of Moscow.
• 30: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves US$1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union.
• 31: The destroyer USS Reuben James is torpedoed by Erich Topp's U-552 near Iceland, killing more than 100 United States Navy sailors. It is the first loss of an American "neutral warship."