On 2 October 1941 the main forces of Germany's Army Group Center opened Operation Typhoon, the offensive toward Moscow; according to the U.S. Army's 1955 study, one panzer group had attacked on 30 September. That day Hitler told his soldiers that the last great decisive battle of the year had begun. Within a week German armor had encircled Soviet armies west of Vyazma and was closing pockets around Bryansk, and German counts of prisoners ran to hundreds of thousands. Then rain, snow and mud slowed the advance, and in early December the offensive bogged down short of the city as the Red Army struck back. Also on this day: the end of the fighting in the Warsaw Uprising, 1944.
The Battle of Kock, 1939: the last battle of the September Campaign
2 to 6 October 1939 · 87 years ago
The Battle of Kock, fought from 2 to 6 October 1939, was the last battle of the September Campaign fought by the regular Polish army.
Read the full story of The Battle of Kock, 1939: the last battle of the September Campaign ›The Battle of Moscow, 1941: the tide freezes
2 October 1941 to 7 January 1942 · 85 years ago
The Soviet Union won a defensive victory at Moscow between October 1941 and January 1942, halting the German advance before the capital and then throwing it back. It was the first great defeat of the Wehrmacht and ended Hitler's hope of winning the war in a single campaign.
Read the full story of The Battle of Moscow, 1941: the tide freezes ›Battle of the Scheldt, 1944: the Canadians open the port of Antwerp
2 October 1944 · 82 years ago
The First Canadian Army, with British and Polish units, fought to clear the Scheldt estuary so the port of Antwerp could serve the Allied armies. The Germans flooded the land and slowed the advance, and only after weeks of fighting and minesweeping did a convoy reach Antwerp.
Read the full story of Battle of the Scheldt, 1944: the Canadians open the port of Antwerp ›Also on this day
1944: at the Ożarów headquarters of SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach, Col. Kazimierz Iranek-Osmecki "Jarecki" and Lt. Col. Zygmunt Dobrowolski "Zyndram" signed for the Home Army the agreement that ended the fighting in the Warsaw Uprising. Its soldiers were to have prisoner-of-war rights under the Geneva Convention of 1929, and the civilians had to leave the city. According to the Warsaw Rising Museum, the word "agreement" was meant to remove the negative connotations of the word "capitulation", the text was signed in four copies, in Polish and German, and under it the fighting ended at 8 p.m.; because the clocks had gone back an hour in the night before the talks, the text gives its times twice. The museum quotes von dem Bach's diary on the Polish delegates: "They were exceptionally tough negotiating partners, who bargained over every word" (our translation of the museum's Polish). Mariusz Jarosiński, writing for the Polish Press Agency, counts 63 days of fighting and gives about 18,000 insurgents killed, 25,000 wounded and about 180,000 civilians killed. See the Warsaw Uprising.1
1780: Washington reported to the President of Congress that Major John André, adjutant general of the British army, had been executed "on Monday the 2d instant, at twelve o'clock at our late Camp at Tappan". The American army surgeon James Thacher wrote under 2 October: "Major Andre is no more among the living. I have just witnessed his exit".2
