[CougarGA7]

• 4th Panzer Division cuts off 10 to 12 thousand Soviet troops in a forest near Cherikov. But after taking around 2,000 prisoners decided to let the rest escape to the Soviet lines rather than try and contain their attempted breakout with their own depleted forces.

• Kleist's panzers approach Tarashche and Uman' enveloping the 6th and 12th Armies.

• The OKW war diary describes Hitler's feeling on the capture of Moscow: "In this regard it could then happen that Panzer Group 2 turns to the south so that for the thrust on Moscow only infantry armies of Army Group Centre remain. This eventuality does not worry the Führer because Moscow is for him only a geographical term."

• Timoshenko assaults German positions with the five operational groups assigned to him from Belyi to the north to Rosalvl' in the south.

• The Vichy government, after failed appeals to the United States and Germany for help, concedes Indochina to Japan. The agreement allowed the French to maintain control over the civil government, but allows for 50,000 troops to occupy the country.

[FW190]

It has been fashionable to describe Hitler's turning away from Moscow as the key error of the summer campaign. "•The OKW war diary describes Hitler's feeling on the capture of Moscow: "In this regard it could then happen that Panzer Group 2 turns to the south so that for the thrust on Moscow only infantry armies of Army Group Centre remain. This eventuality does not worry the Führer because Moscow is for him only a geographical term." "

OKW should have bitch slapped that Austrian FOOL because Moscow was the rail/communication center of the Russian government/military. Had Hitler take Moscow when it was his for the taking, Hitler's decision to turn towards Kiev wouldn't have been necessary because the entire Sowjet war effort would have colapsed.

Of coarse had Germany won the war, my parents (born a thousand miles apart) would probably never have met. Therfore, my siblings and I would not have been born.