Winston Churchill first publically used the "V for Victory" reference on this day in 1941. It was to become a signature sign of his, and the western Allies, during World War Two, being adopted by him as a widely used hand gesture.
The speech was broadcast early in the morning the following day, and after that the V became a popular item of graffiti in occupied Europe. The Germans attempted to co-opt the use of it themselves, as it was so widespread.
The hand gesture predates Churchill's use of it and its origin is obscure. The palm out version is the one that is commonly associated with calls for victory, and then later, in the United States, with a call for peace, the latter of which started during the Vietnam War. It can symbolize both in some modern protests.
The back of the hand out version, it should be noted, is a rude gesture in some cultures. The palm out version has become enormously widely used by the Japanese, particularly Japanese women, who use it very widely in photographs.
On this day in 1941 Adolph Hitler issued his Directive No. 33, which remains one of the most discussed Hitler orders of the war.
While the German armies were all still advancing, resistance was stiffening in some regions and the Germans were not advancing in the south as rapidly as they'd hoped for and some pockets of resistance, such as Leningrad and Smolensk were holding out. Hitler accordingly issued his Directive 33 taking forces from Army Group Center and assigning them to Army Group North and Army Group South. The assignment to Army Group North, FWIW, is commonly ignored when historians analyze this event.
The order also indicated that Moscow was no longer the primary Germany target.
This order met immediate resistance with the German senior leadership, which ran a backdoor effort to prevent its implementation.
It's common to assert that this realignment of forces brought about a military disaster by guaranteeing that the Germans would not take Moscow in 1941. It should be noted that this was not apparent in July 1941 but what was apparent is that Soviet resistance was already stiffening. While the recently directed directives 32 and 32a contemplated the war being won in the east by the fall of 1941, it was becoming clear that this might not occur in the south and north, with the south, the Soviet breadbasket and the source of Soviet petroleum, being very problematic. Seizure of Ukraine had been a declared German objective as far back as the Nuremberg rally speech of 1936 and the German need for foodstuff and petroleum was a pressing matter.
Moscow was the major Soviet communications and transportation hub, so it was not an idle objective, so the realignment of forces can be debated. The decision to attempt it, however, was not as unthinking as often portrayed.
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