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WWII On This Day: July 22

What happened on July 22 during World War II? This date brings together 6 events from 1940, 1942, 1943 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
German Type IXA submarine U-37 in dock at Lorient in 1940 after the French Atlantic ports became U-boat bases.
Mannewitz · Bundesarchiv Bild 101II-MW-1032-11A · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE
The Happy Time and the Wolfpacks

The first U-boat reaches Lorient

A German U-boat entered Lorient on 22 July, beginning the use of the French Atlantic ports as forward submarine bases. The change cut the long transit from German bases through the North Sea and allowed boats to spend more of each patrol on the convoy routes west of Britain. The new bases did not instantly create the later concrete submarine pens or a larger submarine fleet. Their immediate value was time and position. Boats could reach the North Atlantic faster, refit closer to the patrol area and operate farther west,…

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1942
Child survivors of Auschwitz, wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, stand behind a barbed wire fence.
USHMM
The Holocaust: Timeline and Evidence

The Great Deportation from the Warsaw ghetto

German SS and police forces began the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka on 22 July 1942. By 21 September about 265,000 Jews had been deported and murdered at the killing centre; tens of thousands more were killed in the ghetto or sent to forced-labour sites. Jewish Council chairman Adam Czerniaków died by suicide after refusing a German demand to help organise the deportation of children. The surviving ghetto was reduced to a fraction of its earlier population and increasingly organised around forced labour, hiding and…

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1943
Soviet infantry attacking on the Leningrad Front in January 1943.
Soviet infantry attacking on the Leningrad Front in January 1943. RIA Novosti archive #93172 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Source
The Siege of Leningrad

Another attempt to widen the corridor stalls

Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts attacked again in the Mga and Sinyavino sectors to widen the corridor and push German artillery farther from the new railway. The summer fighting gained limited ground and tied down Eighteenth Army, while the railway corridor remained narrow and exposed. Further fighting resumed again in September.

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Troops of the British 51st Highland Division unload stores and vehicles from landing craft on the Sicily coast on 10 July 1943.
Lt C. H. Parnall / Royal Navy / Imperial War Museums A 17916 · UK Government public domain
Operation Husky: The Invasion of Sicily

Seventh Army takes Palermo and turns its advance east

U.S. Seventh Army reached Palermo on 22 July after advancing across western Sicily. The port and the roads through the city gave the American command a new point from which to turn east. The route toward Messina ran along the northern coast and across inland mountains. German units were falling back toward stronger positions, and the American drive now had to fight for road junctions and passes while restoring damaged communications behind it.

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British Sherman crewman cleans the 75 mm gun near Catania on 22 July 1943.
British Sherman crewman cleans the 75 mm gun near Catania on 22 July 1943. Sgt Mott / No. 2 Army Film & Photographic Unit / IWM NA 4972 · UK Government public domain Source
Operation Husky: The Invasion of Sicily

Tank crews continue fighting on the approaches to Catania

British Sherman crews remained engaged in the Catania sector as Eighth Army fought for the river crossings and the roads below Etna. Armour had to operate with infantry and engineers in a landscape of defended villages and narrow passages. A dated army photograph records a gun crew cleaning a tank barrel on 22 July after an action near Catania. Equipment maintenance and replacement parts were daily requirements for keeping armoured units in operation.

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1944
German prisoners of war captured during the Soviet summer offensive march through Moscow on 17 July 1944.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-696-0426-14A · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Operation Bagration

Soviet armour reaches Lublin and closes on Brest

Soviet mobile formations reached and passed Lublin while other armies tightened their approach to Brest. The movement brought 1st Belorussian Front toward the Vistula and placed its spearheads on the direct approaches to Warsaw, far beyond the June start line in eastern Belorussia. The speed of the southern advance reflected the destruction of the German operational structure behind the old Army Group Centre front, but the Red Army was now approaching a much denser transport network and reinforcement area for the Germans. The Vistula offered the Soviets a major operational…

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