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WWII On This Day: July 23

What happened on July 23 during World War II? This date brings together 4 events from 1942 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1942
Red Army soldiers carrying a Soviet flag through the ruins of Stalingrad in 1943.
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R76619 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Battle of Stalingrad

Directive 45 gives Sixth Army the Stalingrad mission

Hitler’s Directive No. 45 divided the summer offensive between the Caucasus and the lower Volga. Army Group A was to continue toward the Caucasian oil regions, while Sixth Army was ordered to defeat Soviet forces around Stalingrad, take the city and cut traffic on the Volga. The decision placed two major strategic aims on an already extended German transport system. Sixth Army’s eastward drive and Army Group A’s southern advance drew on overlapping railheads, road routes, fuel stocks and air support. German commanders still expected Soviet forces in the south…

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A German tank commander in southern Soviet territory in June 1942, shortly before the opening of Case Blue.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-218-0528-30 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Case Blue and the Drive to the Caucasus

Rostov is captured

First Panzer Army and Seventeenth Army entered Rostov on 23 July after Soviet rear guards withdrew across the Don. German troops established crossings and bridgeheads that opened the road into the Kuban and Caucasus. The expected great encirclement around Rostov never formed. Soviet formations had already escaped across or away from the lower Don, leaving the Germans with a strategically important gateway but without the destruction of armies that was supposed to precede the next phase. Rostov therefore marked both success and failure. The geographical door to the Caucasus had…

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Case Blue and the Drive to the Caucasus

Directive 45 orders two simultaneous strategic drives

Directive 45 was issued on 23 July and reached Army Groups A and B on 25 July. Its preamble declared that the main Soviet defensive strength in the south had, for practical purposes, already been destroyed. Army Group A was ordered to carry Operation Edelweiss into the Caucasus and ultimately toward its oil regions and Black Sea coast. Army Group B was to secure the Don, take Stalingrad and later extend control along the Volga toward Astrakhan. The problem was not that these places had never appeared in Directive 41.…

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1944
A Soviet serviceman at Majdanek displays a gas-chamber vent cover after the camp's liberation in 1944.
A Soviet serviceman at Majdanek displays a gas-chamber vent cover after the camp's liberation in 1944. Illustrated London News, 14 October 1944 / unknown photographer · Public domain Source
The Holocaust: Timeline and Evidence

Soviet forces liberate Majdanek

Soviet forces reached the Majdanek concentration camp outside Lublin on 23 July 1944 and found fewer than 500 prisoners. The SS had evacuated most prisoners but left extensive physical evidence, records and structures behind. Majdanek became the first major concentration camp liberated by Allied forces. Soviet and Polish investigators opened the site to journalists and began collecting evidence while the war was still under way.

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