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WWII On This Day: July 3

What happened on July 3 during World War II? This date brings together 4 events from 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1941
A German infantryman beside a burning Soviet BT-7 tank and a dead Soviet soldier, June 1941.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-020-1268-36 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Operation Barbarossa

Stalin addresses the country

On 3 July Stalin spoke publicly after eleven days of invasion, addressing the population as 'brothers and sisters' and presenting the conflict as a struggle for the survival of the Soviet state. He called for resistance in occupied territory and for movable resources to be evacuated or denied to the enemy. The same day Halder wrote that the campaign against Russia had effectively been won in about two weeks, even while acknowledging that geography and continued resistance would require many more weeks of operations. German headquarters and the Soviet leadership…

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1942
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

The Don is reached

By 3 July Fourth Panzer Army had established bridgeheads over the Don west of Voronezh. Bock informed his subordinate commanders that the enemy opposite the main German armies appeared defeated and prepared to release mobile formations for the next movement. The battlefield evidence encouraged that judgment: Soviet units were retreating, command posts were abandoned and German spearheads had covered great distances in a few days. Yet Stavka reserve armies and tank corps were moving toward Voronezh while the southern commands were beginning to pull away from the German pincers. The…

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1943
A German Messerschmitt Bf 110 attacks B-17F Flying Fortresses of the 91st Bomb Group over Europe in January 1944.
U.S. Army Air Forces / National Archives, NAID 204888701 · Public domain in the United States · Source
The Combined Bomber Offensive

Wilde Sau is tried over Cologne

German air defence tested the use of single-engine day fighters at night over an illuminated target area. The experiment became known as Wilde Sau and offered a way to attack bombers without relying entirely on the tightly controlled radar-box system. The method preceded Window's first operational use over Hamburg. When Window disrupted the existing radar picture later in July, freer interception methods such as Wilde Sau became more important to the German response.

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1944
Minsk after its liberation on 3 July 1944.
Minsk after its liberation on 3 July 1944. Vladimir N. Ivanov · 3 July 1944 · Public domain (Russia) Source
Operation Bagration

Minsk falls and Fourth Army is trapped east of the city

Soviet mobile formations entered Minsk on 3 July after converging from the northeast and southeast. Behind them, the roads west of the city had been cut and the main body of Fourth Army was enclosed in a broad pocket east and southeast of Minsk. The retreat that had begun from the Dnieper had become a congested movement through territory already penetrated by Soviet armour and cavalry-mechanised groups. The capture of Minsk was not simply the liberation of the Belorussian capital. It completed the central encirclement that the first breakthroughs had…

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