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WWII On This Day: July 9

What happened on July 9 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
War damage in Minsk photographed in June 1941.
War damage in Minsk photographed in June 1941. Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-137-1008-09A · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Source
Operation Barbarossa

The first great encirclements end

By 9 July organised resistance in the principal Białystok–Minsk pockets had been crushed or dispersed after repeated Soviet breakout attempts. German headquarters reported more than 300,000 prisoners from the battles. The figure records the German captor accounting and uses different categories from later Soviet personnel-loss studies. Western Front had nevertheless lost much of the force with which it had begun the campaign. Army Group Centre was already moving toward the Dvina–Dnieper line, where newly deployed Soviet armies were taking over the defence. The next battle would be fought by a…

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1942
A motorised column. Fuel, not opposition, set the pace of the advance.
A motorised column. Fuel, not opposition, set the pace of the advance. Bundesarchiv Bild 101III-Cantzler-026-11 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Source
Case Blue and the Drive to the Caucasus

The second phase begins early

First Panzer Army was ordered into the next phase on 9 July before its refit and concentration were complete. Fourth Panzer Army was still disengaging from the Voronezh area and moving more than a hundred miles across ground already traversed by other German formations. The timetable now contained a paradox. Territorial progress had run well ahead of the plan, but vehicle condition, fuel delivery and unit readiness lagged behind it. Several panzer and motorised divisions halted simply to receive enough fuel to continue south. German headquarters was accelerating the campaign…

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1943
A Das Reich Panzer III crew halted during the fighting in the Belgorod–Orel battle area, July 1943.
A Das Reich Panzer III crew halted during the fighting in the Belgorod–Orel battle area, July 1943. Bundesarchiv Bild 101III-Zschaeckel-208-25 / Friedrich Zschäckel · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Source
Battle of Kursk 1943

Hoth turns the SS armoured axis toward Prokhorovka

The direct route toward Oboyan had become increasingly difficult under Soviet defence and counterattack. Hoth shifted the main direction of II SS Panzer Corps northeast toward Prokhorovka, where the terrain offered another route around the strongest resistance on the Oboyan axis. The movement also brought the corps toward the Soviet reserves arriving from the east. German and Soviet operational plans were now converging on the same sector, while Army Detachment Kempf continued trying to advance far enough on the eastern flank to support the SS corps.

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1944
The British Army in Normandy, June 1944.
The British Army in Normandy, June 1944. IWM B 5910 · IWM Non-Commercial Licence Source
Operation Overlord

Northern Caen taken in Operation Charnwood

British and Canadian troops entered the northern half of Caen after a heavy bomber attack that killed several hundred French civilians and choked the streets with rubble, hindering the advance it was meant to assist. The Germans held the southern bank of the Orne and the Colombelles works. Caen, a D-Day objective, had taken thirty-three days, and roughly three-quarters of the city was rubble by the time the fighting ended.

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