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WWII On This Day: June 16

What happened on June 16 during World War II? This date brings together 2 events from 1940 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
German troops in northern France during the campaign of 1940.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-299-1808-10A · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Battle of France 1940

Paul Reynaud resigns and Pétain forms a government

Paul Reynaud resigned on 16 June after the cabinet divided over continuing the war from North Africa, seeking an armistice, and the proposed Anglo-French union. President Albert Lebrun asked Marshal Philippe Pétain to form a government. The new cabinet moved quickly to seek German terms while French forces continued fighting and evacuation from Atlantic ports accelerated. The change of government shifted the political objective from sustaining the continental campaign toward obtaining an armistice. Charles de Gaulle left for Britain as a different line of French wartime authority began to emerge.

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1944
A German position under smoke, northern France, 1944.
A German position under smoke, northern France, 1944. Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-299-1808-10A · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Source
Operation Overlord

The bocage begins to bite

South of Carentan and Isigny, US divisions entered the hedgerow country in earnest. Each field was enclosed by an earth bank several feet thick, rooted with hedge and often sunk between banked lanes, giving a prepared position every hundred yards, invisible from the air and impassable to tanks except through gates covered by anti-tank guns. Casualties in rifle companies climbed steeply and gains were measured in fields. The eventual answer, improvised in the field, was the hedgerow cutter welded from beach obstacle steel, still weeks away.

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