World War II calendar
What happened on June 2 during World War II? This date brings together 4 events from 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.
The remaining organised British formations withdrew through the perimeter and embarked during the night of 2–3 June. French troops continued to hold the reduced bridgehead. The evacuation's final priority shifted to French personnel still inside Dunkirk.
Continue in Dunkirk: Operation Dynamo →
German paratroops shot villagers at Kondomari on 2 June, photographed by a war correspondent whose pictures survive. Kandanos was destroyed a few days later and a sign erected recording that it had been razed in retribution for the killing of German soldiers by armed civilians. The occupation of Crete lasted four years and was fought throughout by a resistance the island's population supported almost universally, at a cost in reprisals that fell on villages rather than on fighters.
Artillery and air preparation opened five days before the infantry assault. The siege train included the 800 mm Dora railway gun, 600 mm Karl-Gerät mortars and 420 mm Gamma weapons alongside hundreds of conventional guns and mortars. The purpose was broader than breaking individual concrete forts. Fire struck artillery positions, communications, supply points and the defensive zones through which the assault infantry would have to move.
Continue in Sevastopol and the Crimea →
Trappes was attacked for a second major time as the pre-invasion rail-centre campaign reached its final nights. By this point Bomber Command had dispatched about 8,800 bombers and dropped more than 42,000 tons on thirty-three railway centres in France and Belgium.
Continue in The Transportation Plan →
