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WWII On This Day: June 22

What happened on June 22 during World War II? This date brings together 9 events from 1940, 1941 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
A child survivor of SS Athenia is carried ashore from the Norwegian rescue ship Knute Nelson at Galway on 6 September 1939.
Press Agency photographer · Imperial War Museums HU 51014 · IWM Non-Commercial Licence
The Opening Convoy War

The fall of France changes the U-boat war

France signs an armistice with Germany on 22 June, with hostilities ending on 25 June. The German occupation of the Atlantic coast gives the Kriegsmarine access to ports such as Lorient, Brest and Saint-Nazaire. The bases are not operational for U-boats on the day of the armistice, but the strategic change is immediate: boats will no longer have to begin every Atlantic patrol with the long passage from Germany around the British Isles. BdU moves quickly to exploit the new position. U-30 enters Lorient on 7 July as the first…

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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

France signs an armistice with Germany

General Charles Huntziger signed the Franco-German armistice at Compiègne on the evening of 22 June in the railway carriage associated with the 1918 armistice. The terms divided metropolitan France into occupied and unoccupied zones, regulated demobilisation and captivity, and left the French government responsible for administering territory and colonial possessions under the new settlement. Contemporary documentary traditions record the signing within a span of several minutes in the early evening, including 18:36 and 18:50. The agreement specified that fighting would end only after a parallel armistice with Italy had been…

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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

Directive No. 1 reaches the western military districts

During the night of 21–22 June, the Soviet defence leadership transmitted Directive No. 1 warning the western military districts that a German attack might begin within hours. Units were ordered to occupy firing positions discreetly and bring air forces to readiness while avoiding actions that Moscow feared could be represented as a provocation. The warning entered a command system that had spent weeks balancing evidence of German deployment against Stalin's fear of triggering war prematurely. Some headquarters passed orders onward quickly; elsewhere communications, dispersal and the lateness of the warning…

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German paratroops descending over Crete, May 1941.
Bundesarchiv Bild 141-0864 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
The Balkans and Crete

Did it delay Barbarossa

Barbarossa had been provisionally set for mid-May and opened on 22 June. The Balkan campaign is often credited with the five-week delay, and with it the failure to take Moscow before the winter. The evidence is thinner than the claim. An exceptionally wet spring had left the rivers of Poland and western Russia in flood into June, and the logistical build-up was not complete in May either. The Balkans contributed; whether they were decisive is not settled, and this page will not settle it.

Child survivors of Auschwitz, wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, stand behind a barbed wire fence.
USHMM
The Holocaust: Timeline and Evidence

Mass shootings expand behind the invasion of the Soviet Union

Four Einsatzgruppen followed the German invasion together with Order Police battalions and other SS formations. Early shootings concentrated heavily on political officials and adult Jewish men; during the summer of 1941 the killing expanded to women, children and entire Jewish communities. The operations depended on a wider occupation system that included German military support, regional SS and police commands and, in many places, local auxiliaries. By the end of the war about two million Jews had been murdered in mass shootings and related massacres.

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

The invasion begins

Around 03:15 on 22 June, German artillery, aircraft and ground forces opened the invasion from the Baltic region to the Soviet frontier opposite Ukraine. Romanian forces supported the southern campaign, while German-Finnish operations developed separately farther north. The panzer groups drove through and around frontier positions to reach the rear of Soviet armies. Infantry formations followed to close and reduce pockets while the mobile corps pushed toward the next river barriers, preserving the tempo on which the campaign plan depended. Air attacks on airfields, headquarters, rail junctions and communications magnified…

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The eastern gate of Brest Fortress in June 1941, photographed immediately after its capture.
The eastern gate of Brest Fortress in June 1941, photographed immediately after its capture. Unknown photographer · Public domain in Belarus Source
Operation Barbarossa

Brest Fortress remains contested behind the spearheads

German artillery and assault troops struck the Brest fortress complex as mobile formations crossed the Bug and moved beyond it. Fighting inside the fortress continued after the operational front had already passed east. The Soviet defenders became separated into groups holding casemates, gates and strongpoints under artillery, infantry and engineer attack. German mobile formations could bypass the complex while infantry and heavier weapons remained to reduce it. The result separated tactical resistance from operational movement: Brest continued fighting while the main German advance was already moving toward the Białystok and…

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1944
An RAF Hawker Typhoon being re-armed on a forward airfield in France, July 1944.
An RAF Hawker Typhoon being re-armed on a forward airfield in France, July 1944. IWM · IWM Non-Commercial Licence Source
Operation Overlord

The assault on Cherbourg opens

After a preparatory attack by rocket-firing Typhoons and fighter-bombers, three American divisions attacked the landward defences. Progress was slow through concrete and minefields, and the fighting inside the perimeter lasted four days. On the same day, 1,300 miles east, the Red Army opened Operation Bagration against Army Group Centre. Within a fortnight the Germans would be fighting collapsing fronts at both ends of Europe simultaneously.

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German prisoners of war captured during the Soviet summer offensive march through Moscow on 17 July 1944.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-696-0426-14A · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Operation Bagration

Reconnaissance in force opens the offensive

Soviet forward battalions attacked in the Vitebsk and Orsha sectors to expose firing positions, seize parts of the German forward zone and determine where the main formations could be committed most profitably. In several places the reconnaissance achieved more than a probing action: local German positions gave way far enough for the attacking fronts to feed additional forces into the gains without resetting for a separate assault. The date matters because later Soviet communiqués often treated 23 June as the start of the developed offensive. Operationally, however, fighting on 22…

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