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WWII On This Day: June 24

What happened on June 24 during World War II? This date brings together 3 events from 1940, 1941 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

France signs an armistice with Italy

French and Italian delegations signed the Franco-Italian armistice at Villa Incisa outside Rome on 24 June at about 19:15. Italian forces had attacked across the Alpine frontier during the final days of the campaign, meeting French fortified positions and difficult mountain terrain. The settlement established a limited Italian occupation zone and demilitarised areas. Completion of the Italian agreement activated the timetable built into the German armistice. Both ceasefires were scheduled to take effect shortly after midnight on 25 June.

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1941
Workers carrying out a factory repair on a T-34 Model 1941 during the Second World War.
Workers carrying out a factory repair on a T-34 Model 1941 during the Second World War. Imperial War Museums, HU 81216 · Public domain Source
Operation Barbarossa

Industrial evacuation is organised

On 24 June the Soviet government created the Evacuation Council to organise the movement of industrial plant, workers and other resources away from threatened western regions. The frontier battles were only two days old, yet the state had begun preparing to preserve production if large territories were lost. Machine tools, skilled labour, design bureaux and whole production lines had to be dismantled, loaded onto railways and restarted hundreds or thousands of kilometres east. The transport burden competed with military movements and civilian evacuation on a network already under air attack.…

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1944
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

Rokossovsky's two attacks open the Bobruisk battle

1st Belorussian Front attacked Ninth Army on both sides of Bobruisk. The northern attack met stronger resistance and made slower progress, while the southern grouping broke through across difficult ground and began feeding tank, mechanised and cavalry formations toward the German rear. The two axes forced Ninth Army to defend both the city and the routes by which its corps might escape west. Bobruisk was important because the lower Berezina crossings and road network controlled the southern exit from Army Group Centre's salient. Once Soviet mobile troops moved behind Ninth…

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