WWII On This Day: June 30

Portrait of Joseph Stalin published in 1941. Mil.ru · CC BY 4.0 Source

June 30, 1941 · 18:00 Operation Barbarossa

The Soviet wartime government is formed

On 30 June the State Defence Committee was created under Stalin with extraordinary authority over mobilisation, production, transport, evacuation and internal administration. The frontier catastrophe produced a more concentrated wartime government at the centre of the Soviet state. Western Front was being destroyed while command structures changed and communications with armies repeatedly failed. The new committee concentrated political and economic authority for a war that was already expanding beyond the frontier catastrophe. Its creation nevertheless gave the Soviet leadership an institution able to redirect labour, industry, transport and military resources…

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A German tank commander in southern Soviet territory in June 1942, shortly before the opening of Case Blue. — Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-218-0528-30 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source

June 30, 1942 · 05:00 Case Blue and the Drive to the Caucasus

Sixth Army joins the attack

After weather delays, Sixth Army opened its part of the offensive on 30 June and drove deeply toward the Oskol. Together with Fourth Panzer Army's movement farther north, the advance threatened to surround the Soviet forces still west of the river. Stalin initially pressed for armoured counterattacks around the Voronezh axis, believing the German movement might still develop northward against Moscow. Soviet tank formations were committed before all of them had assembled and before fuel and communications problems had been solved. The German command saw another 1941-style pocket beginning to…

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German troops in the ruins of Sevastopol, 1942. — Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-231-0703-27 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source

June 30, 1942 · 18:00 Sevastopol and the Crimea

The defence contracts and Stavka authorizes command evacuation

Fort Malakov fell and German forces cleared the Sapun Heights and entered Balaklava as the remaining Soviet defensive system broke into smaller positions. Ammunition, food and water were critically short. Oktyabrsky requested permission to evacuate senior command personnel and cancel a proposed diversionary operation. Stavka approved during the night. Several hundred priority officers and specialists escaped by air and submarine while the mass of the garrison withdrew toward Cape Khersones.

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British troops marching through Bayeux, 27 June 1944. IWM B 6058 · IWM Non-Commercial Licence Source

June 30, 1944 Operation Overlord

The end of the first month

Epsom was closed down and Hill 112 abandoned. After twenty-four days the Allies held a lodgement roughly seventy miles wide and, at its deepest, some twenty miles inland, well short of the phase lines the planners had drawn, and containing far more men and materiel than the ground could comfortably hold. The counterattack that was supposed to throw them back had been consumed piecemeal in defensive fighting, division by division, as each arrived. The campaign had already become the attritional battle the Reich could not afford.

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Bullet strikes still visible in the ironwork of the original bridge. Wikimedia Commons · Creative Commons Source

June 30, 1944 · 12:00 Operation Deadstick

What it cost and what it settled

The assault cost two dead and about fourteen wounded. Holding the bridges through the rest of the day and the following night cost the company and the parachute battalion considerably more. The result was that 21st Panzer could not use the crossings to strike west at the beaches, and the airborne division east of the Orne had a supply line. It is the clearest case on D-Day of a very small force deciding something out of all proportion to its size.

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The cratered clifftop at Pointe du Hoc after the assault. US Army Signal Corps · NARA · Public domain Source

June 30, 1944 · 12:00 Pointe du Hoc

Was it worth it

The claim that the assault was pointless because the casemates were empty is repeated often and does not survive the record. The guns existed, they were within range of both American beaches, they were loaded and aimed, and they were destroyed within two hours of the Rangers reaching the clifftop. What is fair criticism is that the intelligence picture was six weeks out of date, that the reinforcement plan hung on a single signal with no margin, and that the men who took the position were then left on it…

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