366 Days
Note: To open a news article, you may have to place the tip of your cursor at the top of or slightly above the news headline until the underline appears, then click your mouse.
June
News Headlines
1
ALLIES DISRUPT GERMAN DEFENSES IN FRANCE
London, England • June 1, 1944 In June 1942 members of the French Resistance provided British intelligence with a copy of the top-secret blueprint of portions of Adolf Hitler’s Atlantic Wall—part of the defenses against the anticipated Allied invasion of Western Europe. The map had been spirited from the office of the German public works […]
2
CHURCHILL-DE GAULLE MISSTEP ON D-DAY EVE
London, England · June 2, 1944 In June 1943 in Algeria, North Africa, the Free French founded the French Committee of National Liberation. Much political maneuvering was needed to merge the Free French, whose nucleus consisted of Frenchmen who had escaped German capture at Dunkirk, the Channel port in Northeastern France (May 26 to June […]
3
GLIDER PHASE OF D-DAY BEGINS
RAF Aldermaston and Ramsbury Airfields, England · June 3, 1944 On this date in 1944 in Aldermaston, England, men of the 434th Troop Carrier Group and the 101st Airborne Division began moving 52 CG‑4A gliders and C‑47 Skytrain tow planes onto the airfield to lead the glider phase of Operation Overlord, the invasion of Nazi-occupied France. […]
4
NORMANDY INVASION SET FOR JUNE 6
London, England · June 4, 1944 Tomorrow, June 5, 1944, a Monday, was to have been the big day, the Allied invasion of a 50‑mile stretch of German-occupied beach on the French Normandy coast. The invasion, codenamed Operation Overlord, had been pushed from May, when the weather had been perfect, to June to allow another […]
5
RESIDENTS WITNESS LIBERATION BY FIRELIGHT
Sainte-Mère-Église, Liberated France · June 5, 1944 On this date in 1944 the people of Sainte-Mère-Église on the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy, France, retired to their beds on the eve of the largest air- and seaborne invasion in history—Operation Overlord. As early as 1942, U.S. military planners had been eyeing this crossroads town. If the […]
6
ALLIES STORM NORMANDY BEACHES
Normandy, Liberated France · June 6, 1944 It was a cloudy D-Day. Already Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe had surrendered air supremacy over the English Channel, when on this date in 1944 in Normandy, France, the U.S. First Army under Gen. Omar Bradley assaulted Utah and Omaha beaches, while to the east British and Canadian units of […]
7
KING, GOVERNMENT FLEE NORWAY TO ENGLAND
Tromsø, Occupied Norway • June 7, 1940 Within days of the German invasion of neutral Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940 (Operation Weseruebung), it became clear that the Norwegian armed forces could not resist the more powerful Wehrmacht (German armed forces), bristling with modern weaponry and supported by highly effective air cover. Caught largely […]
8
GERMAN NAVY SINKS BRITISH CARRIER GLORIOUS
Berlin, Germany · June 8, 1940 In an operation remarkable for its precision and boldness, Germany launched Operation Weseruebung, the invasion of Norway on April 9, 1940, seized its capital, Oslo, and captured the important port of Narvik in Northern Norway. Narvik boasted an ice-free harbor during the long Scandinavian winters, and it was the rail […]
9
HEYDRICH’S DEATH UNLEASHES HORRIFIC REPRISALS
Berlin, Germany · June 9, 1942 On this date in 1942, with the full leadership of the Third Reich in attendance, Nazi “martyr” Reinhard Heydrich was eulogized in one of the most elaborate funerals ever staged in Berlin. (Heydrich had been added by Adolf Hitler to the “honorary list of the Fallen of the Nazi […]
10
ITALY DECLARES WAR ON FRANCE, BRITAIN
Rome, Italy · June 10, 1940 On March 18, 1940, at the Brenner Pass on the Italian-Austrian border, Adolf Hitler and Italian strongman Benito Mussolini met face to face. Hitler had requested the summit in order to force the Duce (Italian, “leader”) to take sides within the framework of the German-Italian Pact of Steel, signed […]
11
ITALY BOMBS MALTA ISLAND FORTRESS
Malta, Central Mediterranean · June 11, 1940 On this date in 1940, one day after Italy entered World War II on the side of Axis partner Nazi Germany, the Italian Royal Air Force opened a nearly nonstop series of air raids on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Lying 50 miles off the Sicilian coast and 200 miles north of […]
12
NAVY FLIERS FIND RICH TARGETS IN MARIANAS
Off the Mariana Islands, Central Pacific · June 12, 1944 On this date in 1944 in the Marianas, U.S. carrier aircraft began attacking Japanese defenses on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam in preparation for the three-week battle on Saipan. On July 9 U.S. Marines declared Saipan secured, calling the battle for the island “the decisive battle of […]
13
NAZI V-1 FLYING BOMBS TERRORIZE LONDON
London, England · June 13, 1944 Beginning on this date in 1944 in London, one week after the Allied D‑Day landings in Normandy, France (Operation Overlord), the Germans unleashed their pilotless flying “retaliation weapon,” Vergeltungswaffe‑1, on England. Adolf Hitler crowed to his rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun, “This will be retribution against England. With it […]
14
GERMAN TROOPS ENTER PARIS; FRENCH GOVERNMENT FLEES
Paris, Occupied France · June 14, 1940 On this date in 1940 German troops marched into a half-empty Paris, forcing the French government to move to Tours, then to Bordeaux on the French Atlantic coast, where for the third time since the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71 it set up an impromptu national headquarters. In a […]
15
FIRST U.S. RAID ON JAPAN SINCE DOOLITTLE’S
Chengtu, China · June 15, 1944 On this date in 1944 67 B-29 Superfortresses took off from their base in Chengtu, mainland China, to release 221 tons of bombs on the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata on the southernmost Japanese home island of Kyūshū. This was the first attack on the Japanese homeland since […]
16
BOMBERS BLAST VIENNA OIL REFINERIES
Foggia Airfield Complex, Southeast Italy · June 16, 1944 On this date in 1944 nearly 600 B‑17 Flying Fortresses and B‑24 Liberators from the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force took off from bases in Foggia, Italy, to attack oil refineries around Vienna, Austria, and Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. After Romania, Austria was the biggest Axis crude oil producer, […]
17
STALIN SEIZES LATVIA, HITLER HALTS WAR AGAINST FRANCE
Munich, Germany · June 17, 1940 On this date in 1940 Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, drawing on provisions of the secret protocol in the August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact with his Nazi ally, ordered an attack on the Baltic state of Latvia. (The 1939 protocol had already returned dividends to the two conspirator […]
18
CHURCHILL TO BRITISH: “BRACE YOURSELVES”
London, England · June 18, 1940 Four days after the fall of Paris to German invaders, Charles de Gaulle, a tall (6 ft, 4 in), young (49), relatively unknown French general who had escaped to England on June 17, 1940, addressed the French people in a radio broadcast from London on this date in 1940. In a celebrated […]
19
U.S. ARMY ACTIVATES SECRET INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL
Camp Ritchie, Maryland • June 19, 1942 On this date in 1942 the U.S. Army activated the Military Intelligence Training Center (MITC) at Camp Ritchie. Former property of a failed ice company, the rural site was converted into a summer training camp for the Maryland National Guard in 1926. Sixteen years later the U.S. Army […]
20
FRENCH RESISTANCE, WEHRMACHT CLASH
Mont Mouchet, South-Central France • June 20, 1944 During the Allied invasion of France (Operation Overlord), the Maquis and other French resistance groups played a vital role in delaying the arrival of German reinforcements to the Normandy beachhead as well as in the eventual Allied victory in France. The FFI, or Fifis (Forces Françaises de […]
21
ROMMEL ROUTS BRITISH, TAKES TOBRUK STRONGHOLD
Cairo, Egypt · June 21, 1942 After a disorderly retreat by the British Eighth Army into Egypt following Erwin Rommel’s breakthrough of the Gazala Line in mid-June, the Desert Fox (Rommel’s popular nickname) stormed the British-held Mediterranean fortress and harbor of Tobruk in Eastern Libya on this date in 1942. The newly minted German field […]
22
JAPAN’S LEADERS PUSHED TO END WAR
Tokyo, Japan · June 22, 1945 Beginning in the summer of 1944 Japanese military prowess fast approached terminal collapse in the Pacific. Between mid-June and early August, Saipan and Guam in the Marianas fell to superior American forces. Peleliu and Angaur in the Palau Islands were in American hands by the end of November 1944. […]
23
SOVIET BLITZKRIEG KNOCKS GERMANS OFF BALANCE
Moscow, Soviet Union • June 23, 1944 On this date in 1944 along a 450-mile front some 2.4 million Soviet frontline and support troops, 5,200 tanks, and 5,300 aircraft smashed through German lines in present-day Belarus (White Russia and Belorussia in some earlier sources). Sabotage of rail networks and bridges by guerrillas several days before June 23 impeded German […]
24
EISENHOWER TO COMMAND U.S. FORCES IN EUROPE
London, England · June 24, 1942 On this date in 1942 Maj. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived in London, England, to assume administrative and operational command of the European Theater of Operations, United States Army. Set up 16 days earlier, ETOUSA directed U.S. ground, air, and service operations north of Italy and the Mediterranean coast. When […]
25
BRITISH INTERN GERMANS, ITALIANS
London, England · June 25, 1940 Under the threat of imminent invasion from Nazi Germany, the British government on this date in 1940 began interning all suspect aliens living in the United Kingdom. Thousands of Germans, Austrians, and Italians, including Jewish refugees from the Nazis, were placed behind barbed wire in England (racetracks and unfinished […]
26
CHERBOURG’S CAPTURE TO REPLACE LOST MULBERRY
Cherbourg, France · June 26, 1944 On June 19–21, 1944, a violent gale hit the two huge Mulberry artificial harbors that the Allies had built in England, towed across the English Channel under danger of wind, weather, and enemy air attack, and planted off the Normandy beaches on D‑Day-plus eight (June 14). The prefabricated harbors with […]
27
RED ARMY OVERRUNS PARTS OF ROMANIA
Bucharest, Romania · June 27, 1940 On this date in 1940 Red Army troops invaded Romania in the wake of Romanian King Carol II’s refusal to cede the eastern territories of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union (see map). These territories had been assigned to the Soviet sphere of influence in a secret protocol […]
28
OILFIELDS, STALINGRAD TARGETS IN SUMMER CAMPAIGN
Along the Eastern Front · June 28, 1942 On this date in 1942 on the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler launched Germany’s second summer campaign against the Soviet Union in two years. (The first had been Operation Barbarossa begun the previous June, which had been intended to knock the Soviet Union out of the war in […]
29
BLOODBATH IN GERMAN CAPITAL, OTHER CITIES
Berlin, Germany · June 29, 1934 Late on this date in 1934 German Chancellor Adolf Hitler unleashed an extraordinary murder spree known as the “Night of the Long Knives” (“Nacht der Langen Messer”). President Paul von Hindenburg’s doctors had leaked the news that the 86-year-old German military hero had only months to live. Hitler feared […]
30
JAPAN DROPS WAR PLANS AGAINST SOVIETS
Tokyo, Japan · June 30, 1941 On September 19, 1931, soldiers of the Kwantung Army (eventually the largest, most prestigious branch of the Imperial Japanese Army) invaded Manchuria in Northeast China from their base at Port Arthur (present-day Dalian or Lüshun Port) and established a puppet state they called Manchukuo. This event was a massive […]
Select another month for more news headlines.
History buffs, there is good news! The Daily Chronicles of World War II is now available as an ebook for $4.99 on Amazon.com. Containing a year’s worth of dated entries from this website, the ebook brings the story of this tumultuous era to life in a compelling, authoritative, and succinct manner. Featuring inventive navigation aids, the ebook enables readers to instantly move forward or backward by month and date to different dated entries. Simple and elegant! Click