WW2 was a global conflict that raged from September 1939 to August 1945; almost six long years.
The change of seasons brought with it changes in the pace of the war. Spring generally meant new offensives, while winter could mean stalemate or a winter offensive - such as those made by the Russians on the eastern front, or the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardenne.
Caen, in Normandy is finally taken on 9th July 1944. The city was a D-Day objective.
1 June 1940: 64,420 men are evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk, France despite heavy German air attacks.
2 June 1941: German paratroopers murder Greek civilians in the village of Kondomari, Crete retaliation for the participation of Cretans in the Battle of Crete
3 June 1940: Dunkirk evacuation ends with 338,226 men having been rescued
4 June 1940: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill broadcasts that: “…..we shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the landing grounds…….. We shall never surrender”. 1944: Rome is liberated by the Allies
5 June 1944: D-Day; Operation Neptune. Allied airborne troops land in France; the first trrops setting foot on French soil being the British 6th Airborne Division, at Benouville, near Caen
- [Veteran's stories] -
Prelude to D-Day: A Sherman tank gunner tells of the day before D-Day
The RAF Servicing Commando in Normandy: Getting your feet wet in France
6 June 1944: D-Day; Operation Overload begins as allied troops storm the German defences of Normandy
- [Veteran's story] -
US Signalman Art Schmitz tells how he knew that D-Day had arrived
7 June 1944: D-Day; British Commandos attack the fishing port of Port-en-Bessin, which was to become the landing point for the Pipeline Under the Ocean (PLUTO)
8 June 1940: British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious sunk by German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau
9 June 1944: 99 civilians are hung from lamp posts and balconies by German troops in Tulle, France, in reprisal for resistance attacks
10 June 1944: With over 326,00 troops now ashore, the Allies cut the road and rail links from Carentan to Cherbourg as the landing beachheads link up
11 June 1940: Italian dictator Mussolini declares war on the Allies
12 June 1942: Dutch Jew Anne frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday. Telling of the horrors of daily life in occupied Holland, this diary is published after the war
13 June 1944: The first V1 rockets to hit England kill six people in London. Ten were fired and four hit the city.
14 June 1940: German troops march into Paris
15 June 1944: US Marines land on the Pacific island of Saipan
16 June 1940: Marshal Petain becomes Premier of Vichy France
17 June 1940: French WW1 hero Marshall Petain asks the Germans for Armistice terms
18 June 1940: Charles De Gaulle, founder of the Free French in England, makes a radio appeal to his fellow countrymen to continue to resist the German invaders
19 June 1944: The worst storm for forty years destroys the Mulberry Harbour at Omaha Beach and severely damages the British one at Arromanches
20 June 1944: US Pacific Fleet destroys or damages 14 Japanese warships including 3 aircraft carriers during the Battle of the Philippine Sea
21 June 1942: General ( later Field Marshall) Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps takes the port of Tobruk, Libya
22 June 1941: Operation Barborrosa begins as Germany invades the Russia, destroying most of the communist aircraft on the ground
23 June 1940: The German battleship Gneisenau is damaged by the British submarine HMS Clyde
24 June 1940: Franco-Italian Armistice signed in Rome
25 June 1944: Allied forces reopen the Imphal to Kohima road in Burma after heavy fighting
- [Veteran's story] -
An officer of the 4th Bn Welch Regiment tells of landing in Normandy with a bicycle
26 June 1944: Operation Epsom begins in Normandy, as the British forces drive for Caen; itself a D-Day objective
27 June 1941: Japanese government declares the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’
28 June 1940: Britain recognises General De Gaulle as the leader of the Free-French
29 June 1944: US Forces liberate Cherbourg at the northern-most point of the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy
- [Veteran's story] -
An officer of the 4th Bn Welch Regiment tells of trench warfare in Normandy
30 June 1940: Germans occupy the Channel Islands, the only part of the British Isles to be occupied during WW2
This month in WW2
Chonicle of the Second World War; Longman
On this day...
& other sources
Copyright notice
Image courtesy of the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum.
This image cannot be copied from this site without prior permission from the IWM.
All material on this site is copyright and should not be used without the written permission of the site owner.