Burma, June 20th, 1944
Montgomery's 14th army broke the siege of Imphal. The next day Allied forces would go on the offensive along the front.
North of Ancona, Italy, June 21st, 1944
The 1st South African Armoured Division, joined the 6th South African Armoured in the front-line. With the war being less than popular back in South Africa, it had been decided back in 1942 to convert the two infantry divisions fighting in North Africa to armor. The two new divisions had been formed in early 1943 in Egypt but it had taken over a year before they had been moved to Italy between training and tank shortages, providing replacements to the British and Indian units fighting in Greece and Anatolia kept taking precedence. But finally the South Africans had joined the advance of the British 8th Army north back in April. And now with both divisions in the front the South Africans had gotten their own corps as well under general
Pienaar.
Byelorussia, June 22nd, 1944
Nearly 1.7 million Soviet soldiers with almost six thousand tanks and assault guns and close to eight thousand aircraft in support struck. Opposing them the German Army Group Center had fewer than half a million men with barely a tenth as many tanks and assault guns as the attacking Soviets. Worse yet for the Germans they were not even expecting the offensive to come in the center of the front, thinking instead the Soviets would had struck in Ukraine. With five days Soviet forces had crossed the Dnieper and were advancing further west.
Karelian Isthmus, June 25th, 1944
Three thousand artillery pieces begun raining fire on the Finnish positions. They would soon be joined by 1,500 aircraft. Then after ten hours of intense bombardment 286,000 Soviet soldiers and 760 tanks went to the attack, spearheaded by two Mechanized Corps. The Finns taken by surprise by the attack on the isthmus only had 75,000 men on the isthmus.
Svir river, Karelia, June 25th, 1944
184,000 Soviet soldiers supported by 327 tanks attacked across the river. Finnish forces were stronger here, this had been the sector where the Finns were expecting an attack, but the Soviets still had comfortable numerical superiority. Besides any Finnish division fighting on the Svir was a division that could not be shifted to the Karelian isthmus. The STAVKA, was not leaving much to chance. Field marshal Triandafillov, fresh from victory against Turkey, had been tasked with knocking Finland out of the war and had been provided ample reinforcements, as several of the veteran Caucasian and Siberian divisions that had won the war in Anatolia were shifted north with the war against Turkey over...
Sivas, June 27th, 1944
Sultan Abdulmejid II died at age 76, having reigned for the past 18 years. His had been a thankless job. The actual power of the sultan and caliph had been severely curtailed since the Young Turks had come to power a generation before, all the more so after Kemal's return to power. Kemal had viewed him with suspicion, never forgetting the role of sultan against the Grand National Assembly in 1919-21, and always considering him a threat to his own power. He had dutifully supported the war effort, when Turkey had joined the war in 1941, after all like most of his subjects he had believed his country was fighting a just war, only to see the country severely defeated for the second time in a generation. The stress had probably been too much for the old man who had passed away. Prince
Ahmed Nihad would now be proclaimed sultan Ahmed IV. But things were not that easy. The new sultan was bedridden from an earlier stroke, which made his ability to perform his duties questionable. And there were also political questions to address. The sultan was also caliph of Islam since the time of Selim I and had been anything but shy about using his position as caliph to proclaim jihad against the enemies of Turkey in both world wars. With Britain, France and the Soviet Union having millions of Muslim subjects neither cared for a repetition. Maitland Wilson had already visited Karabekir demanding Ahmed IV would not be proclaimed caliph without the consent of the Allies...
Drancy camp, France, June 30th, 1944
Marcel Bloch after spending the past several months is various prisons was moved to the Drancy internment camp. He would spend there six weeks before being shipped off to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Constantinople, July 1st, 1944
Bulgarian soldiers looked warily at the other side of the straits and the Soviet soldiers there. Propaganda posters all across Bulgaria proper and its occupied territories proclaimed "Tsargrad had become Bulgarian". The propaganda might work if you were a rural peasant. Maybe. If you accepted the stream of dead and maimed soldiers coming back to Bulgaria for the past four years. It was more difficult to stomach if you actually knew how the war was going...
Macedonia, July 2nd, 1944
The massed artillery barrage, heavier than ever before in the Balkans, signalled the beginning of the offensive of the Allied Armies of the Orient. Between them the attacking Allied armies had over 762,000 men and 27 divisions, 6 of them armoured. The Greek 1st army accounted for almost half the men and a dozen divisions...
Italy, July 2nd, 1944
Beginning the offensive to break the German defenses on the Appenines at the same day with the Allied offensive in the Balkans had been something of a happy coincidence. This didn't make it any less of a problem for the OKW that had to deal simultaneusly with the two Allied offensives in the Mediterranean on top of the deteriorating situation in France and Byelorussia...