Timeline of World War II (1942) - July 1942

July 1942

1: First Battle of El Alamein begins as Rommel begins first assault on British defences.
: Sevastopol falls to the Germans; the end of Red Army resistance in the Crimea.
2: Churchill survives a censure motion in the House of Commons.
3: Guadalcanal is now firmly in the hands of the Japanese.
4: First air missions by American Air Force in Europe.
11: Rommel's forces are now stalemated before El Alamein, largely because of a lack of ammunition.
12: It now becomes clear that Stalingrad is the largest challenge to the invaders.
: A balloon from Operation Outward knocks out a power station near Leipzig.
15: The only action around El Alamein is light skirmishing.
16: Vel' d'Hiv Roundup: On order from the Vichy France government headed by Pierre Laval, French police officers mass arrest 13,152 Jews and hold them at the Winter Velodrome before deportation to Auschwitz.
18: The Germans test fly the Messerschmitt Me-262 V3 third prototype using only its jet engines for the first time.
19: Battle of the Atlantic: German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the last U-boats to withdraw from their United States Atlantic coast positions in response to an increasingly effective American convoy system.
20: After landing in the Buna-Gona area, the Japanese in New Guinea move across the Owen Stanley mountain range aiming at Port Moresby in the south-eastern part of the island, close to Australia; a small Australian force begins rearguard action on the Kokoda Track.
22: The systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins. Treblinka, "a model" concentration camp, is opened in Poland.
24: Germans take Rostov-on-the-Don; the Red Army is in a general retreat along the Don River.
26: A second attack by the British under Auchinleck fails against Rommel. First Battle of El Alamein may be said to be over.
27: Heavy RAF incendiary attack on Hamburg.
29: The Japanese take Kokoda, halfway along the Owen Stanley pass to Port Moresby.
30: Continuing stalemate at El Alamein between Rommel and Auchinleck.

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Famous quotes containing the words july 1942 and/or july:

    “I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.”
    —Gabriel Péri, French Communist leader. Letter, July 1942, written shortly before his execution by the Germans. Quoted in New York Times (April 11, 1943)

    “This, it will be remembered, was the scene of Mrs. Rowlandson’s capture, and of other events in the Indian wars, but from this July afternoon, and under that mild exterior, those times seemed as remote as the irruption of the Goths. They were the dark age of New England.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)