page_title: Timeline of World War II (1941)
section_title: July
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of World War II (1941) / July
context_page_description: This is a timeline of events that stretched over the period of World War II from 1941, marked also by the beginning of Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern Front.
context_section_description: 1: General Auchinleck takes over from General Wavell in North Africa.
  : The British win the Battle of Palmyra against the French in the Middle East.
  : All American men over 21 are required to register for the draft.
  : German troops occupy Latvia's capital, Riga, on the way to Leningrad.
  2: Ponary massacre killings begin, with the shooting of Soviet POWs captured during Operation Barbarossa, which began two weeks earlier, and with the deportation of hundreds of Jews from Vilnius to Soviet dug fuel tank pits near the Ponariai suburb of Vilnius, where they are shot or buried alive. Reports by survivors are accepted as hallucinations. The mass deportations and shooting of Jews continued until 1943.
  : Hungarian troops take over Stanisławów and other towns in what is now Ukraine.
  3: Stalin announces a "scorched earth policy".
  : The United States of America elevates its General Headquarters, United States Army in order to command and plan for military operations within the Zone of the Interior.
  : Italian General Pietro Gazzera surrenders the remnants of his forces in the Jimma area.
  : British troops employ brave and risky flanking tactics to win the Battle of Deir ez-Zor.
  4: Mass murder of Polish scientists and writers, committed by German troops in captured Polish city of Lwów.
  : Vilna Ghetto first Judenrat established.
  5: British Government rules out possibility of negotiated peace with Nazi Germany.
  : British torpedo planes sink an Italian destroyer at Tobruk; on the 20th, two more are sunk.
  : German troops reach the Dnieper River.
  : The Ecuadorian–Peruvian War conflict begins in South America.
  7: British and Canadian troops in Iceland are replaced by Americans.
  8: Yugoslavia, a country formed by the Versailles treaty, is dissolved by the Axis into its component parts; especially important will be Croatia, with a pro-Axis government.
  : Britain and the USSR sign a mutual defence agreement, promising not to sign any form of separate peace agreement with Germany.
  9: Vitebsk (Belarus) is captured; this opens the battle of Smolensk, an important communications centre, considered by the German high command to be "the gateway to Moscow."
  10: The occupation of Latvia starts officially. Guderian's Panzers take Minsk; the Germans advance farther into Ukraine.
  : Units of the Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia begin to arrive. A legion from the Independent State of Croatia is part of the Italian corps.
  12: The Vichy French surrender in Syria.
  : Assistance Pact signed between the United Kingdom and the USSR.
  13: Montenegro starts an uprising against the Axis Powers shortly after the Royalists in Serbia begin theirs. Questionable Communist plans instigate parallel uprising and civil war.
  15: The Red Army starts a counter-attack against the Wehrmacht near Leningrad.
  : Argentia naval air base is set up in Newfoundland; it will prove an important transfer station for the Allies for some years.
  16: German Panzers under Guderian reach Smolensk, increasing the risk to Moscow.
  17: Luftwaffe air attacks on Malta continue.
  19: The "V-sign", displayed most notably by Churchill, is unofficially adopted as the Allied signal, along with the motif of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
  20: Heinrich Himmler visits Soviet POWs near Minsk and Lublin and decides to build the concentration camp near Lublin known as Majdanek concentration camp.
  21: The Luftwaffe strikes heavily at Moscow.
  26: In response to the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the seizure of all Japanese assets in the United States.
  : Germans order a Judenrat established in Stanisławów, Galicia. It is headed by Israel Seibald.
  28: Japanese troops occupy southern French Indochina. The Vichy French colonial government is allowed by the Japanese to continue to administer Vietnam. French repression continues. The Vichy French also agree to the occupation by the Japanese of bases in Indochina.
  : The Germans push against Smolensk, and in the meantime solidify their presence in the Baltic states; native Jewish populations of the Baltic states are being e
caption: The state of the Allies and Axis powers in July 1941
exif: {}