Sunday, June 28, 1942. Fall Blau.

The Germans commenced Fall Blau (Case Blue), their 1942 summer offensive in southern the Soviet Union. The objective was to take the Baku oilfields.  It would run into November.

Burning Soviet KV-1 heavy tank.  By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-216-0412-07 / Klintzsch / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5410409

The offensive took considerable ground and can be regarded as a military success.  Indeed, so much so that it made the Germans overconfident in their abilities.  One of their offensive failures in the battle was to fail to cross the Volga and surround Stalingrad, choosing instead simply to enter it.

The offensive repeated the German tendency to commence offensives on Sundays.

The Australians raided Salamaua in New Guinea without loss of life.  The well planned raid was the first Australian commando raid of the war.

For civilian populations in the US and Canada, such as my then young parents, one can only imagine how this must have looked. The Japanese had recently struck two coastal installations in the Pacific with submarine bombardments, the British were on the retreat in North Africa, and the Germans were once again advancing in the Soviet Union.