June 5: Four thousand Chongqing residents are asphyxiated in a bomb shelter during the Bombing of Chongqing. - A Serbian ammunition depot explodes at Smederevo on the outskirts of Belgrade, Serbia, killing 2,500, and injuring over 4,500.

June 8: British and Free French forces invade Syria.

June 13: TASS, the official Soviet news agency, denies reports of tension between Germany and the Soviet Union.

June 14: Soviet officials deport about 65,000 people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to Siberia. - All German and Italian assets in the United States are frozen.

June 16: All German and Italian consulates in the United States are ordered closed and their staffs to leave the country by July 10. - British Fleet Air Arm aircraft sink the Vichy French ship Chevalier Paul.

June 20: United States Army Air Corps becomes the Army Air Forces. - Walt Disney's live-action animated feature, The Reluctant Dragon, is released.

June 22: Operation Barbarossa: Germany invades the Soviet Union. - Winston Churchill promises all possible British assistance to the Soviet Union in a worldwide broadcast: "Any man or state who fights against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe." - Italy and Romania declare war on the Soviet Union. - The First Sisak Partisan Brigade, the first anti-fascist armed unit in occupied Europe, is founded by Yugoslav partisans near Sisak, Croatia.

June 23: Hungary and Slovakia declare war on the Soviet Union.

June 24: The Soviet Information Bureau, predecessor of RIA Novosti, is founded.

June 25: Finland as a co-belligerent with Germany attacks the Soviet Union to start the Continuation War.

June 28: Albania declares war on the Soviet Union.

June 29: Hitler's second-in-command Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering is appointed as Hitler's successor in a written decree. The decree will come into effect should Hitler die in the middle of the war. (The decree becomes void in April 1945 after Goering tries to assume power while Hitler is still alive, leading to Goering's expulsion from the Nazi Party). (source: Wikipedia)