Ionia, June 30th, 1943
The offensive of the Turkish 1st army was ordered to a halt. It was true that the Turks and Germans had begun with nearly twice as many men. But the Allies had command of the air, the Luftwaffe reinforcing her units in the Balkans with 140 more aircraft in May and June, had barely managed to put a dent on Allied air superiority and the Greeks had been well dug in, with superior armor and artillery and after three years of war more than adept in shifting forces where needed, helped by ample numbers of Studebaker and Ford trucks to move men and supplies much faster than the Turks and Germans that still had to largely depend on on animal drawn transport. After two of the initial Turkish probes had been savaged by the Greek III Armoured Division and with reports of reinforcements already pouring through the port of Smyrna to Ptolemaios Saririgiannis Army of Asia Minor, Cakmak had had enough. There was no point to waste men and machines by continuing the offensive. Better let the Greeks and the English break their heads on Turkish defenses.
Eleusis air base, Athens, July 1st, 1943
Greek and Polish airmen presented arms as prime minister Wladislaw Sikorski climbed down the ladder of the converted B-24 that had brought him to Greece. The Polish prime minister was to meet with the Greek government in downtown Athens and go on an inspection tour of the Polish forces in Greece. Three Polish infantry divisions the 1 Dywizja Grenadierów, 2 Dywizja Strzelców Pieszych and 4 Dywizja Piechoty were fighting in the Thessalian front, with two Polish Air Force squadrons the 303rd "Kościuszko" with Spitfire IXs and 305th "Ziemia Wielkopolska" with B-25 Mitchells flying out of Eleusis. Fourteen more Polish squadrons were operating out of the British islands, the last of them No 336 Bomber squadron had been formed back in February.
Rome, July 4th, 1943
The Italian government ordered the headquarters of the 6th army to move to Calabria. Resistance to the Allied armies still continued but the Italiann hold on Sicily was systematically being reduced.
Kursk July 5th, 1943
781,000 German soldiers supported by more than 2,900 tanks including brand new Tigers and Panthers and almost 10,000 guns attacked. The German offensive had to be delayed repeatedly between lack of resources and crises in other fronts, in particular the landings in Sicily. Many German generals including Guderian had even suggested outright cancelling it, Guderian thought it better to stay on the defensive for 1943 and resume the offensive come next year. But enemy armies kept growing. thus in true Prussian fashion the German army was to once more take its chances and risk winning or losing everything on a single roll of the iron dice. Only this time over 1.4 million veteran Soviet soldiers withe more than 5,000 tanks and five times as many guns waited to receive the assault with yet more ready to reinforce them when needed...
Sicily, July 8th, 1943
Messe and Kesserling begun evacuating second line units and material through the straits of Messina to Calabria. The Allies would attempt to interdict the movement but the Regia Marina and the Regia Aeronautica would prove they still had teeth the hard way when Italian torpedo bombers heavily damaged HMS Indomitable and the submarine Dandolo nearly sunk the light cruiser HMS Sirius. The British and Greeks would attempt to infiltrate the straits of Messina at night with PT Boats, only for two boats to be sunk by the light cruiser Pompeio Magno, one of only a handful of Regia Marina ships equipped with radar. The evacuation and the fighting further south went on...
Rastenburg, East Prussia, July 12th, 1943
Marshals Von Manstein and Von Kluge were summoned to the Wolf's Laid to decide on the continuation of the German offewnsive at Kursk. So far the offensive had been going rather worse than the Germans had hoped for. Their forces had advanced but at very high cost. And while Von Manstein still hoped he was about to break through Soviet forces in his sector and destroy the remaining Soviet reserves afterwards, a rather optimistic assessment of the size of uncommitted Soviet reserves, the Soviets had already counterattacked in Von Kluge's front. Coupled with the imminent collapse of the defenses of Sicily the decision was taken to halt the offensive. But that the Germans had decided to stop their attack hardly meant the battle was over. The Soviet counterattack in the northern sector, was already evolving to a full scale counterattack...