June 22, 1940: Adolf Hitler, with an entourage including Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Generalfeldmraschall Wilhelm Keitel, Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentropp, and others, strides past a German honor guard, on his way to an oddity: an antique railroad car parked in an open area in a forest, opposite a slab memorial.
The forest is Compeignie, the railroad coach is the place the Germans accepted the 1918 Armistice that ended hostilities in WW I, and led to the Treaty of Versailles, and the slab commemorates that fact. Hitler is here to give the French the terms for an armistice to end the German rampage through their country that has been going on since May 10th.
Shortly after the arrival of the German party the French appear. Hitler is there for the introductions, but leaves before the terms are read. France will be divided into an occupied zone, and a neutral rump, headquartered at Vichy. It will remain that way until Operation Attila in November, 1942, when Hitler, perceiving the French response to the Allied invasion of Morocco and Algeria underwhelming orders the Wehrmacht to occupy the rest of France.
June 22, 1941: Operation Barbarossa. On an eight hundred mile front, three and a half million German and allied troops invade the Soviet Union. While the Finns attack in the north, two German Army groups [North and Center] attack north of the Pripyat Marsh. AG North drives toward Lenigrad, AG Center heads for Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow. South of the Marsh, Army Group, composed of German and Romanian troops drives east toward Kiev and the Dnieper river bend.
June 22, 1944: Operation Bagration. In a series of operations preceded by massive misdirection, the Red Army launches a series of concentric envelopments that rips apart, and largely annihilates Army Group Center. Before it is over, Bagration will put Soviet units in East Prussia and across the Vistula from Warsaw.
