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• Weather data for 23 Jul 1942

• General Maximilian von Weichs was appointed to command Armeegruppe B, relieving General Fedor von Bock. ww2dbase [Main Article | TH]
• Adam Czerniaków passed away. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
• Indian troops launched an attack on Deir el Shein near El Alamein, Egypt in failure. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
• Martin Bormann relayed Adolf Hitler's orders to Alfred Rosenberg, noting that the Slavic population in occupied Eastern Europe were to be nothing more than laborers of Germany, thus they did not need to be fed more food than absolutely necessary, and they were not to be educated. ww2dbase [CPC]
• Italian transport Rosolino Pilo, escorted by two destroyers and two smaller vessels, safely arrived at Benghazi, Libya after a three-day trip from Brindisi, Italy. ww2dbase [CPC]
• German submarine U-129 sank US ship Onondaga 5 miles north of Cayo Guillermo, Cuba at 2222 hours; 20 were killed, 14 survived. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]
• German submarine U-752 sank British ship Garmula 200 miles southwest of Freetown, British West Africa; 21 were killed, 67 survived. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]

• Douglas MacArthur arrived at Brisbane, Australia. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]

• Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa of the Japanese 8th Fleet based at Rabaul, New Britain, Bismarck Archipelago repeated his 21 Jul 1942 request for more destroyers. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]

• Japanese troops engaged troops of the Papuan Infantry Battalion at Awala, Australian Papua on the Kokoda Trail. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]

• Barbers Point Naval Air Station: First movies for all personnel, in mess hall. ww2dbase [Main Article | DS]

• Treblinka Concentration Camp in Poland began mass extermination by gassing. Its first prisoners would be Jews recently deported from the ghetto in Warsaw. 700,000 would be killed within the following one year. ww2dbase [Main Article | Facility | CPC]

• Führer Directive Number 45 was issued, ordering Operation Brunswick, the capture of the Caucasus region; Armeegruppe A would move through Maikop and Grozny to the Black Sea and Armeegruppe B would take Stalingrad on the drive to Astrakhan. Meanwhile, in southern Russia, German 13th Panzer Division, German 22nd Panzer Division, and Czechoslovakian Mobile Slovak Division captured the Kommolomny Bridge over the Don River at Rostov-on-Don. ww2dbase [Main Article | TH, CPC]
• Aleksandr Vasilevsky was named a representative of the Soviet Stavka at Stalingrad, Russia. ww2dbase [Main Article | CPC]

• The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in Washington DC, United States, fearful that the completion of the Japanese airfield on Guadacanal in the Solomon Islands might signal a renewed enemy advance in the South Pacific that could threaten US aid to New Zealand and Australia, agreed to Marine deployments to secure the lines of communication (Operation Watchtower). ww2dbase [Main Article | AC]

23 Jul 1942 Interactive Map