July 22 in Military History

Confederate General John Bell Hood launches a ferocious assault against Sherman's forces east of Atlanta, killing Union General James B. McPherson, the highest-ranking Union officer killed in battle, but failing to halt the Federal advance on the city.

Union forces under Major General William Tecumseh Sherman repulse the second major Confederate sortie against Atlanta, a coordinated assault led by Lieutenant General William Hardee that cost the Army of Tennessee roughly 8,000 casualties and opened the final approach to the city.

Russian Provisional Government forces arrest Bolshevik military organizer Leon Trotsky in Petrograd during the crackdown following the July Days uprising, a pause in the revolutionary process that would nonetheless feed directly into the Bolshevik seizure of power three months later.

Following the Bonus Army's expulsion from Washington on July 28, the July 22 Army staff conferences between General Douglas MacArthur, Major Dwight Eisenhower, and Major George Patton shape operational plans that would end the World War I veterans' protest and reshape American civil-military relations.

FBI agents shoot and kill notorious bank robber John Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago. While not a military event, the operation demonstrated the professionalization of federal law enforcement using military-style tactics.

The Nazi extermination camp at Treblinka begins operations in occupied Poland. Over the next 14 months, approximately 900,000 people, predominantly Jews, would be murdered there, making it the second deadliest camp after Auschwitz.

German SS and Order Police units begin the Grossaktion Warschau deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp, a two-month operation that murdered roughly 265,000 Jews and set the stage for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

General George S. Patton's Seventh Army races across western Sicily and captures the capital city of Palermo in a bold dash that demonstrates American mobile warfare capabilities and feeds Patton's rivalry with Montgomery.

Soviet forces of the 1st Belorussian Front under Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky capture Lublin in German-occupied Poland, liberating the Majdanek concentration camp and advancing to within 80 miles of Warsaw during the Operation Bagration offensive.

The Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary organization, bombs the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the British administrative headquarters, killing 91 people. The attack accelerates British withdrawal from Palestine and shapes the founding of Israel.

U.S. forces from the 101st Airborne Division kill Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay in a fierce firefight in Mosul, Iraq, eliminating two key regime figures and a major propaganda victory in the Iraq War.