June 10 in Military History

Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa drowned while crossing the Saleph River in Anatolia during the Third Crusade, causing the disintegration of the largest Crusader army ever assembled.

The Pasha of Tripoli, Yusuf Karamanli, cut down the flagpole of the American consulate in a symbolic declaration of war, beginning the First Barbary War after Thomas Jefferson refused further tribute payments to the North African regency.

During the Spanish-American War, a battalion of US Marines landed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, establishing the base that would become America's oldest overseas naval installation and a controversial detention facility a century later.

Mussolini declared war on France and Britain, entering World War II on Germany's side just as France was collapsing. President Roosevelt remarked: "The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor."

Nazi forces destroyed the Czech village of Lidice in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, killing all 173 men over 15 and deporting the women and children to concentration camps.

The Combined Chiefs of Staff issued the Pointblank Directive, formally committing the RAF and the U.S. Army Air Forces to a combined bomber offensive against German industry and air power in preparation for the cross-Channel invasion.

SS troops murdered 642 men, women, and children in a French village, one of the worst atrocities in Western Europe during WWII.

Waffen-SS troops of the 4th SS-Polizei Panzergrenadier Division massacred 218 civilians in the village of Distomo, Greece, in reprisal for a partisan ambush. It was one of the worst atrocities of the German occupation of Greece.

A United Nations-brokered ceasefire ended the Six-Day War on the Syrian front with Israel in possession of the Golan Heights, completing one of the most decisive military campaigns of the twentieth century.

General Creighton Abrams assumed command of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, replacing General William Westmoreland. Abrams shifted emphasis from large-unit search-and-destroy operations to pacification and the buildup of South Vietnamese forces.

NATO suspended its 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia after President Milošević agreed to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo, ending the Kosovo War and paving the way for a UN peacekeeping mission.