Lithuania: The Soviet Union demands that its Red Army be allowed to enter Lithuania and form a pro-Soviet puppet "People's Government of Lithuania". June 15 – WWII: Occupation of the Baltic states: The Soviet Union occupies Lithuania. Verdun falls to German forces. June 16 The Churchill war ministry in the United Kingdom offers a Franco-British Union (inspired by Jean Monnet) to Paul Reynaud, Prime Minister of France, in the hope of preventing France from agreeing to an armistice with Germany, but Reynaud resigns when his own cabinet refuses to accept it. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is held for the first time, in Sturgis, South Dakota. June 17 – WWII: Philippe Pétain becomes Prime Minister of France, and immediately asks Germany for peace terms. Occupation of the Baltic states: The Soviet Union occupies Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Operation Aerial begins: Allied troops start to evacuate France, following Germany's takeover of Paris and most of the nation. , serving as a troopship, is bombed and sunk by Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 aircraft, while evacuating British troops and nationals from Saint-Nazaire in France, with the loss of at least 4,000 lives, the largest single UK loss in any World War II event, immediate news of which is suppressed in the British press. Destroyer rescues around 600. June 18 – WWII: Winston Churchill tells the House of Commons of the United Kingdom: "The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin... if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour." Appeal of 18 June: General Charles de Gaulle, de facto leader of the Free French Forces, makes his first broadcast appeal over Radio Londres from London, rallying the French Resistance, calling on all French people to continue the fight against Nazi Germany: "France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war." June 20 – WWII: Evacuation of civilians from the Channel Islands to England begins. June 21 – WWII: The unsuccessful Italian invasion of France begins with an offensive in the Alps. June 22 WWII: Second Armistice at Compiègne: The French Third Republic and Nazi Germany sign an armistice, ending the Battle of France in the Forest of Compiègne, in the same Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits railroad car used by Marshal Ferdinand Foch to conclude the Armistice with Germany in 1918. This divides France