With Poland brought down to its knees in 1939, Adolf Hitler was now free to move his troops westward. Capitalizing on enemy inaction, the German High Command decided to invade Denmark and Norway. Hitler couldn't care less about their neutrality and so, on April 9, 1940, the German troops landed in Copenhagen and several Norwegian ports. On the same day, the Danish government capitulated, but the Norwegian Cabinet appealed to the army and the people to stand up to the enemy and asked Britain for help. The German superiority was too overwhelming though and before long, a larger part of the country was in Nazi hands and the power turned over to the local fascist leader Vidkun Quisling whose name became synonymous with "traitor". King Haakon, the government and what was left of the Norwegian army, fled to Britain.
On May 10, the Germans advanced on France striking at the junction point between Belgium, Luxembourg and France bypassing the impregnable Maginot Line of French defenses. By May 20, the Germans had already approached Calais by way of the Ardennes mountains and closed their pincers around a 340,000-strong allied force near Dunkerque. The British High Command ordered an evacuation and within two weeks the British, using every available vessel, including pleasure boats, had taken away the bulk of their army, although most of the equipment had to be left behind. Meanwhile, the Germans kept pushing towards Paris and on June 14 they finally entered the city and, two days later, the French government asked for peace.
By late 1940, Britain was the only country in Europe resisting the Nazi aggression. The predicament only served to fortify the Britons' resolve to fight to the end though, and Neville Chamberlain's replacement with Winston Churchill, an outspoken enemy of any sort of deals with Hitler, was a clear sign of the British determination. Hitler ordered the bulk of his military aviation, about 2,500 planes, into northern France at the start of what has since been known as the Battle of Britain. Starting in July, the air battle continued well into late fall until it was cut short by worsening weather. The British stood their ground scoring the first major victory against Hitler.
The war was also raging in Africa where Hitler's hopes were with the Italians who were moving from Libya towards the Suez Canal and from Ethiopia - towards Kenya and Sudan. The British struck back forcing the Italians to surrender in Ethiopia and driving them out of Egypt. Adolf Hitler sent in an armored and aviation corps to the Italians' rescue. In March the Germans thrust forward heading back towards the Nile valley only to be checked some hundred kilometers away from Alexandria. The stubborn British defense dashed once and for all the German-Italian hopes of seizing the strategic Suez Canal.
On August 20, Leon Trotsky was mortally wounded in Mexico by a Stalinist agent. He died the following day. Gone was Stalin's erstwhile opponent, an uncompromising idealist who, until his last day, staunchly embraced the idea of a world revolution… Ireland's founding Prime Minister James Craig died in the same year. During his 19-year tenure, he discriminated against the country's Roman Catholic minority and changed the constitution to favor the Protestants. In the Soviet Union, the great Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov also died in 1940. His main novel, Master and Margarita, is still very popular around the world.
Among the people who graced the world with their birth in 1940, are Edison Arantis do Nacimento, better known as Pele. The great Brazilian footballer played in four World Cup championships and led his country's team to three global victories. John Lennon and Ringo Starr of the Fab Four were also born in 1940, along with the Nobel Prize-winning Russian poet Iosif Brodsky. In 1972 Brodsky emigrated to the United States where he was very popular and his lectures at prestigious universities, culture clubs an humanitarian societies were always conducted before large audiences of devoted admirers.
In the same year, another Soviet emigre, a pioneer airplane designer and manufacturer, Igor Sikorsky produced the first successful direct-lift machine in the United States .

THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series of historical programs is prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.


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