Events, Verisoph

1938 Halifax replaces Eden as Foreign Secretary ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Halifax took the Foreign Office permanently after Eden resigned over recognizing Italy's conquest of Ethiopia. Quigley presents Halifax as a brake used to counter Eden's collective-security instincts. ●●

1938 Seizure of Austria and rejected Soviet conference proposal ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Days after Germany seized Austria, the Soviet Union proposed an international conference to stop aggression; Britain rejected it at once. Quigley shows Chamberlain then abandoning any idea of guaranteeing Czechoslovakia. ●●

1938 Quigley: who first demanded Czech frontier revision ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley asserts that revision of Czechoslovakia's frontiers in Germany's favor was first floated by Chamberlain privately in May and by the Milner Group publicly in September, before Hitler had even demanded annexation of the Sudetenland. ●●

1938 The Times calls for ceding the Sudetenland ai_extracted 1 cit. no story A Times leading article, which Quigley links to the Astors, publicly suggested frontier revision in Germany's favor. The outcry, he says, showed the British public still needed softening up before Czechoslovakia could be handed over. ●●

1938 Halifax told of the anti-Hitler plot ai_extracted 1 cit. no story A group of German officers and officials planned to kill Hitler if his Czech policy meant war; Halifax was informed by Theodor Kordt but the plot was canceled when Chamberlain agreed to go to Munich. ●●

1938 Turrou breaks up German Abwehr spy ring in New York ai_extracted 1 cit. no story By all accounts Turrou did well at his job, and by 1938 he had gained fame by breaking up a large spy ring run by undercover German Abwehr (military intelligence) agents based in New York. Turrou joined the U. ●●

1938 Fannie Mae created to buy mortgages ai_extracted 1 cit. no story This market came to life in 1938, when a new Federal National Mortgage Association – nicknamed Fannie Mae – was authorized to issue bonds and use the proceeds to buy mortgages from the local Savings and Loans, which were now restricted by regulation both in terms of geography (they could not lend to borrowers more than fifty miles from their offices) and in terms of the rates they could offer d... ●●

1938 Nazis seize S.M. von Rothschild bank in Vienna ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The Vienna banking house S.M. von Rothschild was placed under Nazi compulsory administration on March 30, 1938, and later sold to the German firm Merck, Finck & Co. in October 1939. ●●

1938 Gestapo arrests Louis von Rothschild after Anschluss ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Following the Austro-German Anschluss on March 11, 1938, Louis von Rothschild attempted to flee Vienna but was arrested by the Gestapo, beginning the confiscation of all family assets. ●●

1938 Japan begins military atomic bomb studies ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Japanese studies toward an atomic bomb began first within the military.1285 The director of the Aviation Technology Research Institute of the Imperial Japanese Army, Takeo Yasuda, a lieutenant general and an alert electrical engineer, conscientiously followed the international scientific literature that related to his field; in the course of his reading in 1938 and 1939 he noticed and tracked the discovery of nuclear fission.1286 In April 1940, foreseeing fission’s possible consequences, he ordered an aide who was scientifically trained, Lieutenant Colonel Tatsusaburo Suzuki, to prepare a full report. ●●

1938 German troops march into Austria in the Anschluss ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria with no resistance. The Austrian population, much of it deliriously joyful, seemed to feel that it preferred a future as a German province to being a minor player on the Central European stage. ●●

1938 Hitler escalates demands at Bad Godesberg ai_extracted 1 cit. no story At Bad Godesberg on September 22, 1938, Hitler raised the ante and made clear he sought the abject humiliation of Czechoslovakia, demanding immediate evacuation of the entire Sudeten territory starting September 26 to be completed within forty-eight hours. ●●

1938 Bohr brings news of fission to Princeton ai_extracted 1 cit. no story News of the discovery of fission in late 1938 had arrived in Princeton with Niels Bohr in early 1939, raising for the first time the real possibility, ●●

1938 Britain adopts the Scheme L air programme ai_extracted 1 cit. no story THE WAGES OF DESTRUCTION ‘business as usual’, London adopted an ambitious new air programme (Scheme L), which called for the production of 12,000 modern combat aircraft over the next two years.” Meanwhile, in France the decision was taken both to ste ●●

1938 Goering approves the New Military-Economic Production Plan ai_extracted 1 cit. no story To make up the gap, on 12 July 1938 Goering approved a new version of the Four Year Plan known as the New Military-Economic Production Plan (Wehrwirtschaftliche Neuer Erzeugungsplan).*° By the middle of 1941 Krauch aimed to reach monthly production o ●●

1938 Roosevelt proposes an international refugee committee ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On 25 March 1938, within weeks of the Anschluss, President Roosevelt had proposed the formation of an international committee to address the problem of ‘political refugees’ from Germany and newly annexed Aus- tria.'** On 6 July delegates from thirty- ●●

1938 Zuse completes the Z1 calculator ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Konrad Zuse finishes the Z1, a binary mechanical calculator built in his parents' Berlin apartment. ●●

1938 Frank Buchman founds Moral Re-Armament ai_extracted 1 cit. no story American evangelist Frank Buchman founded the Moral Re-Armament movement, which Nkrumah says later spent heavily to advocate collaboration between colonial rulers and the peoples they oppressed. ●●

1939 to 1944 World War II in Albania wikidata 0 cit. no story involvement of Albania in World War II ●●●●

30 November 1939 to 13 March 1940 Winter War wikidata 0 cit. no story 1939-1940 war between the Soviet Union and Finland ●●●●

1939 Federation of British Industries seeks pact with Germany ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In 1939 the Federation of British Industries sought an agreement with Germany to divide markets and fix prices across most economic activities, an example Quigley cites of Britain's drift into cartelized bilateralism. ●●

1939 Prevention of Violence Act of 1939 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley argues the erosion of civil liberties reached its most dangerous stage with the Prevention of Violence Act of 1939, which let a secretary of state arrest without warrant and deport without trial. ●●

1939 Britain and France recognize Franco's government ai_extracted 1 cit. no story England and France recognized the Franco government on 27 February 1939; after Madrid's surrender the Axis troops were evacuated from Spain following a triumphal march through the capital in June 1939. ●●

1939 Toll of the Spanish Civil War ai_extracted 1 cit. no story When the war ended much of Spain was wrecked and at least 450,000 Spaniards had been killed, of which 130,000 were rebels and the rest Loyalists, with an unpopular military dictatorship imposed by non-Spanish forces. ●●

1939 Germany captures Czechoslovakia's arsenal ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley argues Britain did not yield to superior force at Munich: in March 1939 when Germany overran Czechoslovakia it captured 469 superior tanks, 1,500 planes, 43,000 machine guns, and over a million rifles. ●●

1939 Germany seizes Memel and Italy seizes Albania ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Days after occupying the Czech rump, Germany seized Memel from Lithuania on 22 March 1939, and Italy seized Albania on 7 April 1939. ●●

1939 Czech gold reserves handed to Germany ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley reports that in May 1939 six million pounds of Czech gold reserves held in London were turned over to Germany, with the untrue excuse that the British government could not give orders to the Bank of England. ●●

1939 FBI-Reichsgruppe Industrie cartel agreement ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley describes British economic appeasement: a coal agreement was signed at Britain's request in late January 1939, and a general agreement between the Federation of British Industries and the Reichsgruppe Industrie was signed on 16 March 1939. ●●

1939 Hitler's 'export or die' speech ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In his speech of 30 January 1939 Hitler declared that Germany must export or die, reflecting the critical German economic situation caused by the speed of rearmament and shortage of foreign exchange. ●●

1939 British unilateral guarantee to Poland ai_extracted 1 cit. no story When news reached London of Hitler's demands on Poland, Britain suddenly issued a unilateral guarantee of Poland on 31 March 1939, later extended to Romania and Greece after Italy's attack on Albania. ●●

1939 Hitler's secret war conference on living space ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On 23 May 1939 Hitler told a secret conference of his generals that Danzig was not the real issue, but rather expanding Germany's living space in the East, and that war with Poland and a life-and-death struggle with England lay ahead. ●●

1939 Wilson's secret offer to abandon Poland ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley cites Dirksen's report that in July 1939 Sir Horace Wilson, Chamberlain's personal representative, told the German official Wohlthat that a nonaggression pact would enable Britain to rid herself of her commitments to Poland. ●●

1939 Soviet Union replaces Litvinov with Molotov ai_extracted 1 cit. no story To show its displeasure at British delays and quibbling over an alliance, the Soviet Union replaced foreign minister Litvinov, who favored the Western powers, with Molotov on 3 May 1939, a signal the West failed to heed. ●●

1939 Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Ribbentrop signed a nonaggression pact with Molotov in Moscow; its published portion barred aggressive action between the signers, while a secret protocol delimited spheres of interest in eastern Europe and gave Russia a free hand in Bessarabia. ●●

1939 German invasion of Poland ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The German invasion of Poland at 4:45 a.m. on 1 September 1939 began the Second World War; Polish resistance collapsed by 16-17 September, and Britain and France declared war two days after the invasion. ●●

1939 German invasion of Poland begins ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Germany opened World War II in Europe with a dawn air assault on Poland on September 1, 1939, wiping out the Polish air force largely on the ground. Armored spearheads and dive-bombers broke Polish resistance into isolated fragments. ●●

1939 German submarine sinks the liner Athenia ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In open disobedience to Hitler's orders, a German submarine torpedoed the passenger liner Athenia in the Atlantic on September 3, 1939, killing 112 people. It came the same day Britain and France declared war. ●●

1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement divides Poland ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On September 28, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a new agreement partitioning Poland. Lithuania shifted into the Soviet sphere and the German-Soviet boundary was drawn along the Bug River near the old Curzon Line. ●●

1939 Nazi-Soviet Trade Agreement ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On August 19, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a trade agreement under which Germany extended 200 million marks in credit for machinery in exchange for Russian raw materials. It set up an economic partnership that lasted until the German invasion. ●●

1939 Japan defeated at Nomonhan; truce signed ai_extracted 1 cit. no story A major Japanese defeat by Soviet forces at Nomonhan on the Manchurian-Mongolian frontier ended with a truce on September 16, 1939, one day before Soviet forces entered Poland. The defeat helped turn Japanese expansion southward rather than against Siberia. ●●

1939 The Venlo incident ai_extracted 1 cit. no story At Venlo on the Dutch frontier on November 8, 1939, S.S. Security Police posing as anti-Hitler negotiators shot a Dutch officer and abducted two British intelligence agents into Germany. The episode suggested Britain was seeking a way out of the war. ●●

1939 Anglo-French mutual-assistance pact with Turkey ai_extracted 1 cit. no story France and Britain signed a mutual-assistance pact with Turkey on October 19, 1939. A secret clause excused Turkey from taking up arms against Russia, which left the Soviet Union unreassured. ●●

1939 Soviet Union attacks Finland ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After Finland rejected Soviet territorial demands, the Soviet Union attacked at several points on November 28, 1939, launching the Winter War. The Finns, though outnumbered, used terrain and winter weather to devastate early Soviet assaults. ●●

1939 Soviet Union expelled from the League of Nations ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In its most efficient act, the League condemned the Soviet Union in eleven days in December 1939 and expelled it as an aggressor over Finland. Quigley notes the contrast with the fifteen months it had spent on Japanese aggression, which brought no punishment. ●●

1939 British radar chain begins continuous operation ai_extracted 1 cit. no story A chain of British radar stations, laid out in 1937, began continuous operation in April 1939 and could detect aircraft up to 100 miles away. Superior British scientific inventions, especially radar, were decisive in the Battle of Britain. ●●

1939 Neutrality Acts revised for cash-and-carry ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In November 1939 Congress revised the Neutrality Acts to let the Entente powers buy supplies, repealing the munitions embargo and putting all belligerent purchases on a cash-and-carry basis. Loans were still forbidden and Americans barred from belligerent ships. ●●

1939 U.S. cancels its 1911 commercial treaty with Japan ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In September 1939 Washington gave the required six-month notice to cancel its 1911 commercial treaty with Japan. This opened the door to a range of economic pressures, and the 'moral embargo' was extended to raw materials vital to Japan's war machine. ●●

1939 Frisch and Meitner name nuclear 'fission' ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In February 1939 Frisch and Meitner reported quantitative results of uranium fission in Nature, introducing the word 'fission' and the Atomic Age. ●●

1939 Roosevelt reads Einstein's atomic warning ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Szilard, Wigner, and Teller prompted Einstein to warn Roosevelt about a possible atomic bomb; the President read the memorandum on 11 October 1939. ●●

1939 Colonial subjects at the start of World War II, 1939 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley notes that when World War II began in 1939, roughly six hundred million people, a quarter of humanity and mostly nonwhite, were colonial subjects of European states. ●●

1939 Hodson leaves Round Table for the Ministry of Information (1939) ai_extracted 1 cit. no story When the Second World War broke out in 1939, H. V. Hodson left the Round Table editorship for the Ministry of Information. Quigley asserts that ministry was completely controlled by the Milner Group. ●●

1939 1939 White Paper reverses Palestine policy (May 1939) ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After the failed London conference, the government issued a new policy statement (Cmd. 6019) in May 1939. Quigley calls it a drastic reversal of previous statements and a turn in favor of the Arabs. ●●

1939 Clarence Streit launches Union Now ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Streit first presented his federal-union plan in lectures at Swarthmore College and in his book Union Now. Quigley links the effort to the Rhodes Scholarship network and Milner Group figures like Aydelotte. ●●

1939 National Service Act of 1939 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley says Amery, Grigg, Lothian, and The Times drove the conscription campaign that produced the National Service Act, the Group's chief post-March 1939 cause. ●●

1939 Lady Astor turns on Chamberlain in the Commons ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Lady Astor pressed Chamberlain to condemn Germany's action and was met with the retort "You caused it yourself," a sign Quigley reads as the Group's shift away from appeasement. ●●

1939 Chamberlain's guarantee to Poland ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley reads Chamberlain's unilateral guarantee to Poland as a gesture to voters, worded to cover Polish independence but not territorial integrity so that frontier revision could still proceed. ●●

1939 British and German industry sign the Dusseldorf cartel agreement ai_extracted 1 cit. no story A master agreement between British and German industry, negotiated at Dusseldorf, was signed in London. Quigley frames it as part of the Chamberlain group's economic concessions to Germany. ●●

1939 German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Only after the Nazi-Soviet pact did Halifax turn Britain's unilateral guarantee to Poland into a formal mutual-assistance pact, meant to warn Hitler that public opinion would force Britain into war. ●●

1939 Lothian named Ambassador to the United States ai_extracted 1 cit. no story As war began, Lord Lothian was sent to Washington. Quigley says the Group, having built its foreign policy on closer union with the US, stationed more than a dozen members there to draw America into the war. ●●

1939 U.S. defense budget in 1939 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto states that in 1939, on the eve of war, the U.S. defense budget was $11 billion in year-2000 dollars, and that by his writing it was twenty-four times higher in peacetime. He uses the comparison to argue the leadership fears its own people. ●●

1939 CFR's 1939 War and Peace Studies ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The book cites the 1939 War and Peace Studies as evidence of the Council on Foreign Relations' power within the State Department. It presents the CFR as an evolution of the Network's earlier group, The Inquiry. ●●

1939 Franco dictatorship takes over Spain ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The book covers the arc from the Spanish-American War of 1898 to the Franco dictatorship that took over Spain in 1939. It presents Franco's victory as the result of non-Spanish forces and a deceptive nonintervention policy. ●●

1939 The 1939 Battle of Poland ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The book states that in the 1939 Battle of Poland millions of Polish civilians were executed or murdered. It presents Hitler's attack on Poland as finally forcing the Network's hand toward World War II. ●●

1939 Operation Himmler and the 1939 attack on Poland ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The book describes Operation Himmler, in which Nazis staged fake Polish attacks using concentration camp prisoners in German uniforms. It says these were used to justify attacking Poland in 1939. ●●

1939 Soviets execute thousands of Polish officers at Katyn ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The preponderance of available evidence in this still-controversial episode points to the conclusion that Soviet security troops executed approximately 8,000 nationalist Polish army officers taken prisoner during 1939, then stacked the bodies like cordwood in mass graves at an isolated outpost. ●●

1939 Soviet Union relocates half a million khutor farmers ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Beginning in 1939, the Soviet state forcibly relocated khutor dwellers who had been living on individual farmsteads outside collective villages. This resettlement affected more than half a million peasants and deprived them of their dispersed holdings. ●●

1939 Discovery of delayed neutrons in fission ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The “most significant fact assuring us that the chain reaction could be controlled,” says Compton, was one of the Richard Roberts team’s earliest discoveries at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism following Bohr’s announcement of the discovery of fission in 1939—in Compton’s words, that “a certain small fraction of the neutrons associated with the fission process are not emitted at once but come off a few seconds after fission occurs.”1680 With a pile operating at k only marginally above 1.0, such delayed neutrons would slow the response sufficiently to allow time for adjustment.1681 For once Compton made a quick decision: with control seemingly assured, he allowed Fermi to build CP-1 in the west stands. ●●

1939 League of Nations expels the Soviet Union ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The last act of the League of Nations, which no longer contained Germany, Japan, or Italy, was to expel the Soviet Union after it attacked Finland in ●●

1939 Bohr announces the discovery of fission ai_extracted 1 cit. no story and had attended the conference there on January 25 at which Niels Bohr announced the discovery of fission. ●●

1939 Turing joins the Bletchley Park codebreakers ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In September of 1939, Turing joined the Foreign Office’s Government Code and Cypher School, sequestered at a Buckinghamshire estate known as Bletchley ●●

1939 Frick decree compels German twins to register ai_extracted 1 cit. no story llnesses.” He listed rheumatism, stomach ulcers, cancer, heart defects, anemia and leukemia as the conditions he was focusing on. Verschuer assured, “A good deal of material has been collected.”60 In 1939, Interior Minister Frick issued a public decree compelling all twins to register with their loc ●●

1939 Allied empires outproduce Axis in GDP by 60% ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In 1939, as the war started, the combined GDP of the British and French empires exceeded that of Germany and Italy by 60 per cent. ●●

1939 Krauch launches the Schnellplan emergency programme ai_extracted 1 cit. no story To reach World War I levels by the end of 1939, Krauch launched the Schnellplan, a short-range emergency programme with absolutely top priority amongst all the Wehrmacht’s many programmes. ●●

1939 Reich adopts the New Finance Plan ai_extracted 1 cit. no story To ease its cash flow problems the Reich adopted a new expedient in the form of the New Finance Plan (Neuer Finanzplan) of 20 March 1939. ●●

1939 Ribbentrop signs the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In the early hours of 24 August 1939, Hitler’s Foreign Minister Ribbentrop signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, which included secret provisions for the division of Eastern Europe into separate spheres of influence. ●●

1939 Roosevelt signs the Cash and Carry Act ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Within weeks of the outbreak of war, the isolationists lost the argument in Congress.** On 3 November 1939 President Roosevelt signed into law the ‘cash and carry’ bill that lifted the strict American neutrality provisions banning the sale of weapons ●●

1939 Hitler approves munitions programme favoring heavy artillery ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Based on figures that Hitler had cribbed from the standard history of the Great War, it gave priority above all to howitzers and heavy mortars — the decisive weapons of trench war- fare.” On 12 December 1939 Hitler personally approved the final versi ●●

1939 Ju 88 bomber mass-production begins ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The long-awaited mass-production of the Ju 88 finally began in the autumn of 1939. ●●

1939 Stibitz completes the Complex Number Calculator ai_extracted 1 cit. no story George Stibitz's relay-based Complex Number Calculator at Bell Labs is completed, able to handle complex-number arithmetic. ●●

22 June 1940 Armistice of 22 June 1940 wikidata 1 cit. no story armistice between France and Nazi Germany in World War II ●●●

1940 Nong'an plague wikidata 0 cit. no story ●●●

1940 Quigley: banker-engendered deflation caused World War II ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Quigley argues the banker-engendered deflationary crisis of 1927-1940 can hardly be overestimated in importance. He claims it crippled democracies and gave an impetus to aggression, becoming a chief cause of World War II. ●●

1940 Amery's call forces Chamberlain from office ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The split between the anti-Bolshevik and three-bloc groups burst into the open when Leopold Amery cried to Chamberlain across the floor of the Commons on 10 May 1940, 'In the name of God, go!', leading to Chamberlain's fall. ●●

1940 British interdict German coal to Italy ai_extracted 1 cit. no story As part of economic warfare, Britain cut off seaborne German coal exports from the Baltic to Italy on March 5, 1940, three months before Italy entered the war. The move disrupted the Italian economy and strained German rail transport. ●●

1940 Soviet-Finnish Peace Treaty ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The Winter War ended with the Soviet-Finnish Peace Treaty of March 12, 1940, made at the insistence of Finnish commander Baron Mannerheim. Its terms were harsher than the original Soviet demands, taking the whole Karelian Isthmus and the Hango base. ●●

1940 France orders Weygand to bomb Soviet oil fields ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On April 11, 1940, French premier Reynaud ordered General Weygand to raid the Soviet Caucasus oil wells from Syria as soon as possible. The plan reflected an Anglo-French inclination to fight Russia rather than Germany, but Weygand could not act before France fell. ●●

1940 Hitler orders occupation of Denmark and Norway ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Hitler issued formal orders on March 1, 1940 to occupy both Denmark and Norway, planning the operation with Norwegian Nazi Vidkun Quisling. The aim was to secure the Swedish iron-ore route through Narvik before Britain could cut it. ●●

1940 Denmark surrenders to Germany ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Denmark yielded to a German ultimatum on April 8, 1940 as German divisions overran the country and seaborne forces landed in Copenhagen. The same morning German agents and troops began seizing Norwegian airfields, ports, and radio stations. ●●

1940 Churchill replaces Chamberlain as prime minister ai_extracted 1 cit. no story As German armies struck west on May 10, 1940, Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill formed a national government. His arrival was received with relief by a public that wanted a fighter to rally resistance. ●●

1940 Dunkirk evacuation ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Between May 28 and June 4, 1940, the British Expeditionary Force evacuated 337,131 men from the beaches at Dunkerque under constant air attack, using 887 vessels of all kinds. Hitler had ordered no intensive ground assault on the perimeter. ●●

1940 King Leopold surrenders the Belgian army ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On May 27, 1940, King Leopold made an unconditional surrender of Belgian forces to the Germans, over his government's objections and without ensuring the Allied command was informed. The British at once began evacuating through Dunkerque. ●●

1940 Franco-German armistice at Compiegne ai_extracted 1 cit. no story France's armistice with Germany was negotiated in the same railway carriage at Compiegne where Germany had surrendered in 1918 and took effect on June 25, 1940. Hitler, expecting Britain to make peace, gave France surprisingly lenient terms. ●●

1940 Petain replaces Reynaud, seeks armistice ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Unable to win Cabinet agreement to keep fighting from overseas, Reynaud resigned on June 16, 1940 and was replaced by Marshal Petain. Surrounded by defeatists, Petain immediately asked Germany for an armistice. ●●

1940 Turning point of the Battle of Britain ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The turning point of the Battle of Britain came on September 15, 1940, when 56 German invading planes were shot down. Germany's failure to win air superiority forced the postponement and then cancellation of the invasion of Britain. ●●

1940 Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The three Axis powers signed a military alliance on September 27, 1940, pledging mutual aid if one was attacked by a power not already in the war. The pact was aimed chiefly at deterring the United States from intervening. ●●

1940 Soviet Union demands Bessarabia from Romania ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On June 26, 1940, the Soviet Union gave Romania twenty-four hours to cede Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Germany, which had a stake in Romanian oil, objected only to the demand for Bukovina. ●●

1940 Iron Guard government under Antonescu takes power ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On September 5, 1940, an Iron Guard government under Ion Antonescu took office in Bucharest after the territorial losses of that summer destroyed Romanian moderates. Its first act was to depose King Carol and replace him with his son Michael. ●●

1940 British air attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On November 11, 1940, twenty-one British planes made a torpedo attack on the Italian fleet in Taranto harbor, sinking three of six battleships for the loss of two planes and one pilot. It was an early demonstration of carrier air power against battleships. ●●

1940 Italy attacks Greece from Albania ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Mussolini launched an attack on Greece from Albania on October 28, 1940, against the unanimous advice of his generals. It was stopped within three weeks and a Greek counterattack drove deep into Albania. ●●

1940 Wavell attacks Graziani in Egypt ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On December 7, 1940, General Archibald Wavell attacked Graziani's much larger Italian force in Egypt with 31,000 men and 225 tanks. In two months he captured 130,000 Italians and advanced 600 miles for the loss of only 500 killed. ●●