However, his next films, The Great Dictator ( 1940 ), a parody on Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini that ended in a dramatic speech criticising the blind following patriotic nationalism, and Monsieur Verdoux ( 1947 ), which criticised war and capitalism, as well as his first European film A King in New York ( 1957 ), which ridiculed the U. S. House Un-American Activities Committee, were more clearly political and caused controversy.

Mussolini was aware that Italy did not have the military capacity to carry out a long war with France or the United Kingdom and waited until France was on the verge of imminent collapse and surrender from German invasion before declaring war on France and the United Kingdom on 10 June 1940, on the assumption that the war would be short-lived following France's collapse.

By the late 1930s and the 1940s, Italian Fascism completely denounced capitalism as an obsolete and oppressive system, Mussolini in 1940 at the entry of Italy into World War II, said:

In the wake of Mussolini ’ s declaration of war against France and England on June 10, 1940, he discovered Kafka ’ s The Metamorphosis, Gogol, John Steinbeck and William Faulkner along with French films by Marcel Carné, René Clair, and Julien Duvivier.

Mussolini, in October 1940, used his Albanian base to launch an attack on Greece, which led to the defeat of the Italian forces and the Greek occupation of Southern Albania in what was seen by the Greeks as the liberation of Northern Epirus.

On 10 March 1940, Ribbentrop visited Rome where he met Mussolini, who promised him that Italy would soon enter the war.

After the Italo-German summit at the Brenner Pass on 18 March 1940, which was attended by Hitler and Mussolini, Count Ciano wrote in his diary: " Everyone in Rome dislikes Ribbentrop ".

There he repeated in a different form all that he had already said, for all the world as if he had a gramophone fixed in his brain ... When I took leave, he subjected me to an interminable handshake, meanwhile fixing his cold blue eyes on mine, and repeating almost word for word what he said to me on arrival ... I felt I should never be able to establish any human contact with this man " In early June 1940, when Mussolini informed Hitler that he at long last would enter the war on 10 June 1940, Hitler was most dismissive, in private calling Mussolini a cowardly opportunist who broke the terms of the Pact of Steel in September 1939 when the going looked rough, and was only entering the war in June 1940 after it was clear that France was beaten and it appeared that Britain would soon make peace.

* 1940 – World War II: Axis Powers – Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at the Brenner Pass in the Alps and agree to form an alliance against France and the United Kingdom.

* 1940 – Meeting between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini at the Brenner Pass.

In 1940, Antonioni moved to Rome, where he worked for Cinema, the official Fascist film magazine edited by Vittorio Mussolini.

Duce Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany in June 1940.

Romania's Conducător Ion Antonescu meeting with Benito Mussolini in November 1940.

Hitler agreed with Raeder's idea of sending German forces to North Africa at their meeting of 26 September 1940, but noted that he would need Italian permission to do so, and as it was not until Mussolini requested German help in early 1941 that the necessary Italian permission was obtained.

In June 1940, an agreement had assigned the Mediterranean as Italy's sphere of influence, and until Mussolini requested German help in January 1941, it was not possible to send German troops to North Africa.

During World War II, the German leader Adolf Hitler and the Italian leader Benito Mussolini met there to celebrate their Pact of Steel on 18 March 1940.

The third poem, " The Brenner " ( 24 lines ), had been written on 18 March 1940 to mark the meeting of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler on the Brenner Pass.

Benito Mussolini ordered the paving completed to Michelangelo's design — in 1940.

The Harmony Boys of 2 May 1940 depicts Hitler, Stalin, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and Spanish dictator Francisco Franco " harmonizing " and getting along quite well.

The 1940 discovery of a lost work by Vincent of Lérins, which bears a striking similarity to much of the language of the Athanasian Creed, have led many to conclude that the creed originated either with Vincent or with his students.

It was only after the hastily improvised plan for the invasion of Western Europe in 1940 and its successful conclusion, which led the German General Staff to believe that decisive battles were not obsolete.

He was regarded as having a sound tactical knowledge of the game and being an inspirational leader, as he led the side into the finals in 1940 for the first time since 1926, when the side finished 3rd.

In late 1939 he brought the Duke of Windsor back from self-impodsed exile in France and in early May 1940, Mountbatten led a British convoy in through the fog to evacuate the Allied forces participating in the Namsos Campaign during the Norwegian Campaign.

In the following decades, fear of communism and the Great Depression of 1929 – 1933 led to the rise of extreme nationalist governmentssometimes loosely grouped under the category of fascismin Italy ( 1922 ), Germany ( 1933 ), Spain ( after a civil war ending in 1939 ) and other countries such as Hungary ( 1944 ), Romania ( 1940 ) and Slovakia ( 1939 ).

Following the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Alexander brought the 1st Infantry Division to France, where, in late May 1940, he successfully led the division's withdrawal to Dunkirk.

On the other hand, MIT's extensive collaboration with the federal government on research projects has led to several MIT leaders serving as Presidential scientific advisers since 1940.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah espoused the Two Nation Theory and led the League to adopt the Lahore Resolution of 1940, demanding the formation of independent states in the East and the West of British India.

The last Coalition in the UK before 2010 was led by Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill during most of the Second World War from May 1940 to May 1945.

Menzies led the Coalition into the 1940 election and lost the large majority he'd inherited from Lyons.

The Supermarine main works was in Woolston, Southampton which led to the city being heavily bombed in 1940.

His experiments with television ( known as telectroescopía at first ) began in 1931 and led to a patent for the " trichromatic field sequential system " color television in 1940 ,.

In July 1940, increased Treasury grants led to an improvement in the supply of milks and meals in schools, with the number of meals taken doubled within a year and increased school milk by 50 %.

British discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the replacement of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain with Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940.

This led to a visiting professorship in 1935, when she became the first female engineering professor at Purdue ; she was granted full professorship in 1940, dividing her time between the departments of industrial engineering, industrial psychology, home economics, and the dean's office where she consulted on careers for women.

This led to the activation of the 1st and 2nd Armored Divisions in 1940.

Fonda's successes led Ford to recruit him to play " Tom Joad " in the film version of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath ( 1940 ).

The period from April to June 1940 was one of the most stressful periods of the war for Raeder with operations involving the entire fleet in Norway, the French campaign and Raeder's obsessive fear that the Army and Air Force might win the war without the Navy, and which led to act in an manner that has been described as " irrational ".

* 1940 – Torkild Rieber, CEO, is led to resign when his connections with German Nazism, and his supply of oil to the Fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War are made public

These efforts continued under Roland De Mecquenem until 1914, at the beginning of World War I. French work at Susa resumed after the war, led by De Mecquenem, continuing until World War II in 1940.

Although this initially led to hard feelings, it didn't prevent other McCarey-Grant collaborations — My Favorite Wife ( 1940 ), Once Upon a Honeymoon ( 1942 ), and An Affair to Remember ( 1957 )— from being made later.

The Opinion of the Supreme Court was not unanimous and it led to a conflict with an earlier decision in Federal Communications Commission v. Sanders Brothers Radio Station, 309 U. S. 470, on March 25, 1940.

He joined the Indochinese Communist Party in 1940 and then continued to take part in activities led by Ho Chi Minh.