They could not imagine that the Germans, whom they had defeated only twenty years previously, could defeat them in a mere six weeks, as happened when France fell in June 1940.

Famous victory marches around or under the Arc have included the Germans in 1871, the French in 1919, the Germans in 1940, and the French and Allies in 1944 and 1945.

Montgomery's training paid off when the Germans began their invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May 1940 and the 3rd Division advanced to the River Dijle and then withdrew to Dunkirk with great professionalism, entering the Dunkirk perimeter in a famous night-time march which placed his forces on the left flank which had been left exposed by the Belgian surrender.

Paris fell to the Germans on 14 June 1940, and the French leaders surrendered on 24 June 1940 after the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk.

The Germans attempted to land a weather team on the island on 16 November 1940.

On 10 May 1940, Ribbentrop summoned the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg ambassadors to present them with notes justifying the German invasion of their countries, several hours after the Germans had invaded those nations.

When the Germans threatened to overrun Paris in 1940, where she was then living, he arranged her escape to England.

In terms of fighter aircraft production, the British exceeded their production plans by 43 percent, while the Germans remained 40 percent behind target by the summer 1940.

It was quickly taken by the Germans during the Battle of Maastricht in May 1940, but on 14 September 1944 it was also the first Dutch city to be liberated by allied forces.

The original line construction did not cover the area chosen by the Germans for their first challenge, which was through the Ardennes in 1940, a plan known as Fall Gelb.

First the Germans tried to achieve air supremacy but were defeated by the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain in late summer 1940.

In Western Europe, British troops deployed to the Continent, but in a phase nicknamed the Phoney War by the British and " Sitzkrieg " ( sitting war ) by the Germans, neither side launched major operations against the other until April 1940.

Between September and November 1940, the ethnic Germans of Bessarabia were offered resettlement to Germany, following a German-Soviet agreement.

In the months leading up to the opening of the 1940 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the GOP was deeply divided between the party's isolationists, who wanted to stay out of the war at all costs, and the party's interventionists, who felt that the United Kingdom and her allies needed to be given all aid short of war to prevent the Germans from conquering all of Europe.

From 1940 on Hitler tried to get Germans to resettle from the areas where they constituted a minority ( the Baltics, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe ) to the Warthegau – the region around Poznań, German Posen.

On 17 May 1940 the capital city Brussels fell to the Germans.

* His contact with the Germans and his meeting with Hitler in Berchtesgaden ( 19 November 1940 ).

The city was heavily damaged ( approximately 45 % was destroyed ) during World War II: In June 1940 first, when the area between the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Seine river burned for 48 hours, because the Germans did not allow the firemen to come and extinguish the fire.

Conquered by the Germans in World War II ( 1940 ), it was liberated in 24 – 27 October 1944 by the British 53rd ( Welsh ) Division. This town was mentioned on ' Who do Think You Are?

After France fell to the Germans in 1940, the Vichy government administered Madagascar until 1942, when British Empire troops occupied the strategic island in the Battle of Madagascar in order to preclude its seizure by the Japanese.

The Dutch Army destroyed the first bridge when the Germans invaded Holland in 1940.

Over the course of the morning and early afternoon of April 9, 1940, the Germans flew in sufficient reinforcements to move into the capital in the afternoon, but by that time the Norwegian government had fled.

On 10 May 1940 Nazi Germany invaded the country and, after destroying Rotterdam, occupied it.

During World War II, continental Norway was invaded and occupied by Germany in spring 1940.

Schwitters started a second Merzbau while in exile in Lysaker nearby Oslo, Norway in 1937 but abandoned it in 1940 when the Nazis invaded ; this Merzbau was subsequently destroyed in a fire in 1951.

Latvia's independent status was interrupted at the outset of World War II when in 1940 the country was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941, then retaken by the Soviets in 1944 after Germany surrendered.

In 1940, The Netherlands was invaded by Germany with Nijmegen being the first Dutch city to fall into German hands.

After Germany invaded the Low Countries during 1940, Pius XII sent expressions of sympathy to the Queen of the Netherlands, the King of Belgium, and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.

The German Army and the German Kriegsmarine invaded Norway in 1940 and the German Army occupied all of Norway until May 1945.

In the second half of 1940, Italian troops invaded British Somaliland and ejected the British.

Menzies banned the CPA after the fall of France in 1940, but by 1941 Stalin was forced to join the allied cause when Hitler reneged on the Pact and invaded the USSR.

In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to secure shipments of iron ore from Sweden, which the Allies were about to disrupt.

In May 1940 Britain invaded Iceland to preempt a possible German invasion of the island.

Germany invaded France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg on 10 May 1940.

On June 16, 1940, the Soviet Union invaded Estonia.

When Norway was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940, the government fled to the United Kingdom and reconstituted in exile in Bracknell, outside of London.

On 10 May 1940 the German army invaded Belgium.

More controversial had been Leopold's decision to surrender to Nazi Germany during World War II, when Belgium was invaded in 1940 ; many Belgians questioned his loyalties, but a commission of inquiry exonerated him of treason after World War II.

Norway was invaded by the naval and air forces of Nazi Germany during the early hours of 9 April 1940.

In 1940, during the second World War, coinciding with their ally Germany's invasion of France, the Japanese invaded French Indochina.

Belgium was invaded, defeated, and occupied in an eighteen-day campaign after 10 May 1940.

The Olympics were formally cancelled on 2 May 1940, a week before the Netherlands was invaded.

When the Germans invaded the Netherlands on the 10th of May 1940 German paratroopers landed in Dordrecht.

In 1940, during World War II, Japan invaded Indochina, keeping the Vichy French colonial administration in place as a Japanese puppet.