Félix Éboué in a contemporary World War II cartoonDuring World War II, Chad was the first French colony to rejoin the Allies ( August 26, 1940 ), after the defeat of France by Germany.

In August 1940, the territory responded, with the rest of the AEF, to the call from General Charles de Gaulle to fight for Free France.

Ernest Lawrence Thayer ( August 14, 1863 – August 21, 1940 ) was an American writer and poet who wrote " Casey at the Bat ".

The New York Times ' obituary of Thayer on August 22, 1940, p. 19 quotes comedian DeWolf Hopper, who helped make the poem famous:

He was mentioned in despatches on 9 August 1940 and 21 March 1941 and awarded the Distinguished Service Order in January 1941.

* Spouses: Ruth Doreen Crick, née Dodd ( b. 1913, m. 18 February 1940 – 8 May 1947 ), now Mrs. James Stewart Potter ; Odile Crick, née Speed ( b. 11 August 1920, m. 14 August 1949 – 28 July 2004, d. 5 July 2007 )

Provocations against Greece included the sinking of the light cruiser Elli on 15 August 1940.

Dean Ormsby Torrence ( born Los Angeles, California March 10, 1940 ), is the son of Natalie Ormsby Torrence ( born April 10, 1911 in California ; died August 10, 2008 in Los Angeles, California ) and Maurice Dean Torrence ( born December 5, 1907 in South Dakota ; died November 16, 1997 in Los Angeles, California ), a graduate of Stanford University, who was a sales manager at the Wilshire Oil Company.

In August 1940, Ribbentrop oversaw the Second Vienna Award, which saw about 40 % of Transylvania region of Romania returned to Hungary.

Nevertheless this civilian transport was adapted to the long-range reconnaissance and anti-shipping roles and, between August 1940 and February 1941, Fw 200s sank 85 vessels for a claimed total of 363, 000 Grt.

Leon Trotsky (, ; – 21 August 1940 ), born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army.

* Kamerun was split on 20 July 1922 into British Cameroons ( under a Resident ) and French Cameroun ( under a Commissioner until 27 August 1940, then under a Governor ), on 13 December 1946 transformed into United Nations Trust Territories, again a British ( successively under senior district officers officiating as Resident, a Special Resident and Commissioners ) and a French Trust ( under a Haut Commissaire )

By August 1940, the War Office produced training instructions for the creation and use of Molotov cocktails.

It also extended trade regulation of the 1940 German – Soviet Commercial Agreement until August 1, 1942, increased deliveries above the levels of year one of that agreement, settled trading rights in the Baltics and Bessarabia, calculated the compensation for German property interests in the Baltic States now occupied by the Soviets and other issues.

Germany and the Soviet Union entered an intricate trade pact on February 11, 1940, that was over four times larger than the one the two countries had signed in August 1939.

In a letter to his friend Peter Baynes, dated 12 August 1940, Jung wrote a passage: "...

Beginning in August 1940, the German Luftwaffe began a series of concentrated aerial attacks ( designated Unternehmen Adlerangriff or Operation Eagle Attack ) on targets throughout the United Kingdom in an attempt to destroy the RAF ( Royal Air Force ) and establish air superiority over Great Britain.

The LWS was demonstrated to General Halder on 2 August 1940 by the Reinhardt Trials Staff on the island of Sylt and, though he was critical of its high silhouette on land, he recognised the overall usefulness of the design.

An August 1940 plebiscite endorsed Estigarribia's constitution, which remained in force until 1967.

In three days troops loyal to De Gaulle took control of Chad ( 26 August 1940 ), Cameroon ( 27 August ) and of Middle Congo ( the 28th of August ).

* 1920 – Polish – Soviet War: the Battle of Warsaw begins and will last till August 25.

* 1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest while on holiday in the town of Foros, Ukraine.

* 1924 – The Georgian opposition stages the August Uprising against the Soviet Union.

The first Soviet atomic device was tested on August 29, 1949.

The treaty was signed in Moscow on May 26, 1972 by the President of the United States, Richard Nixon and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev ; and ratified by the US Senate on August 3, 1972.

On 23 August 1944, Romania quit the Axis Powers and declared war on Germany, and allowed Soviet forces to cross its territory to reach Bulgaria.

This doctrine was announced to retroactively justify the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 that ended the Prague Spring, along with earlier Soviet military interventions, such as the invasion of Hungary in 1956.

A hydrogen bomb — which produced nuclear fusion instead of nuclear fission — was first tested by the United States in November 1952 and the Soviet Union in August 1953.

In August 1918, in the Soviet Republic had accounted for some 75 Uyezd-level Extraordinary Commissions.

In August 1962, after some unsuccessful operations by the US to overthrow the Cuban regime ( Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose ), the Cuban and Soviet governments secretly began to build bases in Cuba for a number of medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles ( MRBMs and IRBMs ) with the ability to strike most of the continental United States.

On August 31, Senator Kenneth Keating ( R-New York ), who probably received his information from Cuban exiles in Florida, warned on the Senate floor that the Soviet Union may be constructing a missile base in Cuba.

Ivashko remained for five days as acting General Secretary until August 29 when the party's activity was suspended by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.

In August 1960, due to rejection of requests to the UN for aid to suppress the South Kasai and Katanga revolts, Lumumba's government decided to request Soviet help.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich ( 25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975 ) was a Soviet Russian composer and pianist and a prominent figure of 20th century music.

Following the restoration of independence from the Soviet Union, Russia was one of the first nations to recognize Estonia's independence ( the first country to do so was Iceland on 22 August 1991 ).

After the detonation of the first Soviet fission bomb in August 1949, he, along with Isidor Rabi, wrote a strongly worded report for the committee which opposed the development of a hydrogen bomb on moral and technical grounds.

Francis Gary Powers ( August 17, 1929 – August 1, 1977 ) was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident.

On August 17, 1960, Powers was convicted of espionage against the Soviet Union and was sentenced to a total of 10 years, three years in imprisonment followed by seven years of hard labor.

That aggressive strategy worked as Germany pulled out of the League of Nations ( 1933 ), rejected the Versailles Treaty and began to re-arm ( 1935 ), won back the Saar ( 1935 ), remilitarized the Rhineland ( 1936 ), formed an alliance (" axis ") with Mussolini's Italy ( 1936 ), sent massive military aid to Franco in the Spanish Civil War ( 1936 – 39 ), seized Austria ( 1938 ), took over Czechoslovakia after the British and French appeasement of the Munich Agreement of 1938, formed a peace pact with Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union in August 1939, and finally invaded Poland in September 1939.

Polish – Soviet War, Battle of Warsaw ( 1920 ) | defenses near Warsaw, August 1920

On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov – Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, which secretly provided for the dismemberment of Poland into Nazi and Soviet-controlled zones.