Timeline June 1940

Events in June 1940 25

• 1868 – 1940 Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940) Died 21 June 1940, aged 71 French painter of the Nabis group, known for intimate domestic interiors. He died in La Baule while fleeing the German advance.
• 1879 – 1940 Paul Klee (1879-1940) Died 29 June 1940, aged 60 Swiss-born German painter and Bauhaus teacher whose work drew on Expressionism, Cubism and Surrealism. The Nazis labelled his art degenerate. He died in Switzerland after years of illness.
• 1885 – 1940 DuBose Heyward (1885-1940) Died 16 June 1940, aged 54 American author of the novel "Porgy", which became the basis of the Gershwin opera "Porgy and Bess". He also wrote the opera's libretto.
• 1887 – 1940 Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) Died 10 June 1940, aged 52 Jamaican political activist who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and led the Pan-Africanist "Back to Africa" movement. He died in London after a series of strokes.
• 1896 – 1940 Italo Balbo (1896-1940) Died 28 June 1940, aged 44 Italian Fascist leader, aviator famous for mass transatlantic flights, and Governor of Libya. Italian anti-aircraft gunners shot down his plane by mistake over Tobruk.
• 1940 Battles of Narvik Allied and German forces fight over the iron-ore port German forces seized the northern Norwegian port of Narvik on 9 April. British, French, Polish and Norwegian troops retook the town in late May but withdrew in early June as the situation in France collapsed. The naval battles in the fjord cost Germany ten destroyers.
• 1940 Fleeing the Nazi Invasion When Nazi Germany invaded Norway on 9 April 1940, three-year-old Harald, his mother and his two sisters were rushed northward, crossing into Sweden under fire. They eventually made their way to the United States, settling in Washington, DC, while his father and grandfather King Haakon VII remained in London with the government-in-exile.
• 1940 German invasion of Denmark and Norway Operation Weserübung secures Scandinavia for Germany On 9 April Germany invaded Denmark, which surrendered within hours, and Norway, which fought on with Allied support. The campaign ended when the last Norwegian forces capitulated on 10 June. King Haakon VII and the Norwegian government went into exile in London.
• 1940 Battle of France Germany overruns France and the Low Countries in six weeks On 10 May Germany attacked the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, and armoured forces broke through the Ardennes at Sedan. Allied armies were split and pushed back to the Channel coast. France signed an armistice on 22 June, which came into effect on 25 June.
• 1940 Dunkirk evacuation Operation Dynamo rescues 338,000 Allied troops Between 26 May and 4 June more than 338,000 British and French soldiers were evacuated from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk. Naval ships were joined by hundreds of civilian craft, the "little ships". The operation saved the core of the British Army, though almost all of its heavy equipment was left behind.
• 1940 Mobilized and Captured in WWII Prisoner of war in Nazi Germany Sartre was mobilized into the French army at the outbreak of the Second World War and served as a meteorologist before being captured by German forces in June 1940. He spent roughly nine months as a prisoner of war in a camp near Trier, Germany, an experience that deepened his engagement with themes of freedom under constraint. It was during this captivity that he first read Heidegger's Being and Time closely and began sketching his own major philosophical work.
• 1940 Richard Nixon marries Pat Ryan They met at a community play rehearsal in Whittier She had turned him down for two years before agreeing.
• 1940 We Shall Fight on the Beaches speech Churchill vows Britain will never surrender On 4 June Churchill reported the Dunkirk evacuation to the House of Commons and warned that "wars are not won by evacuations". He declared that Britain would fight on the beaches, the landing grounds and in the streets. It is one of the best-known speeches in the English language.
• 1940 Italy enters the Second World War Mussolini declares war on France and Britain On 10 June Benito Mussolini declared war on France and the United Kingdom as France was collapsing. Italian forces attacked across the Alps but made little progress before the armistice. The move widened the war into the Mediterranean and North Africa.
• 1940 Italy enters the war Mussolini declares war on Britain and France Italy declared war on Britain and France on June 10, 1940, as German forces approached Paris. Mussolini wanted to share in the expected victory and gain territorial concessions.
• 1940 Fall of Paris German troops enter the French capital The French government declared Paris an open city and moved south. German troops entered Paris unopposed on 14 June. Pictures of German soldiers marching past the Arc de Triomphe became symbols of the French defeat.
• 1940 First prisoners arrive at Auschwitz Polish political prisoners open the camp On 14 June the Germans sent 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów to the new concentration camp at Auschwitz. The camp grew into the largest Nazi killing centre. More than a million people, most of them Jews, were murdered there by 1945.
• 1940 Soviet occupation of the Baltic states Red Army occupies Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia The Soviet Union issued ultimatums and occupied Lithuania on 15 June, then Latvia and Estonia on 17 June. Rigged elections followed, and all three states were annexed as Soviet republics in early August. They regained independence only in 1991.
• 1940 Sinking of RMS Lancastria Britain's worst maritime disaster On 17 June German aircraft sank the troopship Lancastria off Saint-Nazaire while it was evacuating British troops and civilians from France. At least 3,000 people died, and some estimates are far higher. Churchill suppressed news of the disaster at the time.
• 1940 Appeal of 18 June De Gaulle calls on the French to keep fighting On 18 June General Charles de Gaulle broadcast from the BBC in London and urged the French to reject the armistice and continue the war. Few heard the broadcast at the time. It came to be seen as the founding act of the Free French and the Resistance.
• 1940 Armistice of Compiègne France signs an armistice with Germany On 22 June France signed an armistice with Germany in the railway carriage at Compiègne where Germany had signed the 1918 armistice. Germany occupied northern and western France, and a nominally sovereign French state kept the south. A separate armistice with Italy followed on 24 June.
• 1940 France surrenders Armistice signed in Compiègne forest France signed an armistice with Germany on June 22, 1940, in the same railway carriage where Germany had surrendered in 1918. Northern France was occupied; a collaborationist government ruled the south from Vichy.
• 1940 Hitler tours Paris Hitler makes his only visit to the French capital In the early morning of 23 June Adolf Hitler toured Paris with Albert Speer and Arno Breker. He visited the Opéra, the Eiffel Tower and Napoleon's tomb. The photographs of the brief visit became some of the best-known images of the war.
• 1940 Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina Romania cedes territory to the Soviet Union under ultimatum After a Soviet ultimatum on 26 June, Romania withdrew from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. The Red Army occupied the territories between 28 June and 4 July. Most of Bessarabia became the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
• 1940 German occupation of the Channel Islands The only British soil occupied by Germany German forces landed on Guernsey on 30 June and on Jersey on 1 July, after Britain had demilitarised the islands. The occupation lasted until May 1945. Islanders faced deportations, forced labour and severe food shortages.