Defining Events of the 1940s Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1944

The Normandy landings took place on June 6th 1944, when Allied troops landed on the Normandy coast In Operation Overlord, also called D-Day. It was the largest seaborne invasion ever known and occurred over five sectors code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.

The invasion was preceded by Operation Bodyguard, which was a successful deception strategy aimed at convincing the Wehrmacht that the attack would come at a later date and in a different place. The story is told in the film 'The Longest Day', based on Cornelius Ryan's 1959 non-fiction book of the same name.

Answer: 1947

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to adopt a plan to partition the then British Mandate into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, and thus after 2000 years a Jewish State was born anew in its ancient homeland. The resolution was emphatically rejected by the local Arab population and the Arab States, but the majority of 33:13 with 10 countries abstaining was sufficient for it to be passed.

It remains a contentious issue and the region continues to be dangerous and unstable 75 years later.

Answer: 1940

German troops attacked Denmark and Norway in April 1940. They then rolled uninvited into Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France in the space of six weeks starting in May 1940. Paris fell in May, and in June an armistice was signed between France and Germany, whereby Germany occupied northern France and all of France's Atlantic coastline down to the border with Spain. Vichy France was the unoccupied French state headed by Marshal Pétain during World War II.

Although officially neutral, it was in fact in collaboration with Nazi Germany.

Answer: 1949

The USSR detonated its first atomic bomb, called RDS-1 or 'First Lightning', over Siberia on August 29, 1949. It was code-named 'Joe-1' by the US. Its development was greatly aided by spies inside the Manhattan Project, most notably Klaus Fuchs and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Answer: 1945

The US detonated atomic bombs over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. The war in Europe was already over, but the Pacific War still rumbled on. The bombs, called Little Boy and Fat Man, were dropped after Japan refused to surrender despite an ultimatum stating that the alternative would be 'prompt and utter destruction'.

The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and had the desired effect in that Japan surrendered to the Allies on August 15.

Answer: 1941

Enigma was a type of enciphering machine used by the German armed forces to send messages securely. Although Polish mathematicians had worked out how to read Enigma messages in the early 1930s and had shared this information with the British, the Germans increased its security at the outbreak of war by changing the cipher system daily. This made the task of understanding the code much more difficult. Alan Turing's team eventually succeeded in July 1941. The story is the subject of the gripping and heartbreaking 2014 film 'The Imitation Game'.

Answer: 1943

These took place on the night of 16-17 May 1943 when 19 specially adapted Lancaster bombers dropped bouncing bombs in a daring attack on dams in the Ruhr Valley. The bouncing bombs were the brainchild of British engineer Barnes Wallis. The story is told in the epic war film 'The Dam Busters' (1955), starring Richard Todd and Micheal Redgrave.

Answer: 1948

Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948, at the age of 78 by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist who considered Gandhi to have been too accommodating to Pakistan during the partition of India the previous year. Godse and his accomplice were subsequently hanged. No Nobel Peace Prize was awarded that year because Ghandhi, the strongest symbol of non-violence in the 20th century, was so obviously the deserving recipient.

Answer: 1946

UNICEF was created by the United Nations General Assembly on December 11, 1946, with the stated aim of providing supplies and assistance to children in the aftermath of World War II. Going by the name of the 'United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund', it was originally conceived of as a temporary relief fund protecting children's rights to survive, thrive, and reach their full potential.

It is now officially called the 'United Nations Children's Fund' in recognition of the fact that children's rights are as endangered today as they were in 1946.

Answer: 1942

The Battle of Stalingrad ran from August 1942 to February 1943 and marked Hitler's failure to take the city in what is widely regarded as the turning point of WWII in Europe. The battle was marked by fierce close-quarters combat and the bombing of civilian targets; it thus serves as a good example of urban warfare.

It was the deadliest battle to take place during WWII and one of the bloodiest in the whole history of warfare, with an estimated total casualty count of 2 million.