<P> The Soviet Union wanted to annex Finland and offered a union agreement, but Finland rejected it, which caused the Soviet Union to attack Finland on November 30 . This began the Winter War . After five months of hard fighting, Finns were only pushed from a strip of land bordering Russia, in spite of Soviet numerical superiority, the Soviet Union gave up attempts to subdue the whole country . In the Moscow Peace Treaty of 12 March 1940, Finland ceded 10% of her territory . The Finns were embittered over having lost more land in the peace than on the battlefields, and over the perceived lack of world sympathy . </P> <P> Meanwhile, in western Scandinavia, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway in April 1940, and in response, Britain occupied the Faroe Islands (a Danish territory) and invaded and occupied Iceland (a sovereign nation with the King of Denmark as its monarch). </P> <P> Sweden was able to remain neutral . </P> <P> On 10 May the Phoney War ended with a sweeping German invasion of the neutral Low Countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, and into France bypassing the French fortifications of the Maginot Line along the border with Germany . After overrunning The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, Germany turned against France, entering the country through the Ardennes on May 13--the French had left this area less well defended, believing its terrain to be impassable for tanks and other vehicles . Most Allied forces were in Flanders, anticipating a re-run of the World War I Schlieffen Plan, and were cut off from the French mainland . As a result of this, and also the superior German communications and tactics, the Battle of France was shorter than virtually all pre-war Allied thought could have conceived . It lasted six weeks, including the Luftwaffe bombing of Paris June 3 . On 10 June Italy declared war on both France and the United Kingdom, but did not gain any significant success in this campaign . The French government fled Paris, and soon, France surrendered on 22 June . In order to further the humiliation of the French people and the country itself, Hitler arranged for the surrender document to be signed in the Forest of Compiègne, in the same railway coach where the German surrender had been signed in 1918 . The surrender divided France into two major parts; the northern part under German control, and a southern part under French control, based at Vichy and referred to as Vichy France, a rump state friendly to Germany . Many French soldiers, as well as those of other occupied countries, escaped to Britain . The General de Gaulle proclaimed himself the legitimate leader of Free France and vowed to continue to fight . Following the unexpected swift victory, Hitler promoted 12 generals to the rank of field marshal during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony . </P>

Describe the course of world war two in europe until the end of 1940