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The obvious U. S. candidate for that title was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who got himself elected for an unprecedented third term. But Franklin Roosevelt's other accomplishments of 1940 were not breathtaking.
On the score of leadership Wendell Willkie, who, although a businessman, convinced 22,500,000 voters that he spoke for a vital cause, performed more strikingly.
But in the end Willkie did not succeed in leading his crusade to victory.
The great accomplishments of 1940 belonged, if anywhere, across the waters as they did in 1938 when Man of the Year Hitler conquered without fighting in Austria and at Munich, as they did in 1939 when Man of the Year Stalin got half of Poland by a shrewd deal and a free hand to work his will on Finland. But 1940 did not fall like a plum into the lap of the Dictators. One of them, Benito Mussolini, thinking conquest was easy, proved the year's greatest flop. Another, Joseph Stalin, lost several teeth before he chewed off an edge of tough little Finland. A third, Adolf Hitler, was more successful.
Hitler during the year conquered five nations by arms—among them France, his most powerful opponent on the Continent—and subjugated part of the Balkans by threats. His conquests were on a par with those of Napoleon Bonaparte. But in one vital respect he failed. He did not master Britain, as scheduled, before the summer was out. He did not bring the war to a victorious conclusion. At year's end he had a tiring people at home, and a war abroad, a war which, unless he could end it swiftly, might ultimately prove Germany's undoing. All his victories had not saved him from jeopardy nor won him real success. Before the end of fateful 1941 Hitler may be Man of the Century —if Britain falls. If Britain still stands at the end of 1941, Adolf Hitler may be on his way to join the distinguished company of Benito Mussolini, Generals Gamelin and Almazán, and John Llewellyn Lewis, those men of high hopes who failed to come through in the crisis year of 1940.
Among other Europeans who had made their mark in 1940, one was short, squat General John Metaxas, Premier of the Greeks, who had made a monkey of Benito Mussolini. Another was Britain's Union Leader Ernest Bevin, who became a tower of strength in Britain's Government, who rallied Labor to Britain's cause, who became a symbol of the breakdown of class distinctions by which Britain achieved a new unity to fight her battle.
Yet the curious fact was that in most men's minds everywhere—even in Germany, to judge by Nazi denunciations—Winston Churchill outranked all others as Man of 1940. He came to power as Prime Minister just as the Blitzkrieg descended upon Britain's outposts. In his first few weeks in office they toppled about him like ninepins. Norway had already been lost. Then fell The Netherlands, Belgium, France.
Against this roll call of defeats, all the victories which Churchill gave his countrymen, aside from isolated successes at sea, were such that any Cockney could count them on his thumbs: 1) the gallant evacuation at Dunkirk, really a disaster in which, although upwards of 335,000 men were saved, the equipment of virtually the entire British Expeditionary Force was lost; 2) the Battle of the Marmarica which smashed the Italian Army in Egypt.