List of Famous people who died in 1940

:For similarly named individuals, see Ed Schwartz (disambiguation).

Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas D’Oyly Snow, was a British Army officer who fought on the Western Front during the First World War. He played an important role in the war, leading the 4th Division in the retreat of August 1914, and commanding VII Corps at the unsuccessful Gommecourt diversion on the first day on the Somme and at the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917.

Katharina Schratt was an Austrian actress who became "the uncrowned Empress of Austria" as a confidante of Emperor Franz Joseph.

Ferdinand Hellmesberger was an Austrian cellist and conductor.

Lluís Companys i Jover was a Spanish politician from Catalonia who served as president of Catalonia from 1934 and during the Spanish Civil War.

William Vestey, 1st Baron Vestey was an English shipping magnate.

Berton Churchill was a Canadian stage and film actor.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov was a Russian writer, medical doctor and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, published posthumously, which has been called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.
He is also known of magnificent plays The White Guard, Ivan Vasilievich (play), Flight (play), The Days of the Turbins and other works of the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote mostly about bout the horrors of a fratricidal Russian Civil War and about the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and Civil War.
Some of his works were banned by Soviet government and personally by Joseph Stalin after by them was decided that they "glorified emigration and White generals". On the other hand, Stalin loved The Days of the Turbins very much and reportedly saw it at least 15 times.