Free French units also served in the Royal Air Force, Soviet Air Force, and British SAS, before larger commands were established directly under the control of the government-in-exile.

The Free French Navy operated as an auxiliary force to the Royal Navy and, in the North Atlantic, to the Royal Canadian Navy. The Free French fought both Axis and Vichy troops and served in almost every major campaign, from the Middle East to Indochina and North Africa. It was only progressively, often with the decisive military intervention of the Allies, that Free France took over more Vichy possessions, securing the majority of colonies by November 1942.

Initially, with the exception of French possessions in the Pacific, India, and Equatorial Africa, all the territories of the French colonial empire rejected de Gaulle's appeal and reaffirmed their loyalty to Marshall Pétain and the Vichy government. On 27 October 1940, the Empire Defense Council ( Conseil de défense de l'Empire)-later the French National Committee ( Comité national français or CNF)-formed to govern French territories in central Africa, Asia, and Oceania that had heeded the 18 June call. Opposed to the idea of an armistice, de Gaulle fled to Britain, and from there broadcast the Appeal of 18 June ( Appel du 18 juin) exhorting the French people to resist the Nazis and join the Free French Forces. Free France also supported the resistance in Nazi-occupied France, known as the French Forces of the Interior, and gained strategic footholds in several French colonies in Africa.įollowing the defeat of the Third Republic by Nazi Germany, Marshal Philippe Pétain led efforts to negotiate an armistice and established a German puppet state known as Vichy France. Led by French general Charles de Gaulle, Free France was established as a government-in-exile in London in June 1940 after the Fall of France during World War II and fought the Axis as an Allied nation with its Free French Forces ( Forces françaises libres). Free France ( French: France Libre) was a political entity that claimed to be the legitimate government of France following the dissolution of the Third Republic.

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