Free France Free France Free France and its Free French Forces (French: "France Libre" and "Forces françaises libres") were the government-in-exile led by Charles de Gaulle during the Second World War and its military forces, that continued to fight against the Axis powers as one of the Allies after the fall of France. Set up in London in June 1940, it organised and supported the Resistance in occupied France. Charles de Gaulle, a French government minister who rejected the armistice concluded by Marshal Philippe Pétain and who had escaped to Britain, exhorted the French to resist in his BBC broadcast "Appeal of
Resistance in the German-occupied Channel Islands had abandoned the Islands and declared them neutral territory in June 1940. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth made a special visit to the Islands on 7 June 1945. Early on in the war, Islanders were given a salutary lesson in resistance. On 28 June 1940 German Heinkel bombers from Cherbourg made an armed reconnaissance, they bombed and strafed the harbours of Saint Peter Port and Saint Helier killing 38 and wounding 45 civilians. On 13 December 1940, sixteen young Frenchmen, soldiers on probation, set out in a boat from occupied Brittany with the intention of joining the Free French