Military history of France during World War II 2nd Armoured Division, famous for its role in the 1944 liberation of Paris and Strasbourg, with the caption "Yesterday Strasbourg, tomorrow Saigon: Join the Far East French Expeditionary Forces". In 1945 after Japan surrendered and China was in charge in Indochina, the Provisional French Republic sent the French Far East Expeditionary Corps to Indochina to pacify the Vietnamese liberation movement and to restore French colonial rule. Free French commando groups called "Corps Léger d'Intervention" (C.L.I.) were created by de Gaulle in November 1943 as part of the FEFEO and trained in French Algeria then in ,British India, after the British
German military administration in occupied France during World War II Vichy France. While the Vichy government was nominally in charge of all of France, the military administration in the occupied zone was a ' Nazi dictatorship. Its rule was extended to the free zone when it was invaded by Germany and Italy during ' on 11 November 1942 in response to Operation Torch, the Allied landings in French North Africa on 8 November 1942. The Vichy government remained in existence, even though its authority was now severely curtailed. The military administration in France ended with the Liberation of France after the Normandy and Provence landings. It formally existed from May