Fighting French

Thesaurus

Noun

Fighting French - a French movement during World War II that was organized in London by Charles de Gaulle to fight for the liberation of France from German control and for the restoration of the republicFree FrenchSecond World War, World War 2, World War II - a war between the Allies (Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iran, Iraq, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States, USSR, Yugoslavia) and the Axis (Albania, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Rumania, Slovakia, Thailand) from 1939 to 1945social movement, movement, front - a group of people with a common ideology who try together to achieve certain general goals; "he was a charter member of the movement"; "politicians have to respect a mass movement"; "he led the national liberation front"

Fighting French

(French, La France Combattante), a movement headed by General C. De Gaulle during World War II (1939–45) to liberate France from the fascist German occupiers and the collaborationist Vichy regime. The movement was affiliated with the anti-Hitlerite coalition. (From June 18, 1940, to Apr. 13,1942, it was called the Free French movement.)

On Sept. 24, 1941, the central body of the movement, the French National Council, was established in London. The leadership of the movement relied for support on those French colonial possessions that sided with De Gaulle’s movement, including Chad, Cameroon, the Middle Congo, Ubangi-Shari, and Gabon.

The movement maintained armed forces and participated in a series of military operations of the anti-Hitlerite coalition. In November 1942 a group of French pilots, later known as the Normandy-Neman Regiment, was dispatched by the French National Council to the Soviet Union to take part in a joint struggle against Hitlerite Germany.

The success of the Fighting French movement was facilitated by the support of the Resistance Movement within France and by contacts established between the French Communist Party and the Fighting French movement in January 1943 for the purpose of organizing joint actions against the aggressors. Representatives of the Fighting French joined the Council of National Resistance, created in May 1943 by various Resistance groups.

After the entry of Anglo-American forces into Algeria in November 1942, the French National Council moved from London to Algeria and was reorganized on June 3, 1943, as the French Committee of National Liberation, a central body that represented the state interests of France in 1943 and 1944. On Aug. 26, 1943, the committee was officially recognized by the governments of the USSR, the USA, and Great Britain. Members of the French Communist Party joined it in April 1944. On June 2, 1944, the committee began calling itself the Provisional Government of the French Republic, headed by De Gaulle.

REFERENCES

Sovetsko-frantsuzskie otnosheniia vo vremia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg. Moscow, 1959.
De Gaulle, C. Voennye memuary, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1957–60. (Translated from French.)
Antiukhina-Moskovchenko, V. I. “O kapituliatsii Frantsii v 1940 g. i ee mezhdunarodnykh posledstviiakh.” In Frantsuzskii ezhegodnik, 1961. Moscow, 1962.
Antiukhina-Moskovchenko, V. I. “SharP de Goll’.” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, 1971, nos. 3–6.
Smirnov, V. P. Dvizhenie soprotivleniia vo Frantsii v gody vtoroi mirovoi voiny. Moscow, 1974.
Histoire du parti communiste français. Paris, 1964.

V. I. ANTIUKHINA-MOSKOVCHENKO

Fighting French

Fighting French

Fighting French

REFERENCES

Fighting French

Synonyms for Fighting French

noun a French movement during World War II that was organized in London by Charles de Gaulle to fight for the liberation of France from German control and for the restoration of the republic

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