The attack on Pearl Harbor gave General de Gaulle and his movement the legitimacy they so lacked in their early days. It was in Oceania, between Tahiti, Bora-Bora, Nouméa and the New Hebrides, that Free France would become a territorial ...See moreThe attack on Pearl Harbor gave General de Gaulle and his movement the legitimacy they so lacked in their early days. It was in Oceania, between Tahiti, Bora-Bora, Nouméa and the New Hebrides, that Free France would become a territorial reality for the first time, and that Charles de Gaulle would be officially recognized as its leader by the Americans. It was on these islands that the British and Americans would rely to halt the Japanese advance. Historians and archive images eloquently evoke this little-known page of the Second World War, decisive for France.
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