Azad Hind government declares a provisional Indian republic

Governor Félix Éboué and military commander Pierre Marchand declared Chad’s alignment with Charles de Gaulle’s Free French movement. Chad became its first African territorial base, and other French...

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter, declaring that peoples should be able to choose their form of government and that sovereign rights should be restored. Churchill...

Japanese forces landed at Kota Bharu in British Malaya and at Pattani and Songkhla in Thailand, opening a rapid campaign down the peninsula. The invasion exposed the vulnerability of British...

After Japanese troops crossed from Malaya onto the island, British forces surrendered at the Ford Motor Factory. Singapore entered nearly four years of Japanese occupation, marked by scarcity,...

The All-India Congress Committee adopted the Quit India resolution in Bombay, calling for British withdrawal and mass nonviolent resistance. The colonial government immediately arrested Gandhi and...

Japanese forces launched a coup against the French administration, disarming French troops and ending the arrangement under which Vichy France had administered Indochina under Japanese pressure. Japan...

On the day France celebrated victory over Nazi Germany, Algerian demonstrators in Sétif, Guelma, and nearby towns called for rights and independence. Police violence and attacks on civilians were...

Representatives of 50 countries signed the UN Charter, creating a new international organization after two world wars. The Charter affirmed sovereign equality and self-determination, while also...

Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta read the proclamation of Indonesian independence in Jakarta after Japan’s surrender. The declaration asserted Indonesian sovereignty; Dutch attempts to restore colonial...

The Việt Minh-led uprising succeeded in Hanoi as Japanese authority collapsed and French colonial power remained unsettled. Vietnamese organizers built local committees and mobilized crowds to claim...