Germany, which most of them did by 1943. On 26 August, the governor and military commanders in the colony of French Chad announced that they were rallying to De Gaulle's Free French Forces. A small group of Gaullists seized control of French Cameroon the following morning, and on 28 August a Free French official ousted the pro-Vichy governor of French Congo. The next day the governor of Ubangi-Shari declared that his territory would support De Gaulle. His declaration prompted a brief struggle for power with a pro-Vichy army officer, but by the end of the day all of the colonies that formed French Equatorial Africa had rallied to Free France, except for French Gabon. Free French Administration A series of organizing bodies was created during the war, to guide and coordinate the diplomatic and war effort of Free France, with General Charles playing a central role in the creation or operation of them all. Empire Defense Council On 26 June 1940, four days after the Pétain government requested the armistice, General submitted a memorandum to the British government notifying Churchill of his decision to set up a Council of Defense of the Empire and formalizing the agreement reached with Churchill on 28 June. The formal recognition of the Empire Defense Council as a government in exile by the United Kingdom took place on 6 January 1941; recognition by the Soviet Union was published in December 1941, by exchange of letters. French National Committee Winston Churchill suggested that create a committee, to lend an appearance of a more constitutionally based and less dictatorial authority and on 24 September 1941 created by edict the French National Committee as the successor organization to the smaller Empire Defense Council. According to historian went on to accept his proposal, but took care to exclude all his adversaries within the Free France movement, such as Émile Muselier, André Labarthe and others, retaining only "yes men" in the group. The committee was the coordinating body which acted as the government-in-exile of Free France from 1941 to 1943. On 3 June 1943 it merged with the French Civil and Military High Command headed by Henri Giraud, becoming the new "French Committee of National Liberation". National Resistance Council De Gaulle, began seeking the formation of a committee to unify the resistance movements. On January 1, 1942, he delegated this task to Jean Moulin. Moulin achieved this on May 27,