Pursued over the last two years of the Pacific war, the Free French effortto organize and direct an effective resistance to the Japanese occupation ofIndo-China ended in military failure. Characterized by administrativecomplexity, inadequate supplies and attenuated communications, Gaullistinsurgency was marred by Free France's de facto reliance upon AdmiralLouis Mountbatten's South East Asia Command (SEAC). While there-conquest of Malaya and Burma remained incomplete, British backing fora resistance network in Indo-China was bound to be limited. And as Britishinterest in the final re-conquest of their own territories climaxed in thespring and summer of 1945, so material provision for the French inIndo-China inevitably declined. Although Mountbatten consistently supportedhis Free French protégés, Churchill, in particular, wasreluctant to take issue with his American allies. Neither the US governmentnor American commanders in China and the Pacific supported Free Frenchmethods and objectives. By 1945, the American Office of Strategic Services(OSS), dedicated to supporting guerrilla warfare and resistanceorganization, and the Office of War Information (OWI), which disseminatedUS propaganda, were developing independent contacts inside northernIndo-China. As a result, the OSS increasingly endorsed the one trulyeffective resistance movement: Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh coalition.