Charles Noguès

Auguste Paul Charles Albert Noguès
File:Charles Noguès January 1943 (cropped).jpg Noguès at the Casablanca Conference in 1943
Born	(1876-08-13)13 August 1876 Monléon-Magnoac, Hautes-Pyrénées, France
Died	Paris, France
Alma mater	École Polytechnique
Occupation	General

Charles Noguès (13 August 1876 – 20 April 1971) was a French general. He graduated from the École Polytechnique, and he was awarded the Grand Croix of the Legion of Honour in 1939.

On 20 March 1933, he became commander of the 19th Army Corps (France), the French Army's forces in French Algeria.

During World War II, he served as Resident-General in Morocco and Commander-in-Chief in French North Africa. Noguès was appalled by news that the French government was seeking an armistice with Germany. On 17 June 1940 he telegraphed to Bordeaux, where the government was then situated: "The whole of North Africa is appalled. The troops beg to continue the struggle if the government has no objection. I am ready to take responsibility for this attitude with all the risks that it entails," i.e. asking for a hint to carry on fighting. However, he did not approve of General Charles de Gaulle's call from London on 18 June to carry on fighting, telling the British liaison officer that he thought de Gaulle's attitude "unseemly" and forbidding the North African press from publishing de Gaulle's appeal.

Noguès accepted the armistice on 22 June, partly (he claimed) because Admiral François Darlan would not let him have the French fleet to continue hostilities against the Axis powers. He eventually agreed under pressure from Maxime Weygand's emissary General Louis Koeltz (fr:Louis Koeltz), telegraphing Weygand: "it covers me with shame".

In 1940, Résident Général Charles Noguès implemented antisemitic decrees coming from Nazi-controlled Vichy government excluding Jews from public functions. Sultan Mohammed V refused "Vichy’s plan to ghettoize and deport Morocco’s quarter of a million Jews to the killing factories of Europe;" however, the French government under Noguès did impose some antisemitic laws against the sultan's will. Leon Sultan, of the Moroccan Communist Party, for example, was disbarred.

Nogues was critical of movements in Morocco for reforms in colonial administration. Nogues was of the belief that Moroccan reformers pursued independence and would not be satisfied with liberal reforms in France's colonial administration.

Book

• Lacouture, Jean. De Gaulle: The Rebel 1890–1944 (1984; English ed. 1991), ISBN 978-0-841-90927-4

External links

• Newspaper clippings about Charles Noguès in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW