Charles Noguès


Charles Noguès was a French general. He graduated from the École Polytechnique, and he was awarded the Grand Croix of the Legion of Honour in 1939.
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 in 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 because Admiral Francois 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, 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.

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