Louis Noguères

Who was Louis Noguères?

Louis Noguères was a French politician and member of the French Resistance.

Son of a magistrate, Louis Noguères was born at Laval, Mayenne. His family moved frequently and Louis attended schools in Laval, Angers, Chambéry, and Le Havre. He studied law and history at the Sorbonne in Paris. In Paris he met Jean Jaurès and collaborated with him on the sixth volume of L'Histoire de la Révolution et de l'Empire. Although supportive of socialism, Noguères did not join the French Section of the Workers' International at this time. Recalled to active service during the First World War, he served in the infantry and the air force, and received the Légion d'honneur.

He worked as a lawyer for many years before first standing for election as mayor of Thuir in the Pyrénées-Orientales in 1931. In 1935, now a member of the SFIO, he was reelected as mayor and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in at the end of 1937.

On 10 July 1940, Louis Noguères was one of the eighty who voted against granting special powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain. Placed under police surveillance, he was ejected from the Chamber of Deputies in February 1941 when a letter which expressed his hostility to the Vichy Regime, Nazi Germany, and Fascism, was intercepted. He publicly expressed opposition to Vichy at the funeral of Senator Georges Pézières in March 1941, and was placed under house arrest, first Argentat in Corrèze, then at Florac in Lozère.