ABSTRACT
The acclaimed medieval historian Marc Bloch was called up from the army reserve in August 1939 at the age of 53 and thereafter endured a peripatetic ten months as a firsthand participant in France’s defeat. Posted variously in Strasbourg and Picardy through the Phoney War, after the German invasion Bloch retreated with the First Army to Dunkirk in May 1940, was evacuated under fire to England and then shipped almost immediately back to Cherbourg. His campaign ended in June in Rennes where he escaped capture by changing into civilian clothes and reassuming the civilian identity of gentleman academic; after the armistice he was reunited with his family at their home in Guéret in the unoccupied southern zone. Desperately saddened by the tragedy that had befallen his country, Bloch spent that summer composing a statement of evidence about his experiences which became a searing indictment of those he held responsible for France’s shattering reverse.2 He lambasted ‘the utter incompetence’ of the French military command, but in seeking to illuminate the underlying causes of the disaster he spread blame across all sectors of French society; peasants, workers and bourgeoisie, politicians, teachers and journalists, all played their part in dooming the nation to its Strange Defeat. Even though Bloch remained convinced of the ‘deep-seated vitality’ and capacity for recovery of the French people, his remorseless analysis attributed the catastrophe to a fundamental structural and spiritual malaise that had sapped France’s will and ability to resist the Axis challenge.3 Bloch did not live to see the 1946 publication of the book. Seeking to make his own contribution to France’s rebirth he joined
the resistance, was captured, tortured and eventually executed by the Nazis in June 1944. According to resistance legend, his dying words were ‘vive la France!’.4
