Background
Bloch was born in Lyon, France on July 6, 1886.
(This book is his (Marc Bloch) testament as a historian - ...)
This book is his (Marc Bloch) testament as a historian - a thoughtful, honest statement by a great craftsman about the principles of his trade. here he expressed his aims, which were those of most historians of his own and younger generations. here he set forth his conviction of hte unity of all history and of the living connection between present and past which makes history something more than a game for dilettantes.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394705122/?tag=2022091-20
(A renowned historian and Resistance fighter ― later execu...)
A renowned historian and Resistance fighter ― later executed by the Nazis ― analyzes at first hand why France fell in 1940. Marc Bloch wrote Strange Defeat during the three months following the fall of France, after he returned home from military service. In the midst of his anguish, he nevertheless "brought to his study of the crisis all the critical faculty and all the penetrating analysis of a first-rate historian" (Christian Science Monitor).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393319113/?tag=2022091-20
Bloch was born in Lyon, France on July 6, 1886.
Bloch received his education at the Ecole Nórmale Supérieure in Paris. After his graduation, he studied in Germany at Leipzig and Berlin for a year, returning to France to work in Paris, where he began an intensive study of French medieval society.
An ardent French nationalist and patriot, Bloch served in the French army during the two world wars. Though not required to serve due to his age, he enlisted at the start of World War II in 1939, serving as a fuel supply officer until the defeat of his country.
Between the wars he managed to influence a generation of French historical scholarship through his teaching and the journal he founded with Lucien Febre, Annales d'Histoire Economique et Sociale.
Bloch held chairs at Strasbourg University and at the Sorbonne. His books on French medieval society, including "French Rural History" and "Feudal Society", are admired for the bold breadth of their coverage and their insights. He also wrote about his own profession in "The Historian's Craft".
After the defeat of France, Bloch taught in Vichy France for three years and then joined the French resistance. His fellow resistance fighters valued his bravery, intelligence, and skill in deciphering secret codes and hand-delivering messages under cover.
In 1944 the Nazis arrested, tortured, and executed this gentle man, who until his dying day professed a belief in humanity.
(Marc Bloch said that his goal in writing Feudal Society w...)
(This book is his (Marc Bloch) testament as a historian - ...)
(A renowned historian and Resistance fighter ― later execu...)
In his final book, "L’étrange défaite" (“Strange Defeat,” 1949) published posthumously in 1946, Bloch discussed his relationship with Judaism. He stated, “By birth I am a Jew, though not by religion, for I have never professed any creed, whether Hebrew or Christian. I feel neither pride nor shame in my origins.... I am at pains never to stress my heredity save when I find myself in the presence of an anti-Semite.... France will remain the one country with which my deepest emotions are inextricably bound up. I was born in France. I have drunk the waters of her culture. I have made her past my own.... I breathe freely only in her climate, and I have done my best with others, to defend her interests.”
He held that the chief task of the historian was to pose important questions, and not to simply collect and present data.
It is said that he died standing before a firing squad with the words “Vive La France!” on his lips.