Strange Defeat [Paperback]

Marc Bloch (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393319113 | ISBN-13: 978-0393319118 | Publication Date: July 1, 1999

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). Bloch takes a close look at the military failures he witnessed, examining why France was unable to respond to attack quickly and effectively. He gives a personal account of the battle of France, followed by a biting analysis of the generation between the wars. His harsh conclusion is that the immediate cause of the disaster was the utter incompetence of the High Command, but his analysis ranges broadly, appraising all the factors, social as well as military, which since 1870 had undermined French national solidarity. "Much has been, and will be, written in explanation of the defeat of France in 1940, but it seems unlikely that the truth of the matter will ever be more accurately and more vividly presented than in this statement of evidence." — P. J. Philip, New York Times Book Review "The most wisdom-packed commentary on the problem set [before] all intelligent and patriotic Frenchmen by the events of 1940." — D. W. Brogan, Spectator

Editorial Reviews

Review

Much has been, and will be, written in explanation of the defeat of France in 1940, but it seems unlikely that the truth of the matter will ever be more accurately and more vividly presented than in this statement of evidence. -- P. J. Philip, New York Times Book Review

The most wisdom-packed commentary on the problem set [before] all intelligent and patriotic Frenchmen by the events of 1940. -- D. W. Brogan, Spectator

About the Author

Marc Bloch was a French historian who cofounded the Annales School of French social history. He was captured and shot by the Gestapo in 1944 for his work with the French Resistance.

Product Details

• Paperback: 204 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393319113
• ISBN-13: 978-0393319118
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #172,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb evaluation of the French Defeat, October 31, 2001

By 

Mark Twain (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strange Defeat (Paperback)

I keep returning to this book as among the best I've ever read. It is both good reading as military history and failure analysis: no one has been able to write so deftly and originally about why France fell so swiftly in 1940. Unlike other military history books, this one is not heavy on maps nor units nor armament, merely a very incisive and friendly discussion of why France fells so quickly.
Having served during WW1 and serving during WW2, Marc Bloch points to a litany of reasons why the French army, which was better equipted than the Germans, collapsed so suddenly. Despite what I learned in highschool about the French defeat of WW2 (France was overconfident behind the Maginot Line), Marc Bloch tells a different reason. The French army never understood how the speed of modern weapons had shortened space. Marc Bloch, serving at the front in 1940, recalled that the German offensive actually seem to overtake each French retreat: whenever Marc Bloch's unit retreated in 1940, they constantly found the Germans in their rear. The consequence was the French army was in a perpetual retreat and lacked the time to mount a proper counter offensive.
Marc Bloch also points to the cultural factors in the French defeat, namely the French education system which ignored history and visual arts in its cirriculum. He proposes a greater emphasis on both. I agree with the latter: in the US, we are saturated with images but we are visually illiterate. As for history, there is now too much emphasis on history without a comparable attempt to work things out in the present. This is a terrific book that reads like a no-holds barred fight.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensible for Understanding 20th Century France, October 15, 2006

By 

I. Martinez-Ybor "Ignacio Martínez-Ybor" (Miami, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Strange Defeat (Paperback)

This slim, unpretentious volume, written at the time events took place, and validated by the author's subsequent death at German's hands, is the best witness account we have of the disintegration of what at the time was regarded the most powerful army in the Allied camp. There is a dry-eyed innocence in the reporting that makes the shattering news it conveys more momentous than anything I have read in more scholarly, more documented, chronicles of the period which overwhelm citizen experience with broader perspectives. This is not to minimize others' works, nor to regard M. Bloch as a "minimalist": au contraire. He was a world-renowned medieval scholar, so his mind was nuanced and perceptive, his approach unsentimental and objective; he brings the full intellectual rigor of his training and experience to extract all possible social, historical, and moral truth from the seemingly mundane. He was in his late forties when the war started but nonetheless, served with honor, very much with his eyes-opened, did his duty in the army and kept his brain functioning throughout rather than putting it on hold in blind patriotism (such a treacherous, over-rated popular paliative). He kept at his craft but rather than delving in ancient manuscripts he reported on what he observed around him of an army, indeed a state, in rapid collapse. The macro waves drowning the country are inferred from his micro observations. Indeed the many treasures come in seemingly casual descriptions of mundane events like millions of naked, flickering, low-wattage light-bulbs adumbrating the tragedy of national collapse. Bloch comes to a melancholic but inherently optimistic conclusion: the future of France will be built not by men of his generation, but by a new breed. How ironic this observation in the midst of the overwhelming propaganda for Petain's phony reactionary, bullying National Revolution and its relatively widespread support (at least in its early stages) in Occupied and Vichy France. This book was written after the defeat and before he joined the Resistance (in whose service he was captured, tortured and killed by the Gestapo). Even in the most abject moments of defeat, I don't think Bloch ever wavered in the belief that the Germans would eventually have to go. Indeed, without regret or melancholy, there seems to have been an absolute faith in the eventual disappearance of the old, pre-popular front, pre-war French order, as much as of French political and military men, as of pre-war French bourgeoisie. The book could have been written by a character in Renoir's 1939 masterpiece "Regle du Jeu." This is real though, and our author a genuine hero. Perhaps it would have been ironically interesting, had he lived, to learn what he would have made of Indochine, Algerie, Gaullism and the heady days of 1968.

For anyone interested in the second world war and French history, this little book is indispensible.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Account of a Shocking Defeat, July 24, 2006

By 

Rastignac (Ann Arbor, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strange Defeat (Paperback)

The simple-minded are apt to chalk up the shocking defeat of France in the summer of 1940 to French weakness. If you'd rather think a bit more deeply, read this classic account by the pioneering medieval historian. Bloch, who lived through the defeat and died fighting with the French resistance, lays out a penetrating analysis of the French defeat. It is vivid, perceptive, beautifully written, and unsparing in its examination of the failures of the generals, the politicians, and the people. It is a thought-provoking cultural critique of a society in a moment of crisis. A classic.