''Strange Defeat'' () is a book written in mid-1940 by the French historian

Marc Bloch Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch ( ; ; 6 July 1886 – 16 June 1944) was a French historian. He was a founding member of the Annales School of French social history. Bloch specialised in medieval history and published widely on France in the Middle ...

. The book was published in 1946; in the meanwhile, Bloch had been tortured and executed by the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

in June 1944 for his participation in the

French resistance The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, Nazi occupation and the Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy#France, collaborationist Vic ...

. An English translation was published by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

in 1949 and by

W. W. Norton W. W. Norton & Company is an American publishing company based in New York City. Established in 1923, it has been owned wholly by its employees since the early 1960s. The company is known for its Norton Anthologies (particularly '' The Norton ...

in 1968.

Background

The book focuses on the causes of the French defeat in the

Battle of France The Battle of France (; 10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign (), the French Campaign (, ) and the Fall of France, during the Second World War was the Nazi Germany, German invasion of the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembour ...

in 1940, and in part uses a relatively long-term view similar to that in his history scholarship (see

Annales school The ''Annales'' school () is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century to stress long-term social history. It is named after its scholarly journal '' Annales. Histoire, S ...

). The main thesis of the book is that the French leadership failed to recognize that, since

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, "the whole rhythm of modern warfare had changed its tempo." There are only three chapters: ''Presentation of the Witness'', being a short personal history of a life devoted to historical study and interrupted by World War I; ''One of the Vanquished Gives Evidence'', a factual account of his experience in the battle of France; and ''A Frenchman Examines His Conscience'', a biting analysis of the thinking and actions of the generation in the

interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...

Bloch raised most of the issues historians have debated since. He blamed France's leadership: :What drove our armies to disaster was the cumulative effect of a great number of different mistakes. One glaring characteristic is, however, common to all of them. Our leaders...were incapable of thinking in terms of a new war.Marc Bloch, ''Strange Defeat: a Statement of Evidence Written in 1940'' (Oxford U.P., 1949), p 36 Guilt was widespread. Carole Fink argues that Bloch blamed the ruling class, the military and the politicians, the press and the teachers, for a flawed national policy and a weak defense against the Nazi menace, for betraying the real France and abandoning its children. Germany had won because its leaders had better understood the methods and psychology of modern combat.Carole Fink, "Marc Bloch and the ''drôle de guerre'' Prelude to the Strange Defeat p 46 Bloch reports a harsh and forthright view of the cause of the defeat as he and fellow officers saw it at the time (p. 20 of the printed French edition, p. 45 of the manuscript, written between July and September 1940):

" atever the deep-seated cause of the disaster may have been, the immediate occasion was the utter incompetence of the High Command."

Bloch is also critical of the Allies, specifically of the behaviour of

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

soldiers and of the High Command in the retreat in Belgium. In a subsequent revision, however, he added a footnote that broadened the blame to non-HQ officers (p. 68 of the printed French edition, p. 145 of the manuscript, footnote dated July 1942):

"failures in the troop command were substantially less rare than I had wanted to believe in the aftermath of the defeat. ... Certainly a certain morality crisis in class groups (among reserves as well as active officers) was deeper than one dared imagine."

Chapter III then expounded on more general institutional and societal failures that hindered France's response.

References

External links

* ''Original French text'

Centre Marc Bloch

Université Marc Bloch
History books about World War II 1946 non-fiction books France in World War II 1940 in France History books about France Works about the Battle of France Historiography of World War II Works by Marc Bloch

Background

Contents

See also

References

Further reading

External links