His great work remains the creation in 1929, with Lucien Febvre, of the review “Annals of Economic and Social History”, the spearhead of the French historiographical school. Long considered the most prestigious history journal, it will influence many historians around the world.
He is the founder of the history of mentalities, beliefs, ways of thinking”
“He is the founder of the history of mentalities, beliefs, ways of thinking,” summarizes historian Julien Théry. With in particular his master book “Les Rois thaumaturges” (1924), he gave “history another object than the great names, the great events, the battles”.
Its pioneering methods allow a new approach, with “a History that is interested in the depths of society” and captures man in all his aspects. “It prefigures Fernand Braudel” and his “Identity of France”, adds Julien Théry.
Great patriot
“Passionate about the Republic” and a great patriot who signed the manifesto of anti-fascist intellectuals in the 1930s, this atheist Jew, Poilu of the 14/18 war, was mobilized again in 1939. At his request, when he 53 years old, six children and suffers from debilitating polyarthritis. “I am the oldest captain in the French army,” he said.
Small and thin, with a distinguished appearance, thin intellectual-rimmed glasses, this man, who was initially sometimes icy, drew from the debacle of 1940 an uncompromising work, “The Strange Defeat”. His best-known work, published posthumously after the war and recounting from the inside, in an implacable manner, “the most atrocious collapse of our history”.
Born July 6, 1886 in Lyon, Marc Bloch grew up in Paris where his father, also a historian, taught ancient history at the Sorbonne.
Marc Bloch only had faith in one idea, the Republic”
His family is Jewish, non-practicing. “Marc Bloch only had faith in one idea, the Republic,” underlines his granddaughter, Suzette Bloch. He said that he only claimed his Jewishness “in one case: in front of an anti-Semite”.
A brilliant student, received at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, he obtained the history-geography aggregation and taught in high school.
After the war, where he distinguished himself (Legion of Honor and War Cross with four citations), he married Simonne Vidal, daughter of a polytechnician, with whom he had six children. He was appointed professor at the University of Strasbourg then, in 1936, at the Sorbonne.
In 1940, with the anti-Jewish laws of Vichy, he was excluded from teaching before being temporarily reinstated.
It was over when the Germans invaded the free zone in November 1942. With his family, he took refuge in the family home in Creuse before once again choosing the France he loved so much.
“France, some of which would conspire to expel me […] will remain, whatever happens, the homeland from which I cannot uproot my heart,” he wrote.
Interned, tortured then executed
He joined the Resistance, plunged into clandestine life in Lyon, and joined the Franc-Tireur movement.
Under the pseudonym “Chevreuse”, then “Arpajon” and “Narbonne”, he formed the Liberation Committees of the region. He was arrested on March 8, 1944, interned in Montluc prison and tortured for days.
In captivity, he becomes a teacher again and instructs his comrades in misfortune. “If I escape, I will resume my classes,” he confided to them.
“There are two categories of French people who will never understand the history of France”, he summarized in “The Strange Defeat”, “those who refuse to vibrate at the memory of the coronation of Reims; those who read without emotion the story of the Federation Day.”
He was finally shot by the Gestapo on the evening of June 16, 1944 in a bushy field near Lyon. Executed with a machine gun in the back. With 29 other comrades, tortured in groups of four.
His ashes were transferred in 1977 to the family vault in the Bourg-d'Hem cemetery (Creuse).
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