''Strange Defeat'' (french: L'Étrange Défaite) is a book written in the summer of 1940 by 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 Medieval France ov ...

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

Gestapo The (), 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 Prussia into one organi ...

in June 1944 for his participation in the

French resistance The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...

. An English translation was published by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

in 1949 and by W. W. Norton in 1968.

Background

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

Battle of France The Battle of France (french: bataille de France) (10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign ('), the French Campaign (german: Frankreichfeldzug, ) and the Fall of France, was the Nazi Germany, German invasion of French Third Rep ...

in 1940, and in part uses a relatively long-term view similar to that in his history scholarship (see Annales school). The main thesis of the book is that the French leadership failed to recognize that, since

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, "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 lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the World War I, First World War to the beginning of the World War II, Second World War. The in ...

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. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

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

{{Reflist

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 Battle of France Historiography of World War II Works by Marc Bloch

Background

Contents

See also

References

Further reading

External links