Thursday 24 March 2022

The courage of Marc Bloch

     As a student of medieval French during the 1970s, I was obliged to read one of the standard works on French medieval history, La Société Féodale by Marc Bloch. It was a massive tome, already nearly forty years old, and although I admired Bloch's scholarship, I cannot say that I actively enjoyed reading it. I knew nothing of Mr Bloch and made no attempt to find out. There was no Google to make it easy to discover his biographical details, and in any case I had no reason to want to know them.

    Born in 1886, only a couple of months before Siegfried Sassoon, Marc Bloch came from a middle-class family and, like Sassoon, was of Jewish ancestry. There the resemblance appears to end. Bloch's father was a historian and teacher, whom Marc would later emulate. His academic prowess showed itself at an early age, when Sassoon was still struggling to keep up with his lessons at Marlborough, and after national service, Marc was researching in early French history and was appointed a Fellow of the Fondation Dosne-Thiers in Paris.

    Then came the war. Like others, Marc Bloch expected it to last a short time. He soon distinguished himself with acts of somewhat foolhardy bravery, and actively enjoyed his first few months of service. As with Sassoon, it was the first time he had really mixed with working-class men, and he soon came to appreciate their qualities. He also quickly developed a dislike for some of the senior officers. Having no inclination towards poetry, he made it his business to record the events of the war impartially, as he would do again when the Second World War came along. He found the French army woefully unprepared from the outset, and he suffered the same personal losses as his British counterparts, not to mention the psychological after-effects of combat: "Ever since the Argonne in 1914, the buzzing sound of bullets has been stamped on the grey matter of my brain," he wrote.

    Thankfully, Bloch survived that first war, and was able to return to academia. Despite his age and failing health, he remained in the military reserve, and found himself called up at the start of the Second World War, but felt bored rather than patriotic. Once again critical of the generals, he was eventually obliged to move to Vichy-controlled territory, where his Jewish blood put him almost equally at risk. Sending his family - a wife and six children - to safety, he joined the Resistance in Lyon in 1942. His administrative skills, learned in the field of education, led to his becoming a regional organiser. 

    Bloch's unassuming appearance could not protect him indefinitely. In 1944, aged 57, he was discovered in possession of a radio transmitter, and he was captured and tortured. Shortly after the Normandy landings, he was shot by a firing squad, along with a number of other prisoners.

    Bloch had requested that his epitaph read "Dilexi veritatem" ("I have loved the truth"), a sentiment of which Siegfried Sassoon would have wholeheartedly approved. His unfinished book, L'Étrange Défaite (Strange Defeat), published posthumously, was concerned with the failure of the French government to prevent the country's fall in 1940. Looking back on the First World War, he wrote:

"...After four years not only of fighting but of mental laziness, we were only too anxious to get back to our proper employments...That is our excuse. But I have long ceased to believe that it can wash us clean of guilt."

        

    

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