Marc Bloch: Memoirs of War, 1914-15

Great historians have seldom described the notable events in which they themselves participated. Marc Bloch – author of Feudal Society, the classic study of medieval social systems and co-founder of the influential French historical journal Annales – is an exception, In his powerful memoir The Strange Defeat, he analysed the fall of France in 1940 from the viewpoint of combatant as well as historian. And in his Memoirs of War, 1914–15, here in its first English translation (originally published in hard covers in 1980 by Cornell University Press), Bloch left a keen and affecting account of his earliest experience of war. Carole Fink’s introduction includes a brief biography of Bloch, discusses the effect of the war upon his intellectual development, and assesses his achievements as a historian. Though Bloch survived the savage trench warfare of the First World War, he was shot by a Gestapo firing squad in 1944 for his participation in the Resistance. Trenchant, inspiring, and tersely written, Memoirs of War, 1914–15 is a monument to a great scholar and fierce patriot.