L'etrange defaite

by Marc Bloch

A renowned historian and Resistance fighter --later executed by the Nazis --analyzes at first hand why France fell in 1940. Marc Bloch wrote Strange Defeat during the three months following the fall of France, after he returned home from military service. In the midst of his anguish, he nevertheless "brought to his study of the crisis all the critical faculty and all the penetrating analysis of a first-rate historian" (Christian Science Monitor). Bloch takes a close look at the military failures he witnessed, examining why France was unable to respond to attack quickly and effectively. He gives a personal account of the battle of France, followed by a biting analysis of the generation between the wars. His harsh conclusion is that the immediate cause of the disaster was the utter incompetence of the High Command, but his analysis ranges broadly, appraising all the factors, social as well as military, which since 1870 had undermined French national solidarity.

Genres: History, France, Nonfiction, World War II, War, European History, Military Fiction

201 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch (6 July 1886 in Lyon – 16 June 1944 in Saint-Didier-de-Formans) was a medieval historian, University Professor and French Army officer. Bloch was a founder of the Annales School, best known for his pioneering studies French Rural History and Feudal Society and his posthumously-published unfinished meditation on the writing of history, The Historian's Craft. He was captured and shot by the Gestapo during the German occupation of France for his work in the French Resistance.

Reviews

[Numidica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book very helpful in understanding the Fall of France in 1940. Although I graduated from West Point and studied military history both as part of my profession and also as an avocation, I could never really comprehend how the Germans pulled off the defeat of France, from a purely military and logistical standpoint. This is one of the books that helped me understand. The short version is that the Germans had the best fighter aircraft force in the world in 1940, and decent tanks (though not the best - that came later), and they used the forces in a way which was unheard of then, but which is now standard in all major armies of the world. Move fast, obtain air superiority, punch through the enemy's front line with massed tanks, and then run around in the enemy's rear areas wreaking havoc on their re-supply and sowing fear and confusion. Americans make fun of France's defeat in 1940, but if the American Army of 1940 had been there it would absolutely have been defeated as badly as the French and British were.

I read a very detailed account of the Battle of France by a German historian (The BlitzKrieg Legend, by Frieser), and that book confirms much of what I learned from Bloch's book. Guderian and Rommel took enormous risks, betting that the French and British would stick to their tactical doctrine, which they did, and once the Panzer divisions had punched through the French line at Sedan and began to drive into the rear areas of the Allies, it was all over. The Luftwaffe, acting as what later came to be known as close air support, sealed the deal with devastating and demoralizing attacks on French frontline units, and the French had no fighter aircraft capable of opposing the Bf-109's and stopping the Luftwaffe onslaught. The French Dewoitine D.520, the new French fighter meant to match the Bf-109, was absent because its production had been held up enough that none of those aircraft were available in June 1940. That plane, if it had been on hand, was close enough to a match for the Messerschmidt that it would have been a big factor if the French had had, say 2,000 of them. But they didn't, and they didn't have independent tank divisions, and with the exception of deGaulle and one or two others, they did not have young generals like Guderian who led from the front. The Germans repeated their novel approach to war on the Russians, and only failed to take Moscow because of poor logistical preparation. But after 1941, the Allies learned how to fight the Germans.

Marc Bloch, who worked in the Resistance after the debacle of 1940 was killed by the Gestapo in 1944, ten days after the Allies landed in France on June 6th, D-Day.

[Jan-Maat]

bookish beginning

I really became aware of this book poking around bookshops in Bordeaux where I was looking for books about the Avignon Papacy to feed my curiousity about that following on from a visit to Avignon in the previous year. I could see this book everywhere, well not everywhere, but I guess it had been recently reprinted and there were displays and adequete stocks of it in the Bordeaux bookshops that I stepped inside. It wasn't until a later visit to France that I got a copy of Strange Defeat and it wasn't until after I had read Romain Gary's la promesse de l'aube that I began to read this , I am a fairly slow person and even my curiousity runs in arrears.

Strange Defeat
I knew Bloch as the author of Feudal Society. Perhaps I was vaguely aware that he had been executed during WWII as an activist in the Resistance. Bloch had served in WWI and was demobilsed witg the rank of Captain. He served again in WWII, this time as a staff officer. He was then in his mid fifties, and a reservist. He saw the defeat in northern France, was evacuated at Dunkirk, returned to France to fight on, only to find that Marshall Petain had surrendered. Bloch managed to get a university job in Vichy France for a while, and then during Juky to September 1940 he wrote Strange Defeat , his account of the defeat of France, so it is an more or less immediate and individual response to national disaster well a disaster from Bloch's perspective . Coming at this from a British perspective I had taken the defeat of France (and of the British expeditionary force) in 1940 for granted, reading Bloch's book led me to see that it was a very strange affair.

L'Étrange Defait
Strange Defeat itself makes up about two-thirds of this volume, the remainder is various kinds of filler, including articles he wrote for a clandestine Resistance magazine, some letters regarding the anti-Jewish policies of Vichy France, Bloch's military citations for valour, an introduction from an early edition of Strange Defeat , and his Rapport sur les ravitaillements de la 1re Armée which I felt showed that he was already intellectually engaged with the shortcomings of the French war effort while still in active service.

I don't have the knowledge to comment usefully on Bloch's arguments or presentation beyond a few very simple points. First that if you commit to building a Maginot line and forcing a presumed German opponant to make their attack in Northern France then the very least that you could reasonably expect is that France and it's allies would be prepared to face a German attack in Northern France, indeed just as they had experience of doing over 1914 - 1918, but this time hopefully with improved co-ordination between their allies. The picture I got from Bloch suggested the opposite, that the French and allies very quickly lost the initative, and fell apart rapidly as a cohesive force once they came into contact with the enemy. Communications failed, miltary forces fell apart. For Bloch the big picture reasons for failure were the age of the French military leadership, and education, not just at military training establishments but at the level of the lycee. Bloch considered the cohesiveness of the officer corps and saw group think. The point about lycees I thought fascinating, ok an educationalist is going to consider education an important factor, quelle surprise, as we say in English. This is an argument about culture, and the culture of people being formed to assume leadership positions, not just in the army, but geberally throughout France and it's empire. This is the Marc Bloch of Feudal Society , which considers Feudalism as a cultural phenomenon more than a legal one. It's then significant that one of the other pieces in this volume is "why I am a republican". For Bloch it was evident that many of his contemporaries were not committed to the Third Republic, that as a citizen of it you needed to explain to your fellow citizens why you supported it.

On his return to France, Bloch finds himself eying the narrow country roads in Brittany, imagining what he could do there with a anti-aircraft gun. For him not only is the defeat strange, but so is also the decision not to fight on. Defeat is not simply a matter of operational failure, it is psychological.

Well this is not the book to read if you want to see maps with arrows and dotted lines, nor if you eant to compare the technical specifications of rifles, or an evaluation of infantry tactics; but if you are interested in the reaction of a participant who is meant to be at the centre of operations but finds that he does not know what is going on.

[Alex Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a hell of a book. A brief account of hell, written from hell, by a man who (as we know with hindsight) was bound for hell on earth at the hands of the Gestapo. It takes a peculiar sort of courage to write the eye-witness history not only of a defeat, but of the comprehensive collapse of the country one loves, at the hands of an enemy one hates and despises from the depths of one's soul. I wonder if Strange Defeat is required reading in the army staff colleges of the world--not so much maybe for the specifics, but for the passion behind the dry, rather scholarly words and the deeper questions about the webs that connect one's country, its causes, its civilians and the soldiers who are supposed to defend them. (Among the malaises he identifies, I don't think he mentions anti-semitism. It wd be beneath his dignity--but the reader should be in no doubt.)

[Matthew Dambro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am simply overwhelmed. I read Bloch as a medieval historian back in graduate school. I knew 40 years ago that he had a first-rate mind. He created the "Annales" school of history almost single handedly. What I failed to grasp then was that he was also a Mahatma, "great-souled one". He was a good man in addition to being a great historian.

[Nils · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marc Bloch's "present history" account of the Fall of France in the Spring of 1940 is rightly considered an essential account of the events: above all, it is a devastating critique of the conservatism of the military establishment and the failures of the military bureaucracy to create a machine made for war rather than pettifogging paper pushing and internal bureaucratic competition. This is his first-order diagnosis of why the French military was so utterly unprepared for the war of movement that unfolded in the May 1940, despite having seen the adequate warnings of what it could look like in Poland in September 1939. No one escapes his wrath: not the general staff, not the field commanders, not the industrialists, not the proletarians, not the intellectuals, not the newspapers, not the English. Among the many possible and traditional villains of French political life, all come in for condemnation save, curiously, the Church (which he never mentions).

What really struck me was the last chapter where Bloch essentially indicts the Communists for creating the national divisions which underlay the production of what he calls, without flinching, national cowardice. He says that basically the Communists created a culture - which he nastily refers to as "petty bourgeois" - of always wanting to achieve the extra marginal dollar on behalf of their constituents, rather than realizing that there were certain values (eg resisting Hitler) that were more important than carrying on the national class struggle. The critique of the system offered by the left, in other words, collapsed the values of the center, thus allowing the more ruthless and cynical parties of the right to take over. (The parallels to the way that the US New Left critiqued "vital center liberalism" in the 60s/70s, thus clearing the space for the Reaganite rightist counterrevolution to win the field is hard not to notice.) "Against one particular school of politics no more terrible charge can be brought than this: that once a man has been formed by it, he may forget everything it taught him, including much that was fine, much that was noble, save only this--the denial of his country." Ouch.

[Jean-Pascal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Texte en titre suivi d'autres courts essais ou articles sur des questions d'époque. Belle écriture, émouvante (encore plus quand on connaît la fin de l'histoire). L'analyse de la défaite fait parfois durement penser à notre défaite à venir face aux problèmes écologiques. Dans les textes de la fin, un point très intéressant sur l'éducation.

[Luke Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, this book is hard to beat. On prose quality and emotional resonance alone, it's the best book on world war two that I've read (and I've read... quite a number of books on the subject.) I mean, being written by a resistance fighter while the war was active, obviously it's a lot less scientific than other examinations of the war, but Bloch can write. For that matter, a lot of his values really resonate today....

"I feel neither pride nor shame in my origins. I am, I hope, a sufficiently good historian to know that racial qualities are a myth, and that the whole notion of Race is an absurdity which becomes particularly flagrant when attempts are made to apply it, as in this particular case of the Jews, to a group of co-religionists originally brought together from every comer of the Mediterranean, Turco-Khazar, and Slav world"


"What, probably, more than anything else marks the true leader is the power to clench his teeth and hang on, the ability to impart to others a confidence that he feels himself. This he can do only if he does feel it. Never, until the very last moment, must he despair of his own genius. Above all, he must be willing to accept for the men under him, no less than for himself, sacrifices which may be productive of good, rather than a shameful yielding which must remain for ever useless."

I was writing the other day, about how leadership requires a degree of nietzschean self-deception that I'm not really capable of, or at the very least that I'm not able to do well and still feel okay about myself. I think such a level of self-deception may conflict with looking at problems logically. I've prided myself on being willing to do things even though I accept that I will probably fail, and while this is fine for an Engineer, it is death to a leader.

I dunno, though, some of his rants against the far left ("Those on our side of the barricades") seem to strike awful close to home with the recent elections;

"But what is really remarkable is that these extremist lovers of the human race showed no surprise at all when, on the road that led to capitulation, they found themselves walking arm in arm with the born enemies of their class, the sworn foes of their ideals. As a matter of fact, odd though such an alliance may seem, its intellectual basis is to be found in conditions long antecedent to a supervening political hostility."

That was the thing that was really striking to me about the last political election. I mean, first that so many people thought that things were bad, economically, but second that so many people on the left refused to support a moderate candidate, leading us to the current situation.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting and entertaining view of the French defeat by the Germans in 1940. Bloch served in the French army in both World War I and the opening of World War II so he was experienced in the workings of the army by the time he wrote the book in 1940. He's a fascinating person as he later fought in the French Resistance and I wish he had survived (he was shot by the Gestapo in 1944) so that we could see if his opinion had changed with time. He gives an insider's viewpoint and is cynically funny, which I didn't expect. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in WWII or that period in general.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful analysis of the failure of France in the invasion of Nazi Germany by renowned French historian Marc Bloch. Written in 1940, he joined the resistance and was captured and executed by the Nazi's in 1944. His analysis of the senior nature of French leadership, both politically and militarily, the parochial views of different segments of French society, and the failure of education and the media all speak to current events in the US.

The ebook that i read was primitive, with typos, and difficult to navigate. The book seemed to have footnotes referenced, but I never was able to access them. These flaws, while irritating, do not detract from the power of Bloch's analysis.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a short book and is an extraordinary read - particularly in these times. The analysis in its third section could equally apply to events from 2016 onwards. I can not recommend it highly enough.

[Katherine Rue · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gem of a book about WWII by a great medievalist.

[Jared · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The ruling idea of the Germans in the conduct of this war was speed. Faced by the undisputed evidence of Germany’s new tactics, we ignored, or wholly failed to understand the quickened rhythm of the times.” 

***

WHAT IS THIS BOOK?
- the work of a very distinguished scholar, a professor of the Sorbonne, who was later to be one of the leaders in the movement of resistance and to be put to death for his part in it.

- Marc Bloch wrote this book, as he says himself, in 'a white heat of rage'.

- The book explains why France was so ill-prepared prior to WWII.

FIGHT ANOTHER DAY
- But now that all show of resistance had melted away, there was obviously no point in carrying on with my duties. Or, perhaps, I should put it this way: that it was more and more clearly borne in on me that the only manner in which I could continue to serve my country and my family was by escaping before the trap should finally be sprung.

WHO IS TO BLAME? (NOTES BELOW FOCUS PRIMARILY ON THE MILITARY)

THE HIGH COMMAND
- Whatever the deep-seated causes of the disaster may have been, the immediate occasion (as I shall attempt to explain later) was the utter incompetence of the High Command.

STAFF PERSONNEL AND LINE PERSONNEL
- One simple and obvious remedy for this state of affairs would have been to establish a system which would have made it possible for small groups of officers to serve, turn and turn about, in the front line and at H.Q. But senior generals dislike having the personnel of their staffs changed too often.

- led to an almost complete divorce between the outlook of the regimental and the staff officer.

MILITARY INCAPABLE OF THINKING ABOUT NEW WAR CONCEPTS
- Our leaders, or those who acted for them, were incapable of thinking in terms of a new war. In other words, the German triumph was, essentially, a triumph of intellect--and it is that which makes it so peculiarly serious.

- Early mistakes become tragic only when the men in charge are incapable of putting them right.

- All these officers had remained, though not always to the same extent, dominated by their memories of the last war.

TEMPO TOO SLOW
- From the beginning to the end of the war, the metronome at headquarters was always set at too slow a beat.

DISTANCES MATTER LESS NOW
- Since the beginning of the twentieth century the whole idea of distance has changed. This alteration in spatial values came about in little more than a single generation.

- The truth of the matter was that the Germans advanced a great deal faster than they should have done according to the old rules of the game.

UNABLE TO ADMIT
- Our own rate of progress was too slow and our minds were too inelastic for us ever to admit the possibility that the enemy might move with the speed which he actually achieved.

UNEXPECTEDLY POWERFUL WEAPONS
- Not only were the German tanks a great deal more numerous than Intelligence had led us to suppose: some of them were quite unexpectedly powerful.

ENEMY IN PLACES WHERE NOT EXPECTED
- Analysed, the words mean no more than this: 'Because the Germans turned up where we didn't expect them and where we had never been told we ought to expect them.'

- The Germans took no account of roads. They were everywhere.

ENEMY MADE CHANGES ON THE FLY
- They relied on action and on improvisation. We, on the other hand, believed in doing nothing and in behaving as we always had behaved.

ENEMY HAD SPECIAL GEAR
- Naturally enough, this high-speed type of warfare demands a certain specialized equipment. The Germans saw to it that such equipment was available: we, on the other hand, did not, or only in insufficient quantities.

- If we were short of tanks, aeroplanes, and tractors, it was mainly because we had put our not inexhaustible supplies of money and labour into concrete...Because we had been taught to put our whole trust in the Maginot Line

ENEMY HAD WEAPONS THAT COULD NOT BE EASILY COUNTERED
- the deplorable immunity thus enjoyed by the enemy bombers, played no small part in lowering the morale of the troops.

OPSEC WAS NOT CONSIDERED
- Besides, a few minutes spent in nosing round our offices, which were plastered with maps showing the location of all munition dumps, fuel depots, and rail-heads in the Army area, would have given much precious information to any spy

ACTION DOES NOT EQUAL PROGRESS
- When we were suddenly called upon to act swiftly, our leaders, more often than not, mistook feverish activity for quick decision.

- They spent their days in rushing from office to office, producing mountains of paper, and never giving themselves a chance to think things out quietly. Unhurried planning alone could have saved us.

- by living in a continual rush they produced in their own minds an illusion of activity.

- Staff circles have always, even in time of peace, been over-fond of living in a perpetual atmosphere of fuss. They should have established, well in advance, a proper time-table of work.

- Soldiers have always held up as a fine example old Joffre's habit of, no matter what the circumstances, having a good night's sleep.

ENEMY USED PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
- The story goes that Hitler, before drawing up his final plans for the campaign, summoned a number of psychologists to his headquarters and asked their advice.

- the air offensive, conducted with such dash by the Germans, does seem to prove that they had gone very deeply into the whole question of nerves and the best way of breaking them.

COMBAT TROOPS EQUALLY TO BLAME
- But it would not be fair to confine these criticisms to the High Command. Generally speaking, the combatant troops were no more successful than the staff in adjusting their movements or their tactical appreciations to the speed at which the Germans moved.

POOR COMMUNICATIONS
- One of them was the wholly inadequate organization of our communications.

INTEL NEEDED IMPROVEMENT
- Improved organization and a keener sense of fact would have been a great advantage. An Intelligence Service ought to act as a kind of agency operating in the interests of the various formations which are--in effect--its customers.

- As to the dissemination of information, it was a standing joke at most headquarters that, as soon as Intelligence found out anything, it proceeded to put it down on paper, mark the document in red ink 'Top Secret', and then shut it away from all those likely to be interested in its contents,

LEADERS WHO IMPOSED NEEDLESS RIGIDITY
- I am prepared even to admit that men must be 'broken in', but only if that process takes into account their quality of human beings--as every true leader has always been ready to recognize.

INCOMPETENCE
- Glaring cases of incompetence had been notorious

- But this clown of a colonel was allowed to stay on,

- It was certainly not his fault that he had been maintained in a post that had put too great a strain on his modest capabilities. Nor was he the only one in like case.

- Those bred up in army ways had, in the course of years spent in the bureaucratic machine, grown used to a certain amount of incompetence which rarely, if ever, ended tragically.

PROMOTION SYSTEM REQUIRED REFORM
- once the question of rank comes into the picture, it follows as a matter of discipline that active command shall go to the senior soldier.

- Now, the movement from one grade to another is controlled by rules, or at least by usages., which make it much more difficult for an officer to be promoted than merely to be given a new appointment.

- Had this system been, in operation during the last war, it is extremely improbable that we should ever have seen a young lieutenant-colonel of 1914, called Debeney, leading the First Army in 1918 to the victories of Montdidier and Saint-Quentin, or Colonel Pétain--the Pétain of our youth--flaming through the hierarchy like a prairie-fire, until he reached the topmost pinnacle of all...at the head of all the soldiers of France.

PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION INADEQUATE
- What, however, it all comes back to, I am convinced, is that the system of education in which senior officers were trained was wholly wrong.

- But no matter how much the things taught may have changed, the method of teaching them was the same, and that is what really matters.

- they had got into the habit of expecting that everything would happen as the manuals said it would. When the Germans refused to play the game according to Staff-College rules, they found themselves as much at sea...They thought that everything was lost, and, therefore, acquiesced in the loss.

RIVALRY IN THE RANKS
- There is an old army saying about the mutual feelings of any two officers who happen to be travelling together up the ladder of promotion. 'If they are Lieutenants, they are friends: if Captains, comrades: if Majors, colleagues: if Colonels, rivals: if Generals, enemies.'

RIDING SOMEONE'S COAT TAILS
- crowd of hangers-on inevitably surrounding each boss with a complexity of flattery and intrigue,

TOO MANY CHIEFS, NOT ENOUGH INDIANS
- where the number of senior officers is too large, responsibility becomes so diluted that it is never felt as an urgent personal preoccupation by any one of them.

ORG CHARTS AND STOVEPIPES
- 'There should never be any branches in a Headquarters Staff.' He meant by this that any such subdivision, though perhaps inevitable, was always fraught with danger. For each part or branch is almost bound to slip into the fallacy of substituting itself for the whole,

- The fact remains, however, that a system of watertight compartments is universal in the higher reaches of the Army. Nowhere have I found them less penetrable than at the very top--

A CASE STUDY IN WHY IT IS OFTEN HARD TO GET THINGS DONE
- As soon as I know what they want done, I will take the necessary steps.' The whole problem resolved itself into knowing whether, in the event of a German breach of neutrality, the High Command meant us or the enemy to reach this particular locality first.

- It would, I suppose, in any case have been more natural for me to go direct to the senior officer in charge of operations, or to one of his representatives. But it is scarcely fitting for one of the uninitiated to knock at the door of the sanctuary.

- I was passed on from office to office.

- Each party to it seemed to be purely concerned with passing the buck.

- As things turned out, I never heard 'another word about the affair.

- All the same, I felt uncomfortable about not sending some sort of answer

- It was not only that the point he had raised was of considerable importance. Unbroken silence on our part would have betrayed to this foreigner the shilly-shallying state of mind of the French High Command. It was bad enough to know it ourselves.

- I sent the following message: 'Don't fill your tanks.' In doing this, I committed a terrible breach of discipline. In the event, however, I did not feel any high degree of guilt. The storm burst, and, as was only to be expected, the Germans beat us to it.

MOUNDS OF PAPERWORK TO GET ANYTHING DONE
- For the 'flabbiness', which was so evident in the High Command had its origin chiefly in habits of living contracted during the years of peace. The 'paper' mania, too, had a good deal to do with it.

DON'T ROCK THE BOAT
- Add to this the terror of 'making a nuisance of oneself', the mania for handling all such matters with kid gloves, which becomes second nature with men who are ching for promotion: the fear of annoying those who are powerful to-day or who may become powerful to-morrow.

- That is the way in which an officer seeks to assure his future. By making oneself party to a reprimand, one runs the risk of compromising one's chances.

POOR COORDINATION WITH ALLIES
- Numerous must have been the bridges (though how numerous I do not know) which the British blew up to cover their retreat, without bothering to find out whether, by their action, they might not be cutting ours.

- We considered that they were acting without the slightest consideration for us,

- A clearer demarcation of the zones for which each army was responsible would probably have prevented a number of tiresome incidents from ever having developed at all.

- But I am convinced that the breakdown of morale would have been far less total, and would have had consequences a great deal less grave, had our contact with our Allies been, in the first place, more firmly established.

- What, in a word, was needed was that we should have an officer of First Army permanently attached to British G.H.Q.

- A genuine alliance is something that has to be worked at all the time. It is not enough to have it set down on paper. It must draw the breath of life from a multiplicity of daily contacts which, taken together, knit the two parties solidly into a single whole. That truth had been too long forgotten at First Army H.Q., and we suffered terribly as a result of our negligence.

NO TASK IS TOO SMALL; ALL ARE IMPORTANT
- the 'showiness' of a job has nothing whatever to do with its importance, or that those engaged in what seem to be very humble tasks are often just as deserving of recognition

THE BEST SOLDIER
- It is a popular fallacy among officers that the man of hot temper, the adventurer or the hooligan, makes the best soldier. That is far from being the truth.

HISTORY IS INSTRUCTIVE
- successive civilizations show certain repetitive patterns, and that these resemble one another in their general lines,

- The traces left by past events never move in a straight line, but in a curve that can be extended into the future.

***

FACTOIDS
- What is a 'batman'? A batman or an orderly is a soldier or airman assigned to a commissioned officer as a personal servant.
- I'm 'batman': https://me.me/i/the-word-batman-is-us...

BONUS
- 'Future War: Not Back to the Future'
- War on the Rocks article by LtGen Dana, USMC, from 6 March 2019 uses the quote at the top from the book 'Strange Defeat') https://warontherocks.com/2019/03/fut...

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the best book I'll read in 2023! Without question, I am an avid reader of history, thus when I saw the title Strange Defeat for the first time, I was intrigued. Why? I’d read many books about the lightning-fast Blitzkrieg of the WWII-era German Army and how they overwhelmed France in 1940, but I’d never read anything from the perspective of a French Army soldier of that timeframe. Time to get the book!

The author, Marc Bloch, has a very unique qualification for such a “Statement of Evidence” as he subtitled his book. He served in WWI as a junior French officer, remained on the reserve roles during the inter-war period, and then served again as a captain in the French Army in 1938-1940. Additionally, he was a history professor as his primary profession making his thoughts even more enlightening. The book is not a litany of post-conflict young officer complaints, although at times you can feel his emotional exasperation rising off the pages which is understandable after such a holistic national defeat. Instead, Strange Defeat is a compilation of some first-hand examinations of what he saw and experienced, while he also attempted to look at the much bigger operational and strategic picture. Overall, an exceptional book on which an entire college course could be based. Below are the most significant excerpts that are worthy of additional thought.

- “This war has taught me a lot, and one of its greatest lessons has been that there are a great many professional soldiers who will never be fighters, and a whole heap of civilians who have fighting in their blood.” P4. PJK. So true. Just because you’ve worn the uniform doesn’t mean you’re automatically a good soldier.
- An historian is not often bored. He always has the resources of memory, observation, and writing to keep him busy. But the feeling that one is serving no useful purpose in a nation at war is intolerable. P7.
- The one thought in everybody's mind was to get clear of this damned stretch of coast before the enemy could smash through our last defences; to escape captivity by the sole road open to us - the sea. P18. Towards evening we re-embarked at Plymouth, and dropped anchor at dawn off Cherbourg. P21. PJK. I never knew that some French were evacuated from the beaches vic Dunkirk. I’ve read many times about the British evacuating their forces from the mainland continent at this time, but never thought about what happened to the other Allied forces, the French who found themselves pushed back to the same area.
- Old Joffre was wiser. “Whether I was responsible for the winning of the Battle of the Marne,” he said, “I do not know. But of this I feel pretty certain, that, had it been lost, the failure would have been laid at my door.” P25. PJK. The responsibility of command; if your team loses, you are to blame.
- Whatever the deep-seated causes of the disaster may have been, the immediate occasion (I shall attempt to explain later) was the utter incompetence of the High Command. P25.
- In short, we could have played our part without difficulty and operations beautifully planned by our own staff and the enemies, if only they had been in accordance with the well-digested lessons learned at peacetime maneuvers. P49. PJK. Seems to indicate that the French Army of the interwar period did not fund and engage in quality training exercises - a recipe for future disaster.
- They relied on action and on improvisation. We, on the other hand, believed in doing nothing and behaving as we always had behaved. P49.
- Unfortunately, our leaders were not drawn from among those who suffered least from a hardening of the arteries. P50. PJK. In other words, the French leaders were old and set in their ways unable to adapt to a rapidly changing situation.
- Let us, if we like, condemn the strategic blunders which compelled our troops in the Nord Department either to abandon to the enemy, or to jettison on the Flanders beaches, the equipment of three motorized divisions, several regiments of mobile artillery, and all the tanks belonging to one of our armies… If we were short of tanks, aeroplanes, and tractors, it was mainly because we had put our not inexhaustible supplies of money and labor into concrete. P52. PJK. BLUF – the French abandoned lost of critical mechanized equipment , of which they could not spare. And instead of investing in such new equipment in the interwar period, they invested in a static fortification between them and Germany – they did not invest wisely. This is the challenge of the Pentagon; how to invest every dollar wisely.
- There can be no real cooperation without comradeship, and comradeship can be achieved only when there is some degree of daily contact. That holds true of all dealings between men, no matter what their nationalities. P78.
- There is no better protection against a hardening of the mental arteries than adaptable minds and physical keenness. P106. PJK: Pure awesomeness. In other words, to be ready for future battles, one must have mental and physical agility no matter one’s age. Your body cannot be soft, and neither can your mind.
- The worst cases of mental paralysis were the result of that mood of outraged amazement which laid hold of men who were faced by a rhythm of events entirely different from the kind of thing that they had been led to expect. P107.
- “Do anything you like Sir, but for Heaven's sake do something! P109.
- Soldiers have always held up as a fine example old Joffre's habit of, no matter what the circumstances, having a good night's sleep. How much better it would have been if our leaders had taken a leaf out of his book. P112.
- … “It's a terrible thing to have to fight a war in one's own country”, and then hurriedly correcting himself, “not that it really matters where a war is fought. A soldier's first duty is to destroy the enemy wherever found.” P114.
- Is it fair to expect that in a war of rapid movement men will have time to learn the lessons of their initial mistakes? The military authorities of 1914-18 were given a breathing space of four years. We had only a few weeks. P120.
- Besides, we had had before our eyes, ever since the summer of 1939, the practical lessons of the Polish campaign. They were clear, simple, and relevant. For what the Germans did later in the West was precisely what they had done earlier in the East. They made us a present of eight months of inactivity, and those eight months should have been used by us in thinking out afresh the whole strategic problem and then putting through the necessary reforms. We failed to take advantage of this opportunity. P121. PJK: This point is perhaps the biggest lesson of the French failure in 1940. They had a chance to learn about the most modern of battlefield tactics that their biggest threat was utilizing… and they did nothing.
- The soldier is only too conscious of the sacrifice he has been called upon to make. If they turn out to have been useless, that, he feels, is not his responsibility. His leaders, ever fearful of his criticism, encourage him to find scapegoats anywhere rather than in the Army. Thus is born the fatal legend of the ‘stab in the back’ which reactionary movements and military coups d’etat always find so useful. P127. PJK. Never thought about this point that the author makes. It’s almost common sense thus I need to watch for this in future world events.
- Among those who did even a little reading (and they were pretty thin on the ground) I scarcely ever saw one with a book in his hands which might have helped him to a better understanding of the present by shedding on it the light of the past. P146. PJK. I love this line “… shedding on it the light of the past”; I hope to use this at some point in the future!
- I detest Nazism, but… it did put at the head, both of its armed forces and of its government, men who, because their brains were fresh and had not been formed in the routine of schools, were capable of understanding ‘the surprising and the new’. All we had to set against them was a set of bald-pates and youngish dotards. P161. PJK. Interesting assessment of the leaders of both countries in 1940. Perhaps another key reason the French lost.

[Bettie]

t has become the must-read book during the pandemic in France. Not Camus's "The Plague'' but Marc Bloch's "Strange Defeat," a scholarly dissection about the fall of France in 1940.

[Samuel Loh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bloch approaches a subject matter which, I feel, few writers of his time could have with the same extraordinary level of emotional collectedness, clarity, or finesse—the complete disintegration of one’s nation, both military and social. True to the historian’s craft, his writing is passionate but never impulsive, his judgments piercing but never unfair; with the exception of mostly infrequent, minor generalisations about different groups of people/organisations (which I nevertheless believe were made in good faith) e.g. when examining the Franco-British alliance’s shortcomings.

In hindsight, the actual reasons which Bloch identifies as central to the French capitulation are not entirely unheard of. The manner in which he presents them, however, is uniquely refreshing. His critique of High Command’s bureaucratic inefficiencies is often accompanied with sharp, sometimes even humorous, personal anecdotes that draw upon an insider’s perspective. He discusses these issues with the fervor and energy of a devoted soldier. The language (even if at times slightly scholarly/academic) is absolutely beautiful and a pleasure to read.

It is difficult to think of Strange Defeat as a strictly historical account for the fall of France in 1940. Indeed, as Bloch himself acknowledges quite often, his wartime appointment did not offer as telescopic a vantage point as he had hoped to pass comment on the more technical or strategic aspects of warmaking (as one might expect from other more conventional titles of military history). Most of the specific military failures he acquaints us with concern a small group of army elements operating in northern France/Belgium, and can scarcely be taken to be representative of the entire French war effort. Rather, Bloch’s work is a patriot’s (historian’s?) very insightful attempt to make meaning of the senselessness of defeat in war, and impose some kind of order to the chaos of total defeat.

[Nat]

A shattering assessment of why the French were so easily defeated in 1940, written in the bleak moment immediately after the capitulation:

"We find ourselves today in this appalling situation--that the fate of France no longer depends on the French, Since that moment when the weapons which we held with too indeterminate a grasp fell from our hands, the future of our country and of our civilization has become the stake in a struggle of which we, for the most part, are only the rather humiliated spectators" (p.174).

It's full of further unflinching judgments like this one: "Our soldiers were defeated and, to some extent, let themselves be too easily defeated, principally because their minds functioned far too sluggishly" (p.48).

The book could also be used as a primer in management, because it catalogues failures in the French military administration that lead to the "sluggishness" that the Germans successfully exploit on the battlefield. One of the failures of the military bureaucracy reminded me of the super-French "Place that Sends You Mad" chapter in The Twelve Tasks of Asterix:

"Dragged from one's bed in the middle of the night by a telegram which might read, for instance, 'Measure 81 to come into force immediately', one would rush to the code-card which was always kept handy, only to find that 'Measure 81' involved the implementation of all clauses contained in 'Measure 49' with the exception of such of them as might have been already set in motion by the application of 'Measure 93'---should the latter happen to have come into force earlier than its numerical place in the series seemed to warrant, and that, in any case, the two first paragraphs of 'Measure 57' must also be acted upon" (p.62).

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

First couple of chapters on the military failings of the French Army in facing the Germans in WWII is pretty standard fare - fighting the last war, overly bureaucratic, etc. Those would be more on the just 3-star level. But Chapter 3, where he covers their shortcomings as a people in recognizing the German threat and in being prepared to adequately deal with it, that is worth the time to read for sure. Bloch is an historian who fought in WWI and WWII and writes this in reflection on France's quick fall to Germany in 1940 as he is fighting in the resistance where he will eventually be executed by the occupying Germans.

Best quote of the book -
"'My only hope...is that when the moment comes we shall have enough blood left to shed, even though it be the blood of those who are dear to us...For there can be no salvation where there is not some sacrifice"

[Tomasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bloch's writing (and the anonymous translation into English) is very good, it's just dragged down by indifferent publisher, who decided that OCR is about as much as they're willing to do. Which results in numerous irritating artifacts and some strangely divided paragraphs, distracting from the overall experience. So, recommended (with a caveat) to everyone interested in the 1940 Blitzkrieg.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

We usually see alternative histories where the Nazis do better then they did in real life. But someone should take up the premise of this book. Was defeat really so strange? If so, what would Europe have looked like after Germany was decimated at the Maginot line?

[Remy Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Holy commas! Not sure if that was Bloch's doing or a poor translation, but the incessant use of commas -- 6+ cooking for a sentence -- made this almost unreadable. Kindle version also has various errors that detract from the experience.

Good firsthand account that's short and yet drags. Sentences should be more concise. It's written with an eye towards its future judgment and so Bloxh wastes a lot of words cabeating and downplaying his analysis. We get it. Note that upfront and don't keep bringing it up. Last chapter drags and while it has some insight, it feels more like a rant with claimed backing from overall truths (the same type of fundamental and self evident principles he says intellectual laziness caused no frenchperson to challenge) than a careful analysis

[David C Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic, written under wartime and unsparing in its critique of France’s military leaders as well as the fractures and weaknesses in French society, especially since WWI. Not a military history per se (although Bloch points to the speed and flexibility of German tactics as key) but a study of organizational weakness and atrophy that can be read with profit today if you’re a business leader or a college president. Bloch was, of course, one of the great modern historians, he fought for France in two world wars and he was executed by the Nazis in 1944 for his heroic work in the resistance.

[TheBeeReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

[Tom Lewandowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

They just don't write like this anymore! Why?!?

[The Sporty Bookworm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lé début est intéressant puis une fois l'explication de la défaite de 1940 passée, cela part dans tous les sens, c'est pénible.

[Salomé · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ennui

[Chris Buckham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Title: Strange Defeat
Author: Marc Bloch
ISBN: 978-8-087-83083-3
Publisher: Important Books
Year: 2013
Softcover
Pages: 133
Photographs/maps: 0

Between July and August 1940, Captain Marc Bloch, a fuel services officer in the French Army, drafted his testament of the cause of the French defeat at the hands of the German Wehrmacht. Bloch had seen active service in the trenches during the First World War and was a historian/professor during the interwar years. His service in the Second World War was undertaken at both operational and Army level HQ's where he was privy to the workings of the highest level of French Army command. With ample military experience and the eye of a professional historian, he was able to to discern much in the confusion that he witnessed around him.

His book is a poignant and insightful analysis of why the French Army and, by extension, the French Government and people were so thoroughly and soundly beaten when all of the potential existed for French victory. He addresses multiple aspects of the French armed forces and French society for, as he points out, there was no one issue but a combination thereof, that brought the house of cards down. He readily acknowledges that he did not have ready access to the 'behind the scenes' machinations of decision making but he did have a keen eye and a myriad of experience that gives his analysis validity and credibility.

He is both relentless and balanced in his exposure of the flaws that plagued the French leadership and HQ; he spares no level of command, but it is evident that his purpose is not to discredit on a personal level but to reveal on a professional level. His observations cross the spectrum of what today would be called the 'J-Staff'; some of his more telling observations follow:

1. Communication: A lack of common operating picture within the HQ's and a failure to pass information to the levels where it was needed in a timely manner. Also a tendency to hoard information;
2. Administration vs Operations: Administration trumped operational decision making. An emphasis on process as opposed to results.
3. Hubris: An assumption of superiority and a failure to emphasize continuous learning. A failure to appreciate the changes that technology had brought to the battlefield and a reliance upon the "way it has always been done'.
4. Education: A failure to adapt and to take advantage of the opportunities to adjust and develop doctrine before the conflict started (the Germans used blitzkrieg techniques in Poland but the French ignored the lessons to be learned despite an 8 month gap between Poland and France).
5. Command: An inability of the commanders to adjust to the dynamic environment of modern operations as a result of experience, training and paradigm shortfalls. Bloch quotes a corps commander to Gen Blanchard (commander of the 1st Army): "Do what you want Mon General but do something!"; stated in Bloch's presence.
6. National Expectations/institutions: A rise amongst the population of a level of expectation for self (as opposed to national) service exacerbated by both government and media playing off political and economic fault lines resulting in stagnation and a psychological 'softening' of the population. A diminishment of critical thinking within scientific and centres of higher education.

These represent a few of the myriad of observations raised by Bloch. Unlike historians writing on the collapse of France in the past tense, Bloch's work is based on experience and having lived the drama. His comments are based upon his personal experiences and views. Bloch's work is a challenge to France to take a hard, unvarnished look at its performance in the war. Unfortunately, many of his views are prevalent in the military's and societies of today including a tendency to emphasize a success without recognizing where significant weaknesses existed. His narrative lacks perhaps some of the 'finishing' of a modern author's work but his points are clear and devastating; our modern institutions and commands ignore his lessons at their peril.

www.themilitaryreviewer.blogspot.com

[Bill Finnegan]

Years ago I read somewhere that it is beneficial to read books in topical clusters, i.e., that are somehow connected to one another. I just completed my World War 2 cluster with “Strange Defeat”, Marc Bloch’s analysis of why it was so easy for Nazi Germany to conqueror France. Block was an eminent French historian who served in the First World War; volunteered for the second despite being a middle- aged grandfather; and was executed by the Nazis in 1944 for his work with the resistance. He wrote the book when he returned to his University teaching post soon after France surrendered. I think it's an important book, a must read for history buffs. But I expect the average reader will not be interested in the subject matter and everyone will struggle a bit with Bloch's writing style (or the English translation thereof) . Some of his explanations for France’s collapse may ( or may not) offer lessons for us today. Here are the main ones that I recall: The French government was dysfunctional; defense funds were miss- spent on construction of a defensive wall (i.e., the Maginot line which the Nazis circumvented) instead of on tanks and planes; the French Army was commanded by old men (and younger officers trained by them) who thought the new War would be exactly like the last one and adopted their strategy and tactics accordingly, ignoring the blitzkrieg tactics and capabilities Germany displayed in its invasion of Poland.; the horrendous experience of the last war ( 1, 357,800 Frenchmen killed, 4, 803,000 wounded , many left with permanent disabilities) bred pacifism and dilution of patriotism which in turn led to widespread sentiment that surrender and occupation were better than war—although in fairness the pacifists were at that point uniformed as to just how profoundly evil Nazism and its intentions were; the timidity of the nation at large--in the wake of Germany’s blanket bombing of Polish cities business interest worried about damage to the economy and citizens about loss of civilian life and this influenced the government to declare that all cities and towns of 20,000 or were would be “open”, i.e., undefended , so the Nazi’s would have no need to bomb them . (He relates how cadets of Samur were being killed on the Loire while Nazis cut their escape route over bridges in Nantes that were off limits to and undefended by French Army)

[Jeff Greason · Rating 4 out of 5]

So often, Godwin's law or the persistent apologists for Communism hinder us from learning badly needed lessons from the tulmutuous twentieth century. This short, very well written book is the judgement of a prominent French historian on how France came to be so swiftly defeated in World War Two, not as a matter of tactics and movements on maps, but also in how the seeds of defeat lay in the state of the nation. The author went on to be a major figure in the French Resistance and was shot for his efforts. I think it would have pleased him to have people read his words today, and learn from them while such cataclysmic results are still avoidable. By the second half of the book, I was highlighting passage after passage, wanting to post them to show the applicability of the lessons of the past to today. And because of the analytic tone, and because he writes to criticize his own country's faults rather than to demonize the invaders, it may perhaps be accessible in a way that other treatments of history are not. Strongly recommended, but you may find it too close for comfort to things you see in the world around you today.

[Rod Zinkel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mark Bloch, a French historian who became part of the resistance against Hitler, writes of the reasons for German’s early victory over France, as he sees it. The leaders of the French military fought the old war, thinking in terms and using tactics of World War I, while Germany fought a new war, using new tactics and weapons to overtake fast. Bloch questions the leadership’s competence at a high level, which is made of old men, when young men are better suited for war, including leadership roles. One reason is the young man is better and quicker to adapt. Bloch comments the Germans improvised, the French did not know how to react. The author criticizes his own profession of education, for senior officials as well as the soldier. He calls for intellectual freedom. He also calls for a free press to present fact instead of propaganda. Finally, he warns of the factionalism in politics: “Those of us--and they were the exceptions--who let themselves be caught up in one or other of the political parties almost always ended by being its prisoners rather than its guides.”

[Vendedor de rápida · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo más importante de este libro es el lúcido análisis de la derrota francesa frente a Alemania en 1940 como sólo lo puede hacer una mente privilegiada, con una claridad y concisión cartesiana que asombra hoy día. Bloch sirvió como oficial de Intendencia y ya había conocido la I Guerra Mundial, y eso permite que sus descripciones y anécdotas presenten la guerra como lo que es, algo absurdo y caótico pero también analizable, como cualquier actividad social o laboral.