In 1939 France declared war on Germany after its invasion and occupation of Poland. As France mobilized its troops, Marc Bloch left his position at the Sorbonne and took up his reserve status as a captain in the French Army at the age of 52. He was encouraged at the time by colleagues both in France and abroad to leave the country. He said it was his personal obligation to stand for the moral imperative.
- "I was born in France, I have drunk the waters of her culture. I have made her past my own. I breathe freely only in her climate, and I have done my best, with others, to defend her interests."
His memoir of the first days of World War II, Strange Defeat, written in 1940 but not published until 1946.
The Historian's Craft (French: Apologie pour l'histoire ou Métier d'historien, 1949) is a book by Marc Bloch and first published in English in 1953 (New York: Knopf) (it was the first of his works to be translated into English). At that stage he was not as well known in the English-speaking world as he was to be in the 1960s where his works on feudal society and rural history were published.
The book was written in 1941 and 1942. Bloch joined the French Resistance prior to its completion.
