Marc Bloch

Marc Bloch (1886–1944) was a pioneering French historian who co-founded the Annales School with Lucien Febvre in 1929, revolutionizing historiography through a multidisciplinary approach emphasizing social, economic, and long-term structures over events. Influenced by the Dreyfus Affair and his service in World War I, he authored key works like Feudal Society and Strange Defeat, critiquing France's 1940 collapse. Joining the French Resistance during World War II, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Lyon in March 1944, tortured, and executed by firing squad on July 16, 1944.