He was a founding member of the Annales School of French social history. Bloch specialised in medieval history and published widely on Medieval France over the course of his career. As an academic, he worked at the University of Strasbourg to and to , the University of Paris to , and the University of Montpellier to After the war, he was awarded his doctorate in and became a lecturer at the University of Strasbourg. There, he formed an intellectual partnership with modern historian Lucien Febvre.
Bloch was a modernist in his historiographical approach, and repeatedly emphasised the importance of a multidisciplinary engagement towards history, particularly blending his research with that on geography , sociology and economics, which was his subject when he was offered a post at the University of Paris in Involved in the Battle of Dunkirk and spending a brief time in Britain, he unsuccessfully attempted to secure passage to the United States.
Back in France, where his ability to work was curtailed by new antisemitic regulations, he applied for and received one of the few permits available allowing Jews to continue working in the French university system.
He had to leave Paris, and complained that the Nazi German authorities looted his apartment and stole his books; he was also persuaded by Febvre to relinquish his position on the editorial board of Annales.
He then joined the non-Communist section of the French Resistance and went on to play a leading role in its unified regional structures in Lyon. In , he was captured by the Gestapo in Lyon and murdered in a summary execution after the Allied invasion of Normandy. Several worksβincluding influential studies like The Historian's Craft and Strange Defeat βwere published posthumously. His historical studies and his death as a member of the Resistance together made Bloch highly regarded by generations of post-war French historians; he came to be called "the greatest historian of all time".
