From 1940 to 1945, the French historian Fernand Braudel was a P.O.W. in Germany. During these years he wrote notably the first version of his famous book on the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II. Some commentators have seen this as a kind of flight from the present, which would also explain the structure of the book and Braudel’s concept of “longue durée”. But a closer look at the historian’s activities during his captivity, and especially at his lectures given in the “Oflags” of Mainz und Lübeck, shows that he did reflect on the present at least as much as on the 16th Century.