The Struggle against Revision of the Dreyfus verdicts

Such imperfect arbitrator as was eventually meted out to Dreyfus; and the flavours taken to carry the excesses of the Army and other anti-Dreyfusards which the Affair revealed represented a step forward in stabilizing the Third Republic, but they go forth an unresolved legacy of discord and distrust among the contending factions and interests involved.

Introduction: french Anti-Semitism and The Third Republic

Traditional anti-Semitism had existed in France for many centuries. It was based on popular belief that the Jews were Christ-killers and engaged in ritual murder of Christians. Jews were periodically reviled and persecuted, restricted to ghettos and limited to occupations much(prenominal)(prenominal) as money lending. France was the first European nation to cave in the Jews full political and legal rights -- in 1791. The Jewish companionship in France was small, 80-100,000 by the 1890s, only .4 percent of the population. Many Jews assimilated and dual-lane in the middle class prosperity and economic ontogenesis of 19th century France. According to Wistrich, "although violent anti-Semitic riots stone-broke out in Alsace in 1848, there was no form antisemitic movement before 1870" (127). Finzi added that "up until the early 1890s anti-Semitism in France had little political importance" (20). It then took a highly virulent form that reached a zenith during the Dreyfus Affair.

The growth of French anti-Semitism by and by 1870 was inseparably linked with

Pages, Alain, Ed. Emile Zola The Dreyfus Affair. Trans. Eleanor Lemieux. raw Haven, Yale UP, 1996.

Dreyfus was arrested on October 15, 1894. He was held and interrogated at the Cherche-Midi prison house in Paris. The decision to arrest him was made by take care of War General Auguste Mercier on the recommendation of the French boss of Staff R. de Boisdeffre. The decision to try Dreyfus was made by Mercier after consultation with the Cabinet. This 'rush to prosecute' was undoubtedly influenced by a number of factors, including Mercier's trembling political standing at the time. Historians have disagreed as to how often of a role anti-Semitism, as opposed to mere unwiseness and carelessness, played in those decisions. Most earlier historians tended to discount its importance.

Chapman say anti-Semitism "cannot be shown to have played a sovereign part in the trial and arrest of Dreyfus" (20). Later historians such as Vital viewed it as the dominant factor (542). thither is little question that the anti-Semitism of Henry's superior, Colonel Jean Conrad-Sandherr, who had tried unsuccessfully to block Dreyfus' appointment to the General Staff and the aristocratic company mindset of de Boisdeffre and other senior officers against Jews helped resolve whatever doubts they whitethorn have had in favor of Dreyfus' guilt.

Shirer, William L. Collapse of the Third Republic. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1969.

The new form of Anti-Semitism which emerged after 1870 was based on the proposition that the Jews were the enemy of la patrie. Left wing thinkers such as Charles Fourier and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon viewed "the Jews as the representatives, manipulators, promoters, and beneficiaries of the bourgeois economy," who exploited the proletariat (Vital 343). a great deal of rural France associated Jews with the adverse consequences of economic modernization. Edouard Drumont's La France juive (1886) popularized the theory that the Jews had seized spot in 1789 and were successfully subverting French tradit
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