A comparison with the position and role of antisemitism in France may further explain the special place of antisemitism in Germany of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries; the apparent similarities between the two countries may also shed some light on the fundamental differences between them.

The history of French antisemitism has received far less attention than its German equivalent. General books on the history of the Third Republic mention, of course, Edouard Drumont and the astounding success of his La France Juive, published in 1886, not only among the general reading public but also among some of France's most prominent intellectuals. The Dreyfus affair is also discussed extensively. But one cannot help but wonder how slanted the picture of the past has become through hindsight and in view of later events in Germany. For our purposes it is not necessary to go into the details of France's tradition of antisemitism. Suffice it to recall that, since the early part of the nineteenth century, manifestations of anti-Jewish sentiments could be found in France, as in Germany, on both the left and the right, nourished no doubt by mainstream Catholic hostility toward the Jews, and that during the later part of the century, French antisemitism, despite its apparent uniqueness, could easily have been defined in terms quite similar to the ones used in the German case.