History of the Jews

by Paul Johnson

‘We were ready to die for Dreyfus,’ wrote Charles Péguy angrily, ‘but Dreyfus himself is not.’160 Why should he? He seems to have realized, along with many older Jews, that the pursuit of the case à l’outrance was increasing, solidifying and would end by institutionalizing anti-Semitism in France. According to Léon Daudet, he used to say to the fanatics on his side: ‘I’ve never had a moment’s peace since leaving Devil’s Island,’ or ‘Shut up, all of you, or I’ll confess.’161 He even remarked, with heavy Jewish irony: ‘There’s no smoke without fire, you know.’ But the new power of the written word in alliance with the radical left was now out of control. It pushed on for revenge and total victory. It got both. The Assumptionists were kicked out of France. The left won an overwhelming electoral success in 1906. Dreyfus was rehabilitated and made a general. Picquart ended up Minister for War. The state, now in Dreyfusard hands, waged a destructive campaign against the church. So the extremists won, both in creating the affair and in winning it.162 But there was a price to pay, and in the end it was the Jews who paid it. Anti-Semitism was institutionalized. Charles Maurras’s League went on to become, after the 1914–18 war, a pro-fascist, anti-Semitic movement which formed the most vicious element in the Vichy regime, 1941–4, and helped to send hundreds of thousands of French Jews, native and refugee, to their deaths, as we shall see. The victory of the Dreyfusards established i...