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Overshadowed by the second act of the confrontation between France and Germany which goes on since Guillaume II to Hitler, the first act, that of 1870-1871, is indeed the very first traumatic experience inflicted by this tragedy. Philippe-E. Landau analyzes how the French Jews lived through the invasion of the country and the horrors of war, the end of the Empire which had been a lucky period for them, and the birth of the third Republic about which they knew nothing, the bloody fight between Communards and the government troops, the first days of the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. He resets the spy mania of 1870 and the promulgation of the Crémieux decree by the republican government in the long-lasting history of antisemitism in France as well as in Algeria.