In this first volume of her monumental three-volume study, Hannah Arendt traces the rise of anti-Semitism in the history of Judaism in Central and Western Europe and outlines the role played by Jews in the development of the nation-state on the one hand, and non-Jewish society on the other. With the emergence of the first anti-Semitic parties in the 1870s and 1880s, Arendt argues, the path was paved for the "final solution." She sees the Dreyfus Affair as a general rehearsal for the work that unfolded in our era - the first distinctly modern/contemporary use of anti-Semitism as a tool of public policy and hysteria as a political weapon.