The Dreyfus Affair

Podcast Transcript

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, France was shaken by a crisis that shook their entire society.

An army officer was wrongly convicted in a sham trial. Then over the next several years, the French military doubled down, refusing to acknowledge what they had done, and punished everyone who attempted to prove them wrong, and even letting the guilty party go free.

The long-term results of the controversy changed France in ways that can still be felt today.

Learn more about the Dreyfus affair, why it happened, and how it affected French society on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The Drefyuss Affair is one of the most significant political and social crises in French history. It is little known today, almost 130 years after the events, especially if you don’t live in France. However, at the time, especially in France, it was the political story of the era.

It wasn’t just a big news story. It completely divided French society and left a legacy that permanently changed French culture.

On the eve of the Dreyfus Affair in the early 1890s, France was a deeply divided and unsettled nation, marked by political instability, social fragmentation, and ideological conflict.

The Third Republic, established in 1870 following the collapse of the Second Empire during the Franco-Prussian War, had endured for over two decades but remained fragile and contested.

Over the last century France had whipsawed between republic to monarchy to republic to monarchy and back to republic.

Many monarchists, Bonapartists, and conservative Catholics still viewed the republic as illegitimate or temporary, hoping for a return to traditional rule.

Meanwhile, republicans and secularists were struggling to define the nation along democratic, rational, and civic lines, often in opposition to the influence of the Catholic Church and the old aristocracy.

The trauma of the Franco-Prussian War and the humiliating loss of the region of Alsace-Lorraine had left a deep scar on the French psyche.

Nationalism was on the rise, fueled by a desire for revenge against Germany, and the army was venerated as both the guardian of national honor and a possible instrument of future redemption.

In this context, the military occupied a privileged position in society, and criticisms of it were often equated with treason.

Perhaps most consequential was the surge in xenophobia and anti-Semitism, which had been building in the 19th century.

The influx of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, combined with the visibility and success of assimilated French Jews in finance, the press, and the professions, stirred resentment among traditionalists.

The publication of Édouard Drumont’s La France Juive in 1886, a best-selling anti-Semitic diatribe, gave ideological coherence to these prejudices and found an eager audience among the French far right.

Anti-Semitism became a potent political force, especially among those who saw Jews as symbols of modernity, liberalism, and the alleged decadence of the republic.

What became known as the Dreyfus Affair started simply enough. It began in 1894 when French military intelligence discovered that someone was leaking classified information to the Germans.

Suspicion quickly fell on Captain Alfred Dreyfus, one of the few Jewish officers on the General Staff.

Alfred Dreyfus was a captain in the French artillery and a graduate of the prestigious École Polytechnique. Crucially, in addition to being Jewish, he was also from Alsace, the territory which was taken by Germany after the Franco-Prussian War, making him doubly suspect in the eyes of many contemporaries.

Just as an aside…..If any of you are curious, Alfred Dreyfus is actually distantly related to the actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She is the fifth cousin four times removed of Alfred Dreyfus.

When French intelligence discovered that military secrets were being passed to the German embassy in Paris, they found a document known as the “bordereau”, which was a handwritten memorandum listing French military information.

The handwriting was compared to that of various officers, and military investigators concluded it matched Dreyfus’s writing, though this analysis was deeply flawed. It was based on a few elements of the writing, and no handwriting expert ever examined it.

Rather than conducting a thorough and impartial inquiry, the military tribunal proceeded with what can only be described as a predetermined outcome. Dreyfus was court-martialed in a secret military trial where he was denied access to the evidence against him.

The proceedings were heavily influenced by antisemitic assumptions and the desire to find a scapegoat for such an intelligence blunder.

Dreyfus was found guilty of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment in the notorious penal colony on Devil’s Island in French Guyana.

The death penalty for such cases had been abolished in France in 1848.

In addition to his sentence, he was subject to a public degradation ceremony.

The ceremony took place on January 5, 1895, in the courtyard of the École Militaire in Paris. Before a formation of thousands of troops and a large crowd, Dreyfus, dressed in a full military uniform, was formally stripped of his rank.

An officer tore the insignia from his uniform, broke his sword in half, and declared him dishonored. Throughout the ceremony, Dreyfus loudly protested his innocence, crying out, “I swear that I am innocent. I remain worthy of serving in the Army. Long live France!”

The public was intended to demonstrate the army’s resolve against treason. However, in many ways, it backfired. Many of the observers thought it was just a performance to justify the lack of evidence in the trial.

When he arrived on Devil’s Island on April 14, 1895, he was the only prisoner on the island. Despite being the only prisoner, the prison’s commandant treated him harshly. He was given spoiled food and often suffered from tropical diseases. He was restricted to a stone hut four meters by four meters in area.

On September 6, 1896, in response to a false article in a British paper reporting his escape, he was shackled to bed for weeks unable to move.

The sentencing of Alfred Dreyfus was not the end of the story. Actually, it was far from it.

Initially, most of French society accepted the verdict. The military’s authority was rarely questioned, and antisemitic sentiment made many people readily believe in Dreyfus’s guilt.

However, cracks in the case began to appear in 1896 when Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, the new head of military intelligence, began looking into the case.

Picquart had been reviewing the Dreyfus file and, upon seeing new intercepted documents from the German military attaché, realized that the real spy was still active. He discovered evidence suggesting that the real traitor was Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.

Esterhazy had motive; he was heavily in debt and had a history of dubious financial dealings, and he had access to the kind of military information mentioned in the bordereau. Moreover, his handwriting was a perfect match for that in the Bordeaux document.

Picquart, for his part, thought that he had done something good by finding the actual traitor, who had been continuing to pass information to the Germans.

However, the Army was more concerned at this point about protecting itself and didn’t want to admit that it had made the mistake.

This was really when the entire affair changed from just a travesty of justice to a full-blown scandal.

In response to bringing these allegations forward, Colonel Picquart was sent to Tunisia so he couldn’t continue his investigation.

In early 1898, Esterhazy was subject to a quick and secret trial where he was acquitted of all charges.

As with so many scandals in history, the cover-up ended up becoming a bigger scandal than the initial one that started it.

The case might have remained buried if not for Dreyfus’s family, particularly his brother Mathieu, who refused to accept the verdict. They gradually built a network of supporters, including prominent politicians, intellectuals, and journalists who began to question the evidence and the fairness of the trial.

The transformation of the Dreyfus case from a military matter into a national crisis culminated with the novelist and journalist Émile Zola’s famous open letter titled “J’Accuse…!” published on January 13, 1898.

His article directly accused military officials and government ministers of covering up the truth and perpetrating a judicial error. Zola’s intervention was crucial because it reframed the issue from a question of military justice to one of fundamental human rights and the integrity of French institutions.

It transformed what had been whispered suspicions into public accusations that demanded a response. The letter’s publication forced French society to confront uncomfortable truths about antisemitism, military incompetence, and the fallibility of institutions they had long trusted.

The affair split French society into two camps: the Dreyfusards, who believed in Dreyfus’s innocence and demanded justice, and the anti-Dreyfusards, who supported the military’s verdict and viewed challenges to it as attacks on French honor and stability. This division cut across traditional political lines, creating strange alliances and bitter enemies.

The Dreyfusards included intellectuals like Zola, political figures like Georges Clemenceau, and eventually much of the political left. They argued that individual justice and truth were more important than institutional loyalty.

The anti-Dreyfusards, meanwhile, included many conservatives, military officers, Catholic leaders, and those who saw the campaign for Dreyfus as a Jewish and foreign conspiracy against France.

The intensity of this division is difficult to overstate. Families were torn apart, friendships destroyed, and French society polarized in ways not seen since the Revolution. The affair became a proxy war for competing visions of what France should be: a republic based on individual rights and rational justice, or a nation rooted in tradition, military honor, and Catholic values.

The truth gradually emerged through a series of revelations and investigations. Major Hubert-Joseph Henry, one of the key figures in maintaining the cover-up, was exposed as having forged evidence to support the case against Dreyfus.

When confronted with proof of his forgery, Henry committed suicide in 1898. Esterhazy, the likely real culprit, fled to England. These developments made Dreyfus’s innocence increasingly apparent.

In 1899, Dreyfus was brought back from Devil’s Island for a new trial.

Remarkably, even with the evidence of forgery and cover-up, the military court still found him guilty, though they reduced his sentence to ten years and recommended a presidential pardon.

This verdict shocked even some anti-Dreyfusards and demonstrated how deeply institutional prejudice and corruption ran.

President Émile Loubet pardoned Dreyfus in September 1899, but full exoneration didn’t come until 1906, when the Court of Cassation, the French Supreme Court, finally overturned his conviction entirely.

Dreyfus was reinstated in the army with the rank of major and later served with distinction in World War I.

The Dreyfus Affair fundamentally transformed France in several profound ways. First, it led to a decisive shift in the balance of power between civil and military authority. The military’s credibility was severely damaged, and civilian oversight of military affairs was strengthened. This represented a crucial step in the development of democratic governance in France.

The affair also accelerated the separation of church and state. Many Catholic leaders had supported the anti-Dreyfusard position, associating the church with antisemitism and reactionary politics in the public mind. This contributed to the passage of the 1905 law separating church and state, fundamentally altering the relationship between religious and secular authority in France.

Whatever forces in French society wished for a return to a monarchy, they never found any success after the Dreyfus Affair.

Perhaps most significantly, the affair marked a turning point in the fight against French antisemitism. The affair exposed the depth of antisemitic sentiment in French society, and it also mobilized opposition to such prejudice.

In the end, the Dreyfus Affair not only vindicated an innocent man but also forced France to confront its contradictions. It reshaped the nation’s legal and political landscape, giving rise to modern concepts of civil rights and the limits of government and military power in a republic.