The Dreyfus Affair

Happy birthday Alfred Dreyfus. Who’s Alfred Dreyfus? Better to ask what was the Dreyfus Affair? What was that all about? In my readings of European history and literature, I gathered that the Dreyfus Affair was a major scandal during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, comparable in extent to the Watergate Scandal. 

In a nutshell, Alfred Dreyfus was an officer in the French Army. He was Jewish. One of his commanding officers didn’t like Jews, so he managed to get Dreyfus sent off to the notorious Devil’s Island prison for life. The truth leaked out, and eventually Dreyfus was released. It took several more years before he was exonerated. 

Alfred Dreyfus was born in the French province of Alsace in 1859. His father was a successful textile manufacturer. During the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, Alsace fell to the Prussians and the Dreyfus family escaped to Paris. The loss of Alsace along with the province of Lorraine was a great shock to French pride, and young Alfred determined to join the military. 

He enlisted in the army in 1877 and by 1889 he was a captain of artillery. He was then admitted to France’s War College. He took an examination that would have gotten him on the general staff, but a member of the staff felt that Jews were not desirable on the staff and lowered his grade. Two years later, the army learned that a spy was passing information on artillery parts to the Germans, and Dreyfus was accused. In a secret court martial, Dreyfus was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island off the coast of South America. Dreyfus was taken to the headquarters courtyard where his insignia was stripped from his coat and his sword was broken, while fellow soldiers watched silently and onlookers shouted abuse. 

The next year the chief of military intelligence discovered the real spy was a Major Esterhazy. The intelligence chief was quickly transferred to the Saharan desert. The press got hold of the story, but a court martial found Esterhazy not guilty. Just to be safe, Esterhazy skipped off to England. Dreyfus’s supporters, including writers such as Emile Zola continued to press his case. Dreyfus was tried again and was again found guilty, but due to popular opinion, the French president offered Dreyfus a pardon. 

After four years on Devil’s Island, his health was broken and he accepted the pardon. He said, “The government has given me back my freedom. It is nothing for me without my honor.” Saving face for the military was more important than the truth. Finally, six years later, a military commission exonerated Dreyfus, and he returned to the army with the rank of major. Two years later he was wounded in the arm in an assassination attempt by a right-wing journalist. 

He retired from the army in 1907, but returned to the service during World War I, finally retiring with the rank of lieutenant-colonel after the war. Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France in the peace settlement. Dreyfus died in 1935 on July 12, exactly 29 years after his exoneration. He was 75. Dreyfus was fortunate he did not live to see WWII when Germany took over the whole of France. It was an especially bad time for Jews, when Auschwitz would make Devil’s Island look like a beach resort.

The Shame