The Dreyfus Affair

This was a dramatic scandal in turn-of-the-century France from 1894 to 1906.  An Alsatian officer, Afred Dreyfus, who happened to be a Jew, was accused of offering to sell sensitive French military secrets (whatever they might possibly have been) to the German military attaché in Paris.  He was tried, convicted, and sent to Devil’s Island, a particularly harsh French penal colony in South America (famously depicted in the movie “Papillon” starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman). 

 A French intelligence (contradiction in terms?) officer, Picquart, discovered that the alleged “smoking gun”, not only did not implicate Dreyfus – who had heretofore been a loyal and obedient officer since 1880 – but instead pointed to another officer, Esterhazy, whose handwriting matched exactly and fit the profile of the spy: lots of gambling debts, not particularly loyal, and overlooked for promotion.

 By then the Top Brass had committed itself to Dreyfus’ guilt; to back down would be admit an error and look stupid.  Too proud to admit its mistake, it tried Dreyfus again and convicted him again.  Dreyfus accepted a pardon, which got him out of Devil’s Island (none too soon – the conditions there often equated to death sentence) but did not exonerate him or restore his rank or honor.  The original document was finally brought to light and exposed as not only a forgery, but a particularly blatant and incompetent one.  In 1906 Dreyfus was reinstated in the French Army, with honors, and served with distinction in World War I against the Germans to whom he supposedly tried to sell secrets.  He died in 1935, shortly before World War II, apparently managing to avoid being accused of being a disloyal Jew offering to sell French military secrets to the Nazis (but he had been long retired by that point anyway).

 In addition to the inconvenience of Devil’s Island (his most serious and immediate concern) Dreyfus had to contend with two court martials and a pardon; and Emile Zola, the famous author, was sued for libel by Esterhazy for publicly accusing him (“J’Accuse”) of being the actual culprit, and actually LOST the case.  The politics and legal subtleties of the drama are considerably less important in the whole picture than several essential points:

1.         No actual military secrets changed hands:  the German attaché did not take Esterhazy’s bait.

2.         Dreyfus’ Jew-ness was considered evidence enough of his guilt.  French anti-semites believed that Jews could not have any loyalty to France.  The anti-Dreyfusards considered the matter “France vs. Jews”.  The “Dreyfusards” (those who supported him and believed he should be released and restored to honor) believed – understandably – that an innocent man should not be punished and that France’s “honor” was not served by doing so.   The scandal divided France into those two camps, with some intense disagreement and discord.

3.         The top brass considered its own honor critical to France’s security.  “We can’t expect our troops to fight and die against Germans if they believe their own generals are idiots.”  But they compounded the original error of convicting Dreyfus with the subsequent error of refusing to release him when the true culprit (Esterhazy) became obvious.  How THIS would inspire loyalty of French poilus is bizarre.  French troops did in fact mutiny in 1917, but this had nothing to do with Dreyfus and everything to do with idiotic offensives which killed off soldiers but achieved nothing. 

 The affair was turned into several movies; the one I saw was “Prisoner of Honor”, from 1991, which starred Richard Dreyfuss (!) as Picquart (pronounced “Picard” – Patrick Stewart?  Where?) and someone else (Kenneth Colley) as Dreyfus himself.  Oliver Reed has a substantial role, but dials back the panache he displayed in "Tommy" and "Gladiator".  As for Dreyfus himself, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (of “Seinfeld”) is claimed to be a distant relative (absent in this movie) but how…is unclear.