June 30, 2021 • 41 mins
The court-martial and exile of Alfred Dreyfus was such big news that it started to be referred to simply as “The Affair.” And it divided French society and became international news.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy be Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This is
part two of our episode on the Dreyfus affair, and
last time we talked about the state of things in
(00:23):
France between eighteen seventy when the Franco Prussian War begin
and eight ninety four when Alfred Dreyfus was accused of
selling military secrets to Germany. Honestly, even though that was
two thirds of the episode, that was a brief discussion
of all that context. Uh, there is a lot of
context in that earlier episode, including the things that led
(00:46):
Dreyfus to join the French army in the first place.
So this episode is going to make the most sense
if folks have listened to the earlier one. First. Today
we're going to pick up where we left off, which
was with Dreyfus being suspected of reason in early October.
The accusation against Alfred Dreyfus followed the discovery of a
(01:06):
torn up document known as the bordereaux. Bordereaux is a
French word for memo or docket, and This document listed
several other documents that its author could sell to the recipient.
It was found in a wastebasket at the Paris office
of German military atche Lieutenant Colonel Maximilian von Schfortz Koppin.
Dreyfus was not informed of what specifically he was suspected
(01:30):
of having done, just that it was treasonous, and at
the beginning he seems to have believed that whatever it
was that people thought that he did, like this accusation,
was just a mistake, and surely whoever had made that
mistake would rectify it as soon as they realized what
had happened. So trusting, because this involved espionage, the investigation
(01:52):
was supposed to be handled in secret. Alfred's wife, Lucy
knew something was going on very quickly as officials arrived
to search their home and to question Lucy and their
wet nurse, who was from Alsace. This questioning was apparently
so aggressive and traumatizing that the nurse vomited afterward. This
just made the interrogator, Commandantupatti de Clem even more convinced
(02:16):
of dreyfuss guilt. Multiple people he questioned said he seemed
to be already convinced that Dreyfus was guilty and that
he was just looking for things that would back that up,
rather than actually trying to find the truth. Because of
the secrecy involved, Lucy was forbidden to contact any of
Alfred's other family about what was happening or to try
to get help. When she was finally allowed to write
(02:38):
to Alfred's brother Matthew, a couple of weeks after Alfred
was first accused, Matthew was totally baffled, calling Alfred's perfect
loyalty his strongest trait. At the same time, like Alfred,
Lucy and Matthew both seemed to think that this was
just some kind of mistake that the Army would soon rectify.
(02:59):
This invest Gatien found very little evidence to support the
allegation that Dreyfus had sold French secrets to Germany. As
we discussed in Part one, a handwriting expert had examined
the Bordereaux and claimed that the dissimilarity to drapus His
own handwriting was evidence that he had written it, calling
it a self forgery, but beyond that it was all
(03:19):
just suspicion. Because Drapus was a Jewish man from Alsace
who did not always get along with other people on
the French Army's general staff because of his demeanor and
his family's wealth. On October fifteenth, eighteen nine four, Dreyfus
was ordered to appear in person for questioning in civilian dress.
When he got there, Dupatti said that he had injured
(03:41):
his finger and he asked Dreyfus to take dictation for him.
Dreyfus agreed, and as he was writing, Dupatti yelled at him,
accusing him of not taking things seriously. Dravius thought that
Dupatti was angry about how he was writing down the dictation,
so he tried to slow down and more carefully, at
(04:01):
which point Dupatty grabbed him by the shoulder and announced
that he was under arrest under a charge of high treason.
And at this point Dreyfus still did not know what
specifically he was being accused of having done. He finally
got the details and was shown a reproduction of the
Borderau on October twenty nine, and when he saw this
(04:21):
document he felt deeply relieved because it's so obviously was
not his handwriting. He also knew nothing about some of
the items that were listed. He couldn't sell information he
did not have, and the Borderau ended with the line
jave paltier on maneuver or I'm going on maneuvers. Drayfus
had not been on maneuver since the year before, and
(04:42):
the document had been intercepted just a month before. None
of this mattered to the people conducting the investigation, though
they made Dreyfus copy out the border Aau repeatedly to
try to show that there were similarities between his handwriting
and the document, and no matter how he conducted himself,
for how he approached his answers to their questions, authorities
(05:03):
were just inflexibly convinced of his guilt. Over the next
few weeks, the psychological toll of this made him increasingly
frustrated and desperate. Although all of this was supposed to
be handled with secrecy, In late October, the anti Semitic
newspaper La Libre Parole, which was founded and edited by
Edward Rumon, published a huge and sensationalized story claiming there
(05:27):
was an influential Jewish lobby that was attempting to get
a Jewish Army officer off the hook for treason. Drewman
argued that the French armies allowing a Jewish man to
rise to such a high rank was evidence that the army,
and by extension, France itself, was inherently flawed and corrupt.
As we mentioned in the previous episode, Drewman had been
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vocally anti Semitic for years and had initially funded his
newspaper through the sale of an anti Semitic book. Details
of the allegation against Drefa's trickled out pretty lowly. After
it became known that Alfred Dreyfus was the accused man,
Dumont published a piece in which he traced the purported
history of Jewish betrayers. This included Judas a scariot who
(06:13):
betrayed Jesus Christ, Simon Dutes, who had betrayed the Duchess
Duberry when she was trying to put her son Are
on the French throne after the July Revolution. Also included
Alfred Joseph Naqua and Arthur Mayor, who Dumont described as
deceiving General Boulange, who we discussed in the previous episode.
(06:34):
With that deception leading him to ruin, Dumont wrote, quote,
this is all just a fatal running to type the
curse of the race. Although the coverage in La Libre
Parole was particularly sensational and anti semitic. It wasn't unique
in its condemnation of Alfred Dreyfus. Overwhelmingly, French newspapers covered
(06:55):
the story as though Dreyfus was definitely guilty, with the
case against him open and show ut his wife and
brother felt completely at a loss, unable to get reporters
to even entertain the idea that he might be innocent. Yeah,
there's news reports basically convinced that the most of the
population of France that Drefus had definitely done this. On December,
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d Fus was allowed to write to his wife Lucy
for the first time in weeks. He asked her to
send him his best dress uniform, hoping that if he
wore it to his court martial, it might demonstrate his
honor and his pride in the French military. This court
martial took place behind closed doors from December eighteenth through
the one. Three handwriting experts testified for the prosecution. The
(07:42):
prosecution also introduced a letter from German military attache Maximilian
von Schwartzkoppen to Italian military attache Major Alessandro Panitzerdi and
in it Schwartz Koppen made reference to someone described as
quote that scoundrel of a D. That's the parties claimed
that D was for Dreyfus. But this letter was also
(08:03):
in a sort of personal code between those two attaches,
and it's not clear who it was actually about at all,
but it was also pretty sordid and strongly suggests the
two men were having an affair. This letter and another
letter that implicated Dreyfus were submitted to the judges presiding
over the court martial as a secret dossier. The letter
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implicating Dreyfus was a forgery, and Dreyfus's defense was not
permitted to see these documents, and they did not even
know that they existed before they were introduced. The judges
unanimously voted to convict Dreyfus on December. He was sentenced
to life deportation in a fortified place, along with military
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degradation and payment of the expenses associated with the court martial.
We'll get into that after a quick sponsor break. Unsurprisingly,
Alfred Dreyfus's mental state had varied in the time between
his arrest and his court martial weeks later. Sometimes he
(09:09):
had been resolute and sometimes despondent and sometimes angry, but
he maintained his innocence throughout, and he held out hope
that he would not be convicted of a crime he
had simply not committed, especially since the only evidence that
he knew about before the trial was the borderoo. But
after his conviction, he was simultaneously bereft and panicked, described
(09:34):
as just having a total emotional collapse. Realizing that Dreyfus
was suicidal, prison command on Ferdinand for Zanetti stayed with
him overnight and talked him through it, drawing on drayfuss
values of honor and justice and explaining that suicide would
probably be interpreted as an admission of guilt. For Zanetti
became convinced of dreyfus innocence and became one of his
(09:57):
very few supporters. During the early part of this ordeal,
Dreyfus was once again denied visits from his wife or
other family. Lucy, who would only wear black until her
husband was freed, started preparing for the possibility that she
and the family might be able to accompany him into exile,
wherever that exile was going to be. She also started
(10:18):
packing what she thought he would need for his imprisonment,
although at this point she didn't know yet where he
was going to be held. Edward Drumond continued his sensationalized
and anti Semitic coverage after Dreyfus's conviction. On December Lalibra
Parole published an article suggesting that Germany should put up
a statue in honor of Dreyfus. This article reiterated the
(10:41):
idea that Dreyfus was not really French, saying that he
hadn't really betrayed France because since he was Jewish, his
true loyalty was to quote the Temple of Jerusalem. Dreyfus
appealed his conviction, but his request for a new trial
was denied on New Year's Eve eighteen, and then on
January five, he was publicly degraded. This degradation was originally
(11:03):
scheduled to take place on January fourth, and all the
reasons for the change in the date aren't documented anywhere.
Various people noted that January five fell during the Jewish sabbath.
For this degradation, officials came to where Dreyfus was being
held and loosened his medals and epaulets and scored his
sword to make it easier to break. Then, in front
(11:26):
of assembled military units and a jeering civilian crowd at
the Ecole Milita, an officer physically toward Drapus's medals, insignias,
and epaulets off his uniform before breaking the sword over
his knee. Then Drapus was forced to march out under
guard as the crowd screamed insults and anti Semitic jeers
at him. Officers wives spat at him. As he was
(11:49):
taken from the courtyard, and as he was being transported
back to prison, onlookers shouted insults and slurs and threw
stones at the carriage. Newspapers printed a lot of depictions
of this after the degradation took place, and in them,
Draypus is pretty frequently shown as being stooped over and
kind of cowed, But he faced this whole ritual shaming
(12:12):
with an upright military bearing, shouting they're degrading an innocent man.
Long live France, Long live the Army. When Drayfus was
transported to his exile, the army tried to avoid another
mob scene by moving him in the middle of the
night in secret. His first stop was at Saint Maltinder,
Rey off the coast of western France, but he did
(12:33):
not get there without attracting attention. A mob gathered when
someone overheard his name. When the train was stopped for
this move, Drayfus had been taken from his cell without
being allowed to gather his things, and he left his
post name behind, and he got frostbite and bruises from
the shackles during the trip. While he was held at
Saint Martin de Ray, Dreyfus wrote repeatedly to the Minister
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of the Interior asking for him to investigate the case
and how it was handled. He asked for permission to
write to Lucy more often as well, He was only
being allowed to send her two letters a week. Officials
at sam Martin de Ray also held Dreyfus's mail, and
they refused to allow him visits from a rabbi, sending
the prison chaplain to him instead. When Lucy was finally
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allowed to visit in person, she wasn't allowed to discuss
his case with him. Eventually, Lucy learned that Alfred was
going to be sent to the French prison complex known
as Devil's Island. This was a collection of prison facilities
on the mainland of French Guiana and three small islands
off the coast. The smallest of these islands was also
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called Devil's Island, and that was where Alfred was to
be imprisoned. Lucy bought him appropriate clothing for the tropical heat,
along with a medicine chest and a mosquito net. Dreyfus
set sail for his transatlantic crossing to this prison on February,
which was his daughter's second birthday. When he left, Devil's
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Island at elf was being used as a leprosarium for
the prison complex, and Dreyfus was held on a neighboring
island while its residents were relocated and the existing facilities
were decommissioned. As that was happening, he was held in
a cell that was made from a converted guards room,
and he was allowed no exercise and kept in solitary
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confinement there for about a month, and during that time
he contracted intestinal parasites and had recurring fevers. Devil's Island
is small and rocky, surrounded by treacherous waters that are
home to sharks, all of which was seen as a
natural deterrent to escape. Once he got there, Drayfus lived
in solitary confinement in a small stone hut with a
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corrugated roof that measured about four meters square, and he
was kept under continual guard. He had a cot, a table,
and two chairs, along with a bucket of stagnant water
that was used for all purposes, including drinking. He was
expected to cook his own food, but at first had
no cookware or utensils, and no eight for the fire.
(15:01):
His water bucket became a mosquito breeding ground, and Dreyfus
contracted malaria. He also had chronic dysentery, and he lost
some of his teeth due to malnutrition. One of Dreyfus's
very few comforts in this appalling environment was that he
was allowed books and paper. Among these books were English
language textbooks that Lucy got for him, and he used
(15:24):
those to teach himself English so that he could read
Shakespeare in its original language. But he was also ordered
not to speak to the guards, and since he had
no one else to talk to, that meant he was
essentially held in silence. After his eventual release, his voice
was raspy for the rest of his life. Back in France,
Lucy and Mastheu Dreyfus were spearheading an effort to clear
(15:46):
his name. That was something Dreyfus had no knowledge of,
since all of his mail was being censored. Felix Favre
had become president in and Matthew had hoped that the
new administration would be more sympathetic and that he be
able to get some more support. But with the exception
of the most anti Semitic newspapers, which continued to relentlessly
(16:07):
focus on in vilified Rafus, media attention had mostly fallen off.
The general public perception was that he had been guilty
and justice had been done. Because of his efforts to
help his brother, Matthew faced suspicion as well. Authorities followed him,
they read his male they bribed his cook to spy
on him, but he seems to have been willing to
(16:29):
talk to anyone who he thought might be able to
help his brother. He was eventually connected to a physician
and hypnotist, doctor Gibert, who had a patient named Leoni
who claimed to be clairvoyant. Matthew met with Leony, who
told him that Alfred had been convicted not because of
the BORDERO, but because of secret documents that they knew
(16:52):
nothing about. Gibert knew President Fara and mentioned this to him,
and Fara apparently not only confirmed it, but also it
gave Jabet permission to share that information with Matthew. This
was not Leonese only detail that turned out to be correct.
She also described Rafus as wearing spectacles when his family
knew him to wear a post and they later found
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out about his being unable to get them when he
was moved in the middle of the night. All of
this gave Matthew hope, but then when far was asked
again about the secret documents, he denied it. Um I
am really fascinated by everything going on with this clairvoyant,
and I wish I knew more about about all of that. Eventually,
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Matthew went to a detective agency in London, dodging secret
police in France to be able to get there, and
he realized that the public in the UK were a
lot more sympathetic to his brother's situation than people generally
were in France. So he thought that if English newspapers
picked up his brother's story and publicized it, that might
put more pressure on French authorities to act, So he
(18:00):
started talking to newspaper editors, but this ended up backfiring.
An English newspaper ran a false report that Drapus had
escaped that overruled Matthew's worries that such a story might
lead authorities to treat his brother even more harshly. It
turned out Matthew's fears were justified. Lali Bla Parole and
other anti Semitic newspapers picked up this rumor and ran
(18:24):
with it, alleging that there was a massive Jewish plot
to smuggle Alfred off of Devil's Island. As a consequence,
guards started shackling Alfred to his bed at night. In
addition to being degrading and painful and causing injuries to
his feet and ankles. This also made it even harder
to deal with the insects that infested the hut. Yeah,
(18:44):
there were. In addition to the mosquitoes, there were ants
that bit like a lot of stinging, biting insects, just
that he could not get off of himself in the night. Eventually,
months after Dreyfus was deported to Devil's Island and Matthews
started making a little bit more progress. He became connected
(19:05):
to August schr Kessner, who was vice president of the
French Senate, who originally was from LuSE. Like the Dreyfus
family was sure, Kessner knew that Dreyfus was innocent. He
had seen evidence of his innocence, but for security reasons,
he could not disclose it. Kind of gave Alfred's brother
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the sense that, like, if he could come to him
confirming the information, he would be able to like say
yes or no, this is this is what I heard.
So even though he could not confirm this to Matthew
at the time, the fact that he seemed to know
something that could exonerate his brother gave Matthews some more hope.
Then in July, Lieutenant Colonel Marie George Picard became chief
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of the Army's Intelligence section. As a person, Picoart was
anti Semitic, but as he looked at the case, he
also became totally convinced of drayfus innocence and started trying
to convince military authorities to act. Then in March of
French intelligence officials intercepted another document in handwriting that was
(20:10):
identical to the Bordeaux. Since Dreyfus was imprisoned on Devil's Island,
it was impossible for him to have written it, and
its author was the real culprit, Major Ferdinand Wilson Esther Hassy.
We'll talk about that some more after a sponsor break. Earlier,
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we talked about how Alfred Dreyfus had no motive to
sell French secrets to Germany. He was devoted to his
wife Lucy and their two children. He was deeply patriotic
toward France, and he was financially very secure. But Ferdinand
Wilson esther Hasi was almost the exact opposite. He was
vocal in his hatred for the French Army. He was
(20:56):
notorious for his abuse of alcohol, and he had a
lot of very serious gambling debts, the kind of debts
you might need a lot of money to pay off.
When it became clear that ester Hasie, not Dreyfus, had
written the Border Room, Lieutenant Colonel Picards started trying to
convince the army to act, but military officials were increasingly
(21:17):
afraid of losing face, believing that admitting wrongdoing would weaken
the army, and by extension week in France, Picart was
removed from his post and transferred out of Paris. At
this point, ester Hausi's involvement was not publicly known, but
people in France were starting to take sides with Dreyfussard's
supporting Dreyfus maintaining Dreyfus innocence, and anti Dreyfusards doing the
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opposite of that. Over the next few years, newspapers published
an enormous volume of articles and slogans and caricatures and
editorial cartoons on this subject. Today there are entire books
on the art of the Dreyfus affair and how that
impacted the development of popular culture in France. On September
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eighth six, Lucy Dreyfus published an open letter in her
husband's defense, and in November of that year, Bernard Lazar
published a pamphlet called Judicial Error, The Truth about the
Dreyfus Case. He sent it to about three thousand French judges. Meanwhile,
La Liebra Parole published an article claiming that the pamphlet
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was false and that Lazarre had been paid five thousand
francs to write it for the purpose of discrediting the
French army. On November tenth, eighteen six, Parisian newspaper The
Matta published affects simile of the bordero that had been
obtained from one of the handwriting experts involved with the
court martial. Matthew Dreyfus made posters showing the Borderoa next
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to a sample of his brother's handwriting. Meanwhile, a stockbroker
saw a reproduction of the bordero in a newspaper and
recognized the handwriting as the longing to a client he
detested because he was an odious person, which was Ferdinand
Walson ester Hassy. That client probably also owed him a
(23:09):
lot of money. Probably yes. Word of all of this
made its way to Matthew Drapus, and he spoke to
August Scher Kestner, who finally confirmed that yes, Esther Hausy
was the person he knew had created the border Room.
Ester Hausy was finally publicly accused of treason in the
fall of more than two and a half years after
(23:31):
Alfred Dreyfus had been sent to Double's Island. But when
Esther Hausy was court martialed in January, he was acquitted.
His defense claimed that Picart had made up the accusation
to smear him. Ester HASI's acquittal was what prompted Alzola,
who was at the time France's most famous living writer,
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to write an open letter to French President Felix Father.
This was published on the entire front page of the
social shialist newspaper Laure under the headline jacquiues, and it
came out on January. The law accused the Army of
wrongfully convicting Dreyfus and covering it up, and he ended
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with a list of allegations against specific people, all beginning
with Jacques and accusing multiple high ranking army officials, the
three handwriting experts, the Offices of War, and the First
Council of War of wrongdoing. Lauore was owned by politician
and journalist George Clemenceaux, and it reportedly sold three hundred
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thousand copies of the Jacques edition. In response, other publications
went into overdrive with anti Dreyfus coverage, much of it
deeply anti Semitic, including of course La lebro Parole, the
Catholic daily newspaper La Croix, and other Catholic publications. It
was during this time that this became known just as
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the Affair and became international news, with people following the
story particularly avidly in the UK and the US. The
anti Semitic media published during this time really fueled anti
Semitism all through France. Widespread simultaneous anti Semitic demonstrations took
place all over the country on January eighteenth eighteen. Also
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in eighteen twenty two, openly anti Semitic candidates, mostly representing
rural areas, were elected to the Chamber of Deputies. In
response to all of this, France's Human Rights League was
established in eighteen and a French League against anti Semitism
had also been formed in part because of all this
three years before. This period was incredibly divisive in France.
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A political cartoon titled dna en famieu ran on February
uh In the first frame, a family is sitting down
to dinner at a huge table, with the caption absolutely
no talk of the affair. In the second frame, the
scene has devolved into an all out brawl, with the
caption they talked about it. Divisions appeared within numerous French circles.
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Different groups of people were not necessarily united and how
they thought about this. Among the literary and artistic community,
Degat and Renoir were anti Dreyfusards, while Pisarro and Money
were pro Dreyfus. Some socialists defended Dreyfus and saw his
conviction as a clear miscarriage of justice that needed to
be remedied, while others saw him as a class enemy
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because of his affluents in his position in the army.
The Jewish community was also not monolithic in its response.
Many Jewish Drayfusards saw this as an issue that was
broadly connected to fundamental human rights for all people, rather
than the defense of one Jewish man. Some joined the
Human Rights League or otherwise advocated for justice and against
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anti Semitism. Others converted to Christianity or changed their last
names to try to escape the escalating anti Semitism, or
just tried to be unobtrusive so that they might go unnoticed.
And for many, many people, all of this went way
beyond dreyfus himself. There was a sense among Dreyfusards that
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the French Republic could not survive if this miscarriage of
justice were allowed to stand, and that the army should
be beholden to the same just laws as the rest
of the nation. Meanwhile, among anti Dreyfusards, there was a
sense that the French Republic could not survive if the
army was weakened by exonerating Dreyfus. In February of Zola
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was tried for libel because of his Jacques's letter. He
was convicted and sentenced to a fine of thirty thousand
francs plus a year in prison. The trial did not
look into the validity of his accusations at all. Zola's
conviction was upheld on appeal and he fled to England.
On July seven, got Froy Caveny, the Minister of War,
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publicized the purported evidence against Dreyfus, and in response, dre
Fassard's published a series of articles countering that this purported
evidence had been forged, and the evidence had been forged.
As evidence of the forgery became public, Lieutenant Colonel Hubert
Joseph Ari was implicated and arrested. He confessed to making
(28:26):
these forgeries. There were additional forgeries that had been added
to all of this over the intervening years, and he
took his own life in August of eight. In the
face of all of this, anti Dreyfissards generally maintained that
these forgeries were a patriotic act that had been done
for the public good. Ari was called a martyr for patriotism.
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As word spread the Minister of War resigned and Esther
Hazy fled to Belgium and then to London. President far
resisted calls to reopen the case, but in November of
eight Dreyfus was informed that his wife was petitioning for
him to be granted an appeal. This was the first
time he had learned about Esther Hassi's involvement with the Bordereaux,
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and he had absolutely no idea about the international furor
that had been going on. On June third, eighteen ninety nine,
the Combined Chambers of the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled
that Dreyfus was eligible for a new trial. He set
sail for the three week return trip to France on
June ninth, eighteen nine. As he departed Devil's Island, he
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reportedly said, quote, my confidence in the justice of my
country is the same. It will be the honor of
this noble France, the honor of our dear army, to
finally arrive at a solution to this horrific judicial error
and to its reparation. Dreyfuss second court martial ran from
August seven to September nine eight. His lawyer for non
(29:58):
Gustave Gaston was shot in the back on August fourteen,
but the proceedings continued. On September nine, by a vote
of five to two, Dreyfus was again convicted, this time
found quote guilty with extenuating circumstances. He was sentenced to
ten years in prison. This was in spite of the
(30:19):
fact that Esther Hassy had confessed to writing the Border
Roa and Anri had confessed to forging documents that had
implicated Drayfus. By this point, the Paris Exposition of nineteen
hundred was eminent, and the French government was worried about
Boycott's by American and British visitors, especially since the prevailing
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sentiment in both the US and the UK was way
more pro Dreyfus. Parliament voted to censure that anti Dreyfus government,
and on September President Emil Lube, who had become president
after Felix far As death the previous February, offered Dreyfus
a pardon. Dreyfus's health had really suffered during his years
(31:03):
of imprisonment at Devil's Island and his subsequent voyage and incarceration.
Many of his family members were worried that he simply
would not survive long if he stayed in prison. They
encouraged him to accept the pardon, even though being pardoned
did not clear his name. Drayfus did, and some drayfusards
were disappointed in this too. Many he had become an
(31:24):
almost mythic murdyr. Figure one said quote, we were prepared
to die for Dreyfus, but Drayfus wasn't. Alfred Dreyfus was
freed on September. The Dreyfus family went to Carpentra and
then to Switzerland as Dreyfus tried to recover and the
family tried to just get some peace. Butmil Zola had
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been given clemency and returned to France in eighteen ninety nine,
and he died of an accidental carbon monoxide poisoning on
September nineteen o two. Drayfus really grieved over his death.
Zola's widow, who had survived the same accident, initially asked
Drapus not to attend the funeral for fear that it
would bring detractors. But Drafus really felt that it was
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his duty to go, and it turned out that those
fears were justified. Demonstrators shouted insults from outside the cemetery
gates during the lat's funeral. When Lucy Dreyfus's father died
not long after this, the family prepared for similar demonstrations
at his funeral, and while these didn't materialize, all the
(32:30):
worry about it and having to have a funeral with
the presence of armed guards that just led Dreyfus to
avoid public ceremonies after this point, including not attending later
funerals of other prominent supporters. In nineteen o four, the
case against Drapus was reopened, and on July twelfth, nineteen
o six, the Civilian High Court of Appeal finally acquitted him.
(32:54):
He returned to service in the army as a major,
which was a rank below where we would have been
under normal circumstances. He was also named Chevalier in the
Legion of Honor with his nighting ceremony at the Ecole
Milita on July twenty one. Picard, who had tried to
clear his name years before, was also reinstated. At the
same time. A lot of people in France did not
(33:17):
believe that he was really innocent. In nineteen o eight,
after an announcement that Emil Zola's ashes would be moved
to the Pantheon. Louis and Thelm Gregory attempted to assassinate
Alfred Dreyfus, and Dreyfus was wounded in this attempt. Gregory
was acquitted, with the court noting that he had quote
(33:37):
dissented with dreyfus exoneration. Although Dreyfus retired from the army
not long after his nineteen o five returned to service,
he returned to active duty as a lieutenant colonel during
World War One. At that point he was nearly fifty five.
His son and several other members of the Dreyfus family
also served. Many of them, including Matthew Dreyfus's son Emile,
(34:00):
were killed in action. Alfred's sun Pierre, was promoted five
times during the war and awarded the Quadi Guier with Palm,
and Alfred became an officer in the Legion of Honor.
His daughter Jeanne, also married a doctor who served in
the war. Alsace Lauren was returned to France after World
War One. Towards the end of his life, Dreyfus was
(34:20):
called on to speak out about the Sacco and Benzetti case.
He said he supported French efforts to ensure that there
was no miscarriage of justice, and he called the possibility
of those two men's execution quote the greatest moral disaster
of many years. This drew criticism from people who claimed
that he was allying himself with anarchists, and from people
(34:42):
who did not think that his statement was nearly strong
enough considering his own wrongful conviction. At this point, though
he was nearly seventy, he was in poor health, and
he was just trying to avoid a spotlight that he
had never wanted in the first place. The drain Fist
affair continued to spawn troversy long after it was over.
(35:02):
A play called Lefebrefuss premiered in ninety one, and that
play was targeted with demonstrations, vandalism, and intimidation throughout its run.
The performances were interrupted every night, including with people throwing
stink bombs. This was one of many many dramatizations of
the affair, which started with a series of one minute
(35:23):
shorts by George Milliers in eighteen ninety nine. Alfred Dreyfus
died on July twelfth, nine thirty five, after a long illness.
His brother Matthew had died in nineteen thirty. Lucy died
on December fourteenth, ninety five, at home, having spent most
of World War two and hiding with a group of nuns.
(35:44):
Most of the Dreyfuss fled south to areas that were
not occupied by Nazi Germany during the war, but Alfred
and Lucy's granddaughter Madeline Dreyfus Levy remained behind to work
with the resistance. She was arrested and died of typhus
at ausch Fit. The Dreyfus affair had enormous and wide
ranging impacts on the nation of France that lasted into
(36:06):
and beyond World War Two. It promoted additional efforts to
separate church and state, which were finalized in nineteen o five.
The response from people like amo Zola refined the idea
of what a French intellectual was and the role of
intellectualism in public life. The affair also stoked nationalism and
anti Semitism, with a far right proto fascist movement rising
(36:29):
in the immediate wake of the affair and growing into
the French Popular Party in the nineteen thirties. This rising
anti semitism connected to the Dreyfust affair also sparked a
rise in Zionism, drawn from the idea that the Jewish
people should have a homeland that was free of anti
Semitic persecution. In January of n just before the hundredth
(36:51):
anniversary of the Jacques's Letter, French President Jacques Sharak wrote
a letter to Dreyfuss descendants that called the Dreyfus affair
quote a our staying unworthy of our country and our history,
a colossal miscarriage of justice and a shameful compromise by
the state. On January of that year, a plaque commemorating
(37:11):
Dreyfus and Zola was unveiled at Equal Militaire, and on
July twelfth of two thousand and six, which was the
centennial of dreyfus exoneration, Sharrock gave an address at Equal
Militaire which was attended by the descendants of Dreyfus and Zula.
In this address, he called Dreyfus an exemplary officer and
(37:32):
also spoke about the dangers of anti Semitism and hate,
saying quote, the combat against the dark forces of intolerance
and hate is never definitively one um. It feels like
a b jillion years ago, but back when I hosted
another podcast called This Day in History Class, we did
an episode on this, which was of course much shorter
(37:54):
because that show was five minutes long per episode. Our
colleague christ for Hasseiotis did some research support on that
installment of the Day in History Class, UM, and so
I just wanted to note that since some of those
sources found their way into this these several years later.
(38:16):
This is one of those episodes that every break that
we've had, Tracy and I sit here and go, yeah,
do you have a little bit of listener mail that
makes us feel less grumbly and angry at the world.
I do it, may or may not do that. It's
from Corina. Thank you Carina for sending this note, and
also thank you Carina for telling me at the bottom
(38:39):
how to say your name. That has a big help. Uh.
Karina wrote, Hi, Tracy and Holly. I've wanted to write
in for a long time, but somehow never have you
cover so many underappreciated topics on the show, and you've
really opened my eyes up to history that hits close
to home. Listening to the Paper Clipper episodes, I had
to pull over and call my mom and then my
(38:59):
grandmother this time, though, you hit my family right on
the news. My grandfather was an engineer at Redstone Arsenal
and then at NASA. His career highlights include the Saturn
five and the Lunar rover. Van Brown picked my grandfather
to go to Antarctica for a month to use that
desolate environment as practice for the buggy. My mom still
(39:22):
has the penguin card from that trip. I've chatted with
my grandmother about this, and she remembers having German engineers
over for dinner after work. There is an apocryphal story
of my mom's in which she saw one of them
topple off the ottoman and then whispered to her that
that was how gravity worked, before dusting himself off and
sending my mom, age four back to bed. I wish
(39:45):
I had been able to ask my grandfather about how
he felt working with the German scientists and how much
he knew about paper clips, since it was such a
poorly kept secret. He passed before I was born, and
as my parents are mid move I can't dig out
the NASA A yearbooks for you. I'll find them and
send you a scan. Meeting you at the live show
in Seattle was the best. I enjoy getting to hang
(40:07):
out with you both as I go about my day.
So here is my puppy, Cerberus best Carina Man. Cerberus
has the cutest gloppy face. That's like a weaponized puppy.
Like I would do anything for that dog. I'd be like, yes, yeah,
of course, you can drive my car. Whatever's fine, whatever
you want, puppy. That sounds great. We've heard from a
(40:31):
few people who either are descended from folks who were
part of Operation paper Clipper, who had family members or
other loved ones who worked with various paper clippers and
other of those messages may make an appearance at some
point during the show. But thank you everybody who has
who has written in to kind of share those connections
to your own family. I just I wanted to particularly
(40:52):
read that one because I love the story about that's
how gravity works, and also the puppy picture. If you
would like to write us about this or any other
podcast or a history podcasts that I heart radio dot
com and we're all over social media at missed in History.
That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram,
and you can subscribe to our show on the I
(41:13):
heart Radio app and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from i heart Radio,
visit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy be Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. This is
part two of our episode on the Dreyfus affair, and
last time we talked about the state of things in
(00:23):
France between eighteen seventy when the Franco Prussian War begin
and eight ninety four when Alfred Dreyfus was accused of
selling military secrets to Germany. Honestly, even though that was
two thirds of the episode, that was a brief discussion
of all that context. Uh, there is a lot of
context in that earlier episode, including the things that led
(00:46):
Dreyfus to join the French army in the first place.
So this episode is going to make the most sense
if folks have listened to the earlier one. First. Today
we're going to pick up where we left off, which
was with Dreyfus being suspected of reason in early October.
The accusation against Alfred Dreyfus followed the discovery of a
(01:06):
torn up document known as the bordereaux. Bordereaux is a
French word for memo or docket, and This document listed
several other documents that its author could sell to the recipient.
It was found in a wastebasket at the Paris office
of German military atche Lieutenant Colonel Maximilian von Schfortz Koppin.
Dreyfus was not informed of what specifically he was suspected
(01:30):
of having done, just that it was treasonous, and at
the beginning he seems to have believed that whatever it
was that people thought that he did, like this accusation,
was just a mistake, and surely whoever had made that
mistake would rectify it as soon as they realized what
had happened. So trusting, because this involved espionage, the investigation
(01:52):
was supposed to be handled in secret. Alfred's wife, Lucy
knew something was going on very quickly as officials arrived
to search their home and to question Lucy and their
wet nurse, who was from Alsace. This questioning was apparently
so aggressive and traumatizing that the nurse vomited afterward. This
just made the interrogator, Commandantupatti de Clem even more convinced
(02:16):
of dreyfuss guilt. Multiple people he questioned said he seemed
to be already convinced that Dreyfus was guilty and that
he was just looking for things that would back that up,
rather than actually trying to find the truth. Because of
the secrecy involved, Lucy was forbidden to contact any of
Alfred's other family about what was happening or to try
to get help. When she was finally allowed to write
(02:38):
to Alfred's brother Matthew, a couple of weeks after Alfred
was first accused, Matthew was totally baffled, calling Alfred's perfect
loyalty his strongest trait. At the same time, like Alfred,
Lucy and Matthew both seemed to think that this was
just some kind of mistake that the Army would soon rectify.
(02:59):
This invest Gatien found very little evidence to support the
allegation that Dreyfus had sold French secrets to Germany. As
we discussed in Part one, a handwriting expert had examined
the Bordereaux and claimed that the dissimilarity to drapus His
own handwriting was evidence that he had written it, calling
it a self forgery, but beyond that it was all
(03:19):
just suspicion. Because Drapus was a Jewish man from Alsace
who did not always get along with other people on
the French Army's general staff because of his demeanor and
his family's wealth. On October fifteenth, eighteen nine four, Dreyfus
was ordered to appear in person for questioning in civilian dress.
When he got there, Dupatti said that he had injured
(03:41):
his finger and he asked Dreyfus to take dictation for him.
Dreyfus agreed, and as he was writing, Dupatti yelled at him,
accusing him of not taking things seriously. Dravius thought that
Dupatti was angry about how he was writing down the dictation,
so he tried to slow down and more carefully, at
(04:01):
which point Dupatty grabbed him by the shoulder and announced
that he was under arrest under a charge of high treason.
And at this point Dreyfus still did not know what
specifically he was being accused of having done. He finally
got the details and was shown a reproduction of the
Borderau on October twenty nine, and when he saw this
(04:21):
document he felt deeply relieved because it's so obviously was
not his handwriting. He also knew nothing about some of
the items that were listed. He couldn't sell information he
did not have, and the Borderau ended with the line
jave paltier on maneuver or I'm going on maneuvers. Drayfus
had not been on maneuver since the year before, and
(04:42):
the document had been intercepted just a month before. None
of this mattered to the people conducting the investigation, though
they made Dreyfus copy out the border Aau repeatedly to
try to show that there were similarities between his handwriting
and the document, and no matter how he conducted himself,
for how he approached his answers to their questions, authorities
(05:03):
were just inflexibly convinced of his guilt. Over the next
few weeks, the psychological toll of this made him increasingly
frustrated and desperate. Although all of this was supposed to
be handled with secrecy, In late October, the anti Semitic
newspaper La Libre Parole, which was founded and edited by
Edward Rumon, published a huge and sensationalized story claiming there
(05:27):
was an influential Jewish lobby that was attempting to get
a Jewish Army officer off the hook for treason. Drewman
argued that the French armies allowing a Jewish man to
rise to such a high rank was evidence that the army,
and by extension, France itself, was inherently flawed and corrupt.
As we mentioned in the previous episode, Drewman had been
(05:49):
vocally anti Semitic for years and had initially funded his
newspaper through the sale of an anti Semitic book. Details
of the allegation against Drefa's trickled out pretty lowly. After
it became known that Alfred Dreyfus was the accused man,
Dumont published a piece in which he traced the purported
history of Jewish betrayers. This included Judas a scariot who
(06:13):
betrayed Jesus Christ, Simon Dutes, who had betrayed the Duchess
Duberry when she was trying to put her son Are
on the French throne after the July Revolution. Also included
Alfred Joseph Naqua and Arthur Mayor, who Dumont described as
deceiving General Boulange, who we discussed in the previous episode.
(06:34):
With that deception leading him to ruin, Dumont wrote, quote,
this is all just a fatal running to type the
curse of the race. Although the coverage in La Libre
Parole was particularly sensational and anti semitic. It wasn't unique
in its condemnation of Alfred Dreyfus. Overwhelmingly, French newspapers covered
(06:55):
the story as though Dreyfus was definitely guilty, with the
case against him open and show ut his wife and
brother felt completely at a loss, unable to get reporters
to even entertain the idea that he might be innocent. Yeah,
there's news reports basically convinced that the most of the
population of France that Drefus had definitely done this. On December,
(07:18):
d Fus was allowed to write to his wife Lucy
for the first time in weeks. He asked her to
send him his best dress uniform, hoping that if he
wore it to his court martial, it might demonstrate his
honor and his pride in the French military. This court
martial took place behind closed doors from December eighteenth through
the one. Three handwriting experts testified for the prosecution. The
(07:42):
prosecution also introduced a letter from German military attache Maximilian
von Schwartzkoppen to Italian military attache Major Alessandro Panitzerdi and
in it Schwartz Koppen made reference to someone described as
quote that scoundrel of a D. That's the parties claimed
that D was for Dreyfus. But this letter was also
(08:03):
in a sort of personal code between those two attaches,
and it's not clear who it was actually about at all,
but it was also pretty sordid and strongly suggests the
two men were having an affair. This letter and another
letter that implicated Dreyfus were submitted to the judges presiding
over the court martial as a secret dossier. The letter
(08:24):
implicating Dreyfus was a forgery, and Dreyfus's defense was not
permitted to see these documents, and they did not even
know that they existed before they were introduced. The judges
unanimously voted to convict Dreyfus on December. He was sentenced
to life deportation in a fortified place, along with military
(08:46):
degradation and payment of the expenses associated with the court martial.
We'll get into that after a quick sponsor break. Unsurprisingly,
Alfred Dreyfus's mental state had varied in the time between
his arrest and his court martial weeks later. Sometimes he
(09:09):
had been resolute and sometimes despondent and sometimes angry, but
he maintained his innocence throughout, and he held out hope
that he would not be convicted of a crime he
had simply not committed, especially since the only evidence that
he knew about before the trial was the borderoo. But
after his conviction, he was simultaneously bereft and panicked, described
(09:34):
as just having a total emotional collapse. Realizing that Dreyfus
was suicidal, prison command on Ferdinand for Zanetti stayed with
him overnight and talked him through it, drawing on drayfuss
values of honor and justice and explaining that suicide would
probably be interpreted as an admission of guilt. For Zanetti
became convinced of dreyfus innocence and became one of his
(09:57):
very few supporters. During the early part of this ordeal,
Dreyfus was once again denied visits from his wife or
other family. Lucy, who would only wear black until her
husband was freed, started preparing for the possibility that she
and the family might be able to accompany him into exile,
wherever that exile was going to be. She also started
(10:18):
packing what she thought he would need for his imprisonment,
although at this point she didn't know yet where he
was going to be held. Edward Drumond continued his sensationalized
and anti Semitic coverage after Dreyfus's conviction. On December Lalibra
Parole published an article suggesting that Germany should put up
a statue in honor of Dreyfus. This article reiterated the
(10:41):
idea that Dreyfus was not really French, saying that he
hadn't really betrayed France because since he was Jewish, his
true loyalty was to quote the Temple of Jerusalem. Dreyfus
appealed his conviction, but his request for a new trial
was denied on New Year's Eve eighteen, and then on
January five, he was publicly degraded. This degradation was originally
(11:03):
scheduled to take place on January fourth, and all the
reasons for the change in the date aren't documented anywhere.
Various people noted that January five fell during the Jewish sabbath.
For this degradation, officials came to where Dreyfus was being
held and loosened his medals and epaulets and scored his
sword to make it easier to break. Then, in front
(11:26):
of assembled military units and a jeering civilian crowd at
the Ecole Milita, an officer physically toward Drapus's medals, insignias,
and epaulets off his uniform before breaking the sword over
his knee. Then Drapus was forced to march out under
guard as the crowd screamed insults and anti Semitic jeers
at him. Officers wives spat at him. As he was
(11:49):
taken from the courtyard, and as he was being transported
back to prison, onlookers shouted insults and slurs and threw
stones at the carriage. Newspapers printed a lot of depictions
of this after the degradation took place, and in them,
Draypus is pretty frequently shown as being stooped over and
kind of cowed, But he faced this whole ritual shaming
(12:12):
with an upright military bearing, shouting they're degrading an innocent man.
Long live France, Long live the Army. When Drayfus was
transported to his exile, the army tried to avoid another
mob scene by moving him in the middle of the
night in secret. His first stop was at Saint Maltinder,
Rey off the coast of western France, but he did
(12:33):
not get there without attracting attention. A mob gathered when
someone overheard his name. When the train was stopped for
this move, Drayfus had been taken from his cell without
being allowed to gather his things, and he left his
post name behind, and he got frostbite and bruises from
the shackles during the trip. While he was held at
Saint Martin de Ray, Dreyfus wrote repeatedly to the Minister
(12:55):
of the Interior asking for him to investigate the case
and how it was handled. He asked for permission to
write to Lucy more often as well, He was only
being allowed to send her two letters a week. Officials
at sam Martin de Ray also held Dreyfus's mail, and
they refused to allow him visits from a rabbi, sending
the prison chaplain to him instead. When Lucy was finally
(13:18):
allowed to visit in person, she wasn't allowed to discuss
his case with him. Eventually, Lucy learned that Alfred was
going to be sent to the French prison complex known
as Devil's Island. This was a collection of prison facilities
on the mainland of French Guiana and three small islands
off the coast. The smallest of these islands was also
(13:38):
called Devil's Island, and that was where Alfred was to
be imprisoned. Lucy bought him appropriate clothing for the tropical heat,
along with a medicine chest and a mosquito net. Dreyfus
set sail for his transatlantic crossing to this prison on February,
which was his daughter's second birthday. When he left, Devil's
(13:59):
Island at elf was being used as a leprosarium for
the prison complex, and Dreyfus was held on a neighboring
island while its residents were relocated and the existing facilities
were decommissioned. As that was happening, he was held in
a cell that was made from a converted guards room,
and he was allowed no exercise and kept in solitary
(14:20):
confinement there for about a month, and during that time
he contracted intestinal parasites and had recurring fevers. Devil's Island
is small and rocky, surrounded by treacherous waters that are
home to sharks, all of which was seen as a
natural deterrent to escape. Once he got there, Drayfus lived
in solitary confinement in a small stone hut with a
(14:41):
corrugated roof that measured about four meters square, and he
was kept under continual guard. He had a cot, a table,
and two chairs, along with a bucket of stagnant water
that was used for all purposes, including drinking. He was
expected to cook his own food, but at first had
no cookware or utensils, and no eight for the fire.
(15:01):
His water bucket became a mosquito breeding ground, and Dreyfus
contracted malaria. He also had chronic dysentery, and he lost
some of his teeth due to malnutrition. One of Dreyfus's
very few comforts in this appalling environment was that he
was allowed books and paper. Among these books were English
language textbooks that Lucy got for him, and he used
(15:24):
those to teach himself English so that he could read
Shakespeare in its original language. But he was also ordered
not to speak to the guards, and since he had
no one else to talk to, that meant he was
essentially held in silence. After his eventual release, his voice
was raspy for the rest of his life. Back in France,
Lucy and Mastheu Dreyfus were spearheading an effort to clear
(15:46):
his name. That was something Dreyfus had no knowledge of,
since all of his mail was being censored. Felix Favre
had become president in and Matthew had hoped that the
new administration would be more sympathetic and that he be
able to get some more support. But with the exception
of the most anti Semitic newspapers, which continued to relentlessly
(16:07):
focus on in vilified Rafus, media attention had mostly fallen off.
The general public perception was that he had been guilty
and justice had been done. Because of his efforts to
help his brother, Matthew faced suspicion as well. Authorities followed him,
they read his male they bribed his cook to spy
on him, but he seems to have been willing to
(16:29):
talk to anyone who he thought might be able to
help his brother. He was eventually connected to a physician
and hypnotist, doctor Gibert, who had a patient named Leoni
who claimed to be clairvoyant. Matthew met with Leony, who
told him that Alfred had been convicted not because of
the BORDERO, but because of secret documents that they knew
(16:52):
nothing about. Gibert knew President Fara and mentioned this to him,
and Fara apparently not only confirmed it, but also it
gave Jabet permission to share that information with Matthew. This
was not Leonese only detail that turned out to be correct.
She also described Rafus as wearing spectacles when his family
knew him to wear a post and they later found
(17:14):
out about his being unable to get them when he
was moved in the middle of the night. All of
this gave Matthew hope, but then when far was asked
again about the secret documents, he denied it. Um I
am really fascinated by everything going on with this clairvoyant,
and I wish I knew more about about all of that. Eventually,
(17:37):
Matthew went to a detective agency in London, dodging secret
police in France to be able to get there, and
he realized that the public in the UK were a
lot more sympathetic to his brother's situation than people generally
were in France. So he thought that if English newspapers
picked up his brother's story and publicized it, that might
put more pressure on French authorities to act, So he
(18:00):
started talking to newspaper editors, but this ended up backfiring.
An English newspaper ran a false report that Drapus had
escaped that overruled Matthew's worries that such a story might
lead authorities to treat his brother even more harshly. It
turned out Matthew's fears were justified. Lali Bla Parole and
other anti Semitic newspapers picked up this rumor and ran
(18:24):
with it, alleging that there was a massive Jewish plot
to smuggle Alfred off of Devil's Island. As a consequence,
guards started shackling Alfred to his bed at night. In
addition to being degrading and painful and causing injuries to
his feet and ankles. This also made it even harder
to deal with the insects that infested the hut. Yeah,
(18:44):
there were. In addition to the mosquitoes, there were ants
that bit like a lot of stinging, biting insects, just
that he could not get off of himself in the night. Eventually,
months after Dreyfus was deported to Devil's Island and Matthews
started making a little bit more progress. He became connected
(19:05):
to August schr Kessner, who was vice president of the
French Senate, who originally was from LuSE. Like the Dreyfus
family was sure, Kessner knew that Dreyfus was innocent. He
had seen evidence of his innocence, but for security reasons,
he could not disclose it. Kind of gave Alfred's brother
(19:25):
the sense that, like, if he could come to him
confirming the information, he would be able to like say
yes or no, this is this is what I heard.
So even though he could not confirm this to Matthew
at the time, the fact that he seemed to know
something that could exonerate his brother gave Matthews some more hope.
Then in July, Lieutenant Colonel Marie George Picard became chief
(19:50):
of the Army's Intelligence section. As a person, Picoart was
anti Semitic, but as he looked at the case, he
also became totally convinced of drayfus innocence and started trying
to convince military authorities to act. Then in March of
French intelligence officials intercepted another document in handwriting that was
(20:10):
identical to the Bordeaux. Since Dreyfus was imprisoned on Devil's Island,
it was impossible for him to have written it, and
its author was the real culprit, Major Ferdinand Wilson Esther Hassy.
We'll talk about that some more after a sponsor break. Earlier,
(20:35):
we talked about how Alfred Dreyfus had no motive to
sell French secrets to Germany. He was devoted to his
wife Lucy and their two children. He was deeply patriotic
toward France, and he was financially very secure. But Ferdinand
Wilson esther Hasi was almost the exact opposite. He was
vocal in his hatred for the French Army. He was
(20:56):
notorious for his abuse of alcohol, and he had a
lot of very serious gambling debts, the kind of debts
you might need a lot of money to pay off.
When it became clear that ester Hasie, not Dreyfus, had
written the Border Room, Lieutenant Colonel Picards started trying to
convince the army to act, but military officials were increasingly
(21:17):
afraid of losing face, believing that admitting wrongdoing would weaken
the army, and by extension week in France, Picart was
removed from his post and transferred out of Paris. At
this point, ester Hausi's involvement was not publicly known, but
people in France were starting to take sides with Dreyfussard's
supporting Dreyfus maintaining Dreyfus innocence, and anti Dreyfusards doing the
(21:42):
opposite of that. Over the next few years, newspapers published
an enormous volume of articles and slogans and caricatures and
editorial cartoons on this subject. Today there are entire books
on the art of the Dreyfus affair and how that
impacted the development of popular culture in France. On September
(22:03):
eighth six, Lucy Dreyfus published an open letter in her
husband's defense, and in November of that year, Bernard Lazar
published a pamphlet called Judicial Error, The Truth about the
Dreyfus Case. He sent it to about three thousand French judges. Meanwhile,
La Liebra Parole published an article claiming that the pamphlet
(22:24):
was false and that Lazarre had been paid five thousand
francs to write it for the purpose of discrediting the
French army. On November tenth, eighteen six, Parisian newspaper The
Matta published affects simile of the bordero that had been
obtained from one of the handwriting experts involved with the
court martial. Matthew Dreyfus made posters showing the Borderoa next
(22:49):
to a sample of his brother's handwriting. Meanwhile, a stockbroker
saw a reproduction of the bordero in a newspaper and
recognized the handwriting as the longing to a client he
detested because he was an odious person, which was Ferdinand
Walson ester Hassy. That client probably also owed him a
(23:09):
lot of money. Probably yes. Word of all of this
made its way to Matthew Drapus, and he spoke to
August Scher Kestner, who finally confirmed that yes, Esther Hausy
was the person he knew had created the border Room.
Ester Hausy was finally publicly accused of treason in the
fall of more than two and a half years after
(23:31):
Alfred Dreyfus had been sent to Double's Island. But when
Esther Hausy was court martialed in January, he was acquitted.
His defense claimed that Picart had made up the accusation
to smear him. Ester HASI's acquittal was what prompted Alzola,
who was at the time France's most famous living writer,
(23:52):
to write an open letter to French President Felix Father.
This was published on the entire front page of the
social shialist newspaper Laure under the headline jacquiues, and it
came out on January. The law accused the Army of
wrongfully convicting Dreyfus and covering it up, and he ended
(24:13):
with a list of allegations against specific people, all beginning
with Jacques and accusing multiple high ranking army officials, the
three handwriting experts, the Offices of War, and the First
Council of War of wrongdoing. Lauore was owned by politician
and journalist George Clemenceaux, and it reportedly sold three hundred
(24:35):
thousand copies of the Jacques edition. In response, other publications
went into overdrive with anti Dreyfus coverage, much of it
deeply anti Semitic, including of course La lebro Parole, the
Catholic daily newspaper La Croix, and other Catholic publications. It
was during this time that this became known just as
(24:55):
the Affair and became international news, with people following the
story particularly avidly in the UK and the US. The
anti Semitic media published during this time really fueled anti
Semitism all through France. Widespread simultaneous anti Semitic demonstrations took
place all over the country on January eighteenth eighteen. Also
(25:19):
in eighteen twenty two, openly anti Semitic candidates, mostly representing
rural areas, were elected to the Chamber of Deputies. In
response to all of this, France's Human Rights League was
established in eighteen and a French League against anti Semitism
had also been formed in part because of all this
three years before. This period was incredibly divisive in France.
(25:44):
A political cartoon titled dna en famieu ran on February
uh In the first frame, a family is sitting down
to dinner at a huge table, with the caption absolutely
no talk of the affair. In the second frame, the
scene has devolved into an all out brawl, with the
caption they talked about it. Divisions appeared within numerous French circles.
(26:08):
Different groups of people were not necessarily united and how
they thought about this. Among the literary and artistic community,
Degat and Renoir were anti Dreyfusards, while Pisarro and Money
were pro Dreyfus. Some socialists defended Dreyfus and saw his
conviction as a clear miscarriage of justice that needed to
be remedied, while others saw him as a class enemy
(26:31):
because of his affluents in his position in the army.
The Jewish community was also not monolithic in its response.
Many Jewish Drayfusards saw this as an issue that was
broadly connected to fundamental human rights for all people, rather
than the defense of one Jewish man. Some joined the
Human Rights League or otherwise advocated for justice and against
(26:52):
anti Semitism. Others converted to Christianity or changed their last
names to try to escape the escalating anti Semitism, or
just tried to be unobtrusive so that they might go unnoticed.
And for many, many people, all of this went way
beyond dreyfus himself. There was a sense among Dreyfusards that
(27:14):
the French Republic could not survive if this miscarriage of
justice were allowed to stand, and that the army should
be beholden to the same just laws as the rest
of the nation. Meanwhile, among anti Dreyfusards, there was a
sense that the French Republic could not survive if the
army was weakened by exonerating Dreyfus. In February of Zola
(27:40):
was tried for libel because of his Jacques's letter. He
was convicted and sentenced to a fine of thirty thousand
francs plus a year in prison. The trial did not
look into the validity of his accusations at all. Zola's
conviction was upheld on appeal and he fled to England.
On July seven, got Froy Caveny, the Minister of War,
(28:01):
publicized the purported evidence against Dreyfus, and in response, dre
Fassard's published a series of articles countering that this purported
evidence had been forged, and the evidence had been forged.
As evidence of the forgery became public, Lieutenant Colonel Hubert
Joseph Ari was implicated and arrested. He confessed to making
(28:26):
these forgeries. There were additional forgeries that had been added
to all of this over the intervening years, and he
took his own life in August of eight. In the
face of all of this, anti Dreyfissards generally maintained that
these forgeries were a patriotic act that had been done
for the public good. Ari was called a martyr for patriotism.
(28:51):
As word spread the Minister of War resigned and Esther
Hazy fled to Belgium and then to London. President far
resisted calls to reopen the case, but in November of
eight Dreyfus was informed that his wife was petitioning for
him to be granted an appeal. This was the first
time he had learned about Esther Hassi's involvement with the Bordereaux,
(29:12):
and he had absolutely no idea about the international furor
that had been going on. On June third, eighteen ninety nine,
the Combined Chambers of the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled
that Dreyfus was eligible for a new trial. He set
sail for the three week return trip to France on
June ninth, eighteen nine. As he departed Devil's Island, he
(29:34):
reportedly said, quote, my confidence in the justice of my
country is the same. It will be the honor of
this noble France, the honor of our dear army, to
finally arrive at a solution to this horrific judicial error
and to its reparation. Dreyfuss second court martial ran from
August seven to September nine eight. His lawyer for non
(29:58):
Gustave Gaston was shot in the back on August fourteen,
but the proceedings continued. On September nine, by a vote
of five to two, Dreyfus was again convicted, this time
found quote guilty with extenuating circumstances. He was sentenced to
ten years in prison. This was in spite of the
(30:19):
fact that Esther Hassy had confessed to writing the Border
Roa and Anri had confessed to forging documents that had
implicated Drayfus. By this point, the Paris Exposition of nineteen
hundred was eminent, and the French government was worried about
Boycott's by American and British visitors, especially since the prevailing
(30:40):
sentiment in both the US and the UK was way
more pro Dreyfus. Parliament voted to censure that anti Dreyfus government,
and on September President Emil Lube, who had become president
after Felix far As death the previous February, offered Dreyfus
a pardon. Dreyfus's health had really suffered during his years
(31:03):
of imprisonment at Devil's Island and his subsequent voyage and incarceration.
Many of his family members were worried that he simply
would not survive long if he stayed in prison. They
encouraged him to accept the pardon, even though being pardoned
did not clear his name. Drayfus did, and some drayfusards
were disappointed in this too. Many he had become an
(31:24):
almost mythic murdyr. Figure one said quote, we were prepared
to die for Dreyfus, but Drayfus wasn't. Alfred Dreyfus was
freed on September. The Dreyfus family went to Carpentra and
then to Switzerland as Dreyfus tried to recover and the
family tried to just get some peace. Butmil Zola had
(31:46):
been given clemency and returned to France in eighteen ninety nine,
and he died of an accidental carbon monoxide poisoning on
September nineteen o two. Drayfus really grieved over his death.
Zola's widow, who had survived the same accident, initially asked
Drapus not to attend the funeral for fear that it
would bring detractors. But Drafus really felt that it was
(32:08):
his duty to go, and it turned out that those
fears were justified. Demonstrators shouted insults from outside the cemetery
gates during the lat's funeral. When Lucy Dreyfus's father died
not long after this, the family prepared for similar demonstrations
at his funeral, and while these didn't materialize, all the
(32:30):
worry about it and having to have a funeral with
the presence of armed guards that just led Dreyfus to
avoid public ceremonies after this point, including not attending later
funerals of other prominent supporters. In nineteen o four, the
case against Drapus was reopened, and on July twelfth, nineteen
o six, the Civilian High Court of Appeal finally acquitted him.
(32:54):
He returned to service in the army as a major,
which was a rank below where we would have been
under normal circumstances. He was also named Chevalier in the
Legion of Honor with his nighting ceremony at the Ecole
Milita on July twenty one. Picard, who had tried to
clear his name years before, was also reinstated. At the
same time. A lot of people in France did not
(33:17):
believe that he was really innocent. In nineteen o eight,
after an announcement that Emil Zola's ashes would be moved
to the Pantheon. Louis and Thelm Gregory attempted to assassinate
Alfred Dreyfus, and Dreyfus was wounded in this attempt. Gregory
was acquitted, with the court noting that he had quote
(33:37):
dissented with dreyfus exoneration. Although Dreyfus retired from the army
not long after his nineteen o five returned to service,
he returned to active duty as a lieutenant colonel during
World War One. At that point he was nearly fifty five.
His son and several other members of the Dreyfus family
also served. Many of them, including Matthew Dreyfus's son Emile,
(34:00):
were killed in action. Alfred's sun Pierre, was promoted five
times during the war and awarded the Quadi Guier with Palm,
and Alfred became an officer in the Legion of Honor.
His daughter Jeanne, also married a doctor who served in
the war. Alsace Lauren was returned to France after World
War One. Towards the end of his life, Dreyfus was
(34:20):
called on to speak out about the Sacco and Benzetti case.
He said he supported French efforts to ensure that there
was no miscarriage of justice, and he called the possibility
of those two men's execution quote the greatest moral disaster
of many years. This drew criticism from people who claimed
that he was allying himself with anarchists, and from people
(34:42):
who did not think that his statement was nearly strong
enough considering his own wrongful conviction. At this point, though
he was nearly seventy, he was in poor health, and
he was just trying to avoid a spotlight that he
had never wanted in the first place. The drain Fist
affair continued to spawn troversy long after it was over.
(35:02):
A play called Lefebrefuss premiered in ninety one, and that
play was targeted with demonstrations, vandalism, and intimidation throughout its run.
The performances were interrupted every night, including with people throwing
stink bombs. This was one of many many dramatizations of
the affair, which started with a series of one minute
(35:23):
shorts by George Milliers in eighteen ninety nine. Alfred Dreyfus
died on July twelfth, nine thirty five, after a long illness.
His brother Matthew had died in nineteen thirty. Lucy died
on December fourteenth, ninety five, at home, having spent most
of World War two and hiding with a group of nuns.
(35:44):
Most of the Dreyfuss fled south to areas that were
not occupied by Nazi Germany during the war, but Alfred
and Lucy's granddaughter Madeline Dreyfus Levy remained behind to work
with the resistance. She was arrested and died of typhus
at ausch Fit. The Dreyfus affair had enormous and wide
ranging impacts on the nation of France that lasted into
(36:06):
and beyond World War Two. It promoted additional efforts to
separate church and state, which were finalized in nineteen o five.
The response from people like amo Zola refined the idea
of what a French intellectual was and the role of
intellectualism in public life. The affair also stoked nationalism and
anti Semitism, with a far right proto fascist movement rising
(36:29):
in the immediate wake of the affair and growing into
the French Popular Party in the nineteen thirties. This rising
anti semitism connected to the Dreyfust affair also sparked a
rise in Zionism, drawn from the idea that the Jewish
people should have a homeland that was free of anti
Semitic persecution. In January of n just before the hundredth
(36:51):
anniversary of the Jacques's Letter, French President Jacques Sharak wrote
a letter to Dreyfuss descendants that called the Dreyfus affair
quote a our staying unworthy of our country and our history,
a colossal miscarriage of justice and a shameful compromise by
the state. On January of that year, a plaque commemorating
(37:11):
Dreyfus and Zola was unveiled at Equal Militaire, and on
July twelfth of two thousand and six, which was the
centennial of dreyfus exoneration, Sharrock gave an address at Equal
Militaire which was attended by the descendants of Dreyfus and Zula.
In this address, he called Dreyfus an exemplary officer and
(37:32):
also spoke about the dangers of anti Semitism and hate,
saying quote, the combat against the dark forces of intolerance
and hate is never definitively one um. It feels like
a b jillion years ago, but back when I hosted
another podcast called This Day in History Class, we did
an episode on this, which was of course much shorter
(37:54):
because that show was five minutes long per episode. Our
colleague christ for Hasseiotis did some research support on that
installment of the Day in History Class, UM, and so
I just wanted to note that since some of those
sources found their way into this these several years later.
(38:16):
This is one of those episodes that every break that
we've had, Tracy and I sit here and go, yeah,
do you have a little bit of listener mail that
makes us feel less grumbly and angry at the world.
I do it, may or may not do that. It's
from Corina. Thank you Carina for sending this note, and
also thank you Carina for telling me at the bottom
(38:39):
how to say your name. That has a big help. Uh.
Karina wrote, Hi, Tracy and Holly. I've wanted to write
in for a long time, but somehow never have you
cover so many underappreciated topics on the show, and you've
really opened my eyes up to history that hits close
to home. Listening to the Paper Clipper episodes, I had
to pull over and call my mom and then my
(38:59):
grandmother this time, though, you hit my family right on
the news. My grandfather was an engineer at Redstone Arsenal
and then at NASA. His career highlights include the Saturn
five and the Lunar rover. Van Brown picked my grandfather
to go to Antarctica for a month to use that
desolate environment as practice for the buggy. My mom still
(39:22):
has the penguin card from that trip. I've chatted with
my grandmother about this, and she remembers having German engineers
over for dinner after work. There is an apocryphal story
of my mom's in which she saw one of them
topple off the ottoman and then whispered to her that
that was how gravity worked, before dusting himself off and
sending my mom, age four back to bed. I wish
(39:45):
I had been able to ask my grandfather about how
he felt working with the German scientists and how much
he knew about paper clips, since it was such a
poorly kept secret. He passed before I was born, and
as my parents are mid move I can't dig out
the NASA A yearbooks for you. I'll find them and
send you a scan. Meeting you at the live show
in Seattle was the best. I enjoy getting to hang
(40:07):
out with you both as I go about my day.
So here is my puppy, Cerberus best Carina Man. Cerberus
has the cutest gloppy face. That's like a weaponized puppy.
Like I would do anything for that dog. I'd be like, yes, yeah,
of course, you can drive my car. Whatever's fine, whatever
you want, puppy. That sounds great. We've heard from a
(40:31):
few people who either are descended from folks who were
part of Operation paper Clipper, who had family members or
other loved ones who worked with various paper clippers and
other of those messages may make an appearance at some
point during the show. But thank you everybody who has
who has written in to kind of share those connections
to your own family. I just I wanted to particularly
(40:52):
read that one because I love the story about that's
how gravity works, and also the puppy picture. If you
would like to write us about this or any other
podcast or a history podcasts that I heart radio dot
com and we're all over social media at missed in History.
That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram,
and you can subscribe to our show on the I
(41:13):
heart Radio app and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
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visit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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Tracy Wilson
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