Alfred Dreyfus Convicted - December 22, 1894

Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted of selling military secrets to Germany on this day in 1894.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to this Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff you
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and it's December
twenty two. Alfred Dreyfuss was wrongfully convicted of selling military

(00:26):
secrets to Germany on this day in eight four. He
was sentenced to military degradation and exile for life. Most
English speakers in the United States say his name dry
Fuss and called us the Dryfus affair, but in French
it is a lot more like Dreyfus. Dreyfuss had decided
to join the military as a young man after witnessing

(00:48):
the German occupation of his hometown and the French defeat
in the Franco Prussian War. He graduated with honors from
Ecole Polytechnique and he became the first Jewish officer on
the ural staff at the headquarters of the French Ministry
of War. On December twenty six of eighteen ninety four,
a document was intercepted that was addressed to the German

(01:10):
military attache, Lieutenant Colonel Max von Schwartzkoppen, and then that
October Dreyfuss was charged with this crime. There were a
lot of reasons that the military had for suspecting him.
He was from Alsace, which had been under German control
since the Franco Prussian War, He had access to the
information and question thanks to his position, His handwriting was

(01:34):
supposedly similar to the handwriting in the documents, and he
was Jewish. Several openly anti Semitic officers said quite plainly
that being Jewish made him suspect. He was convicted in
a closed court martial and publicly degraded on January. He
was then transported to prison and ultimately held in solitary

(01:56):
confinement on Devil's Island. His family, especially his wife and
his brother, believed his innocence from the very start, and
he steadfastly maintained that he was not guilty. They fought
for a retrial for him, and gradually members of the
general public started to call for a retrial as well.

(02:17):
Emil Zola's famous Jacques letter, published in a newsletter called Laure,
was printed on January. This letter took up the whole
front page, and it accused the military and others of
a cover up. He was put on trial for defaming
the French military, convicted of libel and sentenced to a

(02:40):
year in prison and three thousand francs. He was forced
into exile in London. Then George Picard, chief of Intelligence,
found compelling evidence that another French officer, Ferdinand Valsin esther Hasi,
was the real culprit. And this was true, that was
the real culprit. This man had offered his services to

(03:01):
vunched sports Coppin on July, he had been paid on
August fIF and this was his message, not dry fuss
that had been intercepted. Picard was ordered not to pursue
this matter, but he continued on in defiance of that order.
There was eventually a court martial, but estra Hazy was

(03:21):
acquitted and Picard was removed from his position and sent
on a series of dangerous missions to get him out
of the way. This blossomed into a major schism in France.
The dry Fussards and anti dry Sards lined up four
and against reopening the case. This led to all kinds
of political our cartoons, many of them extremely anti Semitic

(03:45):
and full of disparaging stereotypes. Was also tied up in
thoughts about the military, with the dry Fussards wanting the
military to be overseen by Parliament and the anti dry
Fussard's arguing that this whole affair was imaging the military.
This all spread well beyond France, with writers and composers

(04:05):
and artists and world leaders and other prominent people all
taking sides. In August of eight, it was discovered that
one of the documents that had been used to convict
Dreyfuss was a forgery, and one officer admitted that he
had fabricated this document in order to get a conviction.
A retrial was held in June of eight. Once again,

(04:27):
Dreyfus was convicted, but this time he was given a
reduced sentence, led to international outrage. She was offered a
pardon not long after that because he was in poor health,
but he and his family continued to seek exoneration. They
didn't just want him free, they wanted his name cleared.
Another retrial was held in nineteen o three, and finally

(04:48):
in nineteen o six, Dryfus was exonerated. He was innocent
of all charges. He was restored to his position of major.
Picard was also reinstated and promoted to brigadier general, and
the French Army publicly declared that Dreyfus was innocent. They
did that in before we close out today's episode. For

(05:09):
the next week, my co host on Stuffy Missed in
History Class, Holly Fry, will be filling in for me
on this show because of the very weird time travel
nature of this podcast. That was to help me cover
some time out of the office back in November, So
thanks Holly. Thanks also to Christopher Hasciotis for his research
work on today's show, and to Casey Pegram and Chandler

(05:30):
Maze for their audio work on this show. You can
subscribe to the Stay in History Class on Apple Podcasts,
Google podcast, the I Heart Radio app, and wherever else
you get podcasts. Tune in tomorrow for one of the
world's most famous patrons