The Dreyfus Affair: France's Anti-Semitic Military Scandal

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On Saturday, January 5th, 1895, a 35-year-old Army captain named Alfred Dreyfus waited anxiously in the hall of the École Militaire in Paris.

Once a student at this prestigious academy, he now stood under police guard.

Dreyfus straightened his cap and did his best to muster his inner strength.

He had spent the last two and a half months in a military prison and was about to face an officer's worst nightmare, a public humiliation to remove his military honors.

The door swung open and five soldiers marched Dreyfus into the courtyard.

Nearly 4,000 troops stood at attention around the square while another 20,000 people leered at him from outside the gates.

They were there to witness his downfall.

Dreyfus had been convicted of selling French military secrets to Germany.

It was considered a heinous crime against his country.

Dreyfus heard the clockbells strike 9 in the morning.

He wondered if his punishment had been scheduled on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, specifically to disrespect his faith.

A general on horseback ordered him to step forward.

The spectators fell silent as a military clerk read the verdict.

Dreyfus was guilty of espionage and treason.

He shouted that he was innocent, but his protests fell on deaf ears.

The crowd erupted into screams of traitor and death to the Jew.

Dreyfus couldn't believe he was being betrayed by the country he had faithfully served.

He shouted, long live France.

Then he felt someone grab the front of his jacket.

A sergeant stripped his uniform bare, ripping off the gold buttons, braided shoulder cords, and every mark of military authority.

Finally, the soldier yanked Dreyfus' sword from its scabbard, drew it over his knee, and snapped it in half.

Dreyfus stared at the remnants of his honor on the ground.

They might as well have pushed his face into one of the mud puddles dotting the yard.

The guards forced Dreyfus to march around the square as the crowd shouted anti-Semitic insults.

Once the guards led Dreyfus back inside, he hoped the torture was finally over, but the worst was yet to come.

Soon he would be shackled, imprisoned, and exiled halfway around the world.

All for a crime he never committed.

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From Balin Studios and Wondery, I'm Luke Lamana and this is Redacted Declassified Mysteries, where each week we shine a light on the shadowy corners of espionage, covert operations, and misinformation to reveal the dark secrets our governments try to hide.

This week's episode is called The Dreyfus Affair, France's Anti-Semitic Military Scandal.

The story I'm about to tell has all the elements of a political thriller.

Military espionage, forged documents, cover-ups, and a scandal that went straight to the top.

But this didn't start in CIA headquarters or the Oval Office.

It happened in France 130 years ago.

I have to confess, I knew very little about this story.

Maybe some vague memory from a college history class about a Jewish officer named Alfred Dreyfus and a scandal in France.

But as I learned more, I realized this wasn't just some historical footnote.

It's the story of an innocent man crushed by the justice system, and one that still resonates today.

In 1791, France became the first European nation to grant Jews full citizenship rights.

But changing laws couldn't erase centuries of prejudice.

As Jewish families families achieved success in society, Catholics and aristocrats saw their rise as a threat to the old order.

Meanwhile, new pseudoscientific theories tried to paint Jews as an inferior race.

Their loyalties were questioned no matter how patriotic they were, and they were often viewed as permanent outsiders.

So, when a Jewish officer in the French military was accused of treason, many were all too eager to believe the worst, regardless of the evidence.

What began as a simple case of treason spiraled into a web of lies that reached the highest levels of the French government.

The Dreyfus affair raised questions that countries around the world still grapple with.

In a nation with diverse ethnicities and religions, who really counts as a citizen?

And who gets justice under the law?

In the spring of 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus arrived early at the Ministry of War in Paris, relishing the quiet before the chaos of the day began.

Intelligence reports were already piling up on his desk.

It was his job to trace potential threats to France.

Dreyfus was the first Jewish captain ever to serve on France's general staff.

He'd graduated near the top of his class at officer school, outworking everyone around him.

But Paris's military elite was a closed circle.

The typical French officer came from established Catholic military families, men whose ancestors had served in the king's army.

Dreyfus represented something new and threatening.

He was the son of a wealthy Jewish businessman who had dared to enter their exclusive world.

To the old guard, he didn't fit the mold of what a French officer should be.

Dreyfus was aware of the side glances and whispered comments from his fellow officers, but he refused to let them distract him.

Ever since he watched Prussian troops march into his hometown as a boy, Dreyfus had dreamed of becoming a French officer.

After all, French Jews had been equal citizens since the Revolution, 100 years earlier.

In other countries, Jews were forbidden from living alongside non-Jews and couldn't hold certain jobs.

And in Eastern Europe, violent mobs regularly attacked Jewish neighborhoods, destroying homes and killing families.

Now, at his desk, Dreyfus focused on a more immediate threat.

The reports in front of him painted a tense picture.

Relations between France and Germany were on a knife's edge.

France had lost territory to the Germans in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, and the two European superpowers remained avowed enemies.

Dreyfus knew his job protecting French interests was crucial.

He took pride in his work and wanted to prove that a Jew could serve France as loyally as anyone else.

He was certain that in the end, dedication and merit would matter more than background or religion.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

A few months later, on a warm evening in September 1894, A cleaning woman named Marie Bastien was lugging a mop and bucket through the halls of the German embassy in Paris.

Marie was around 40 years old and worked in the office of a top German military officer.

Her boss thought she was illiterate and stupid.

He had no idea she was really a spy.

For the last five years, Marie had been taking letters that she found in his trash and passing them to French counterintelligence.

She was from Alsace, a region of France that Germany had seized in the last war.

Like many others, she hated seeing her home in German hands.

She hoped to find any information that could help France take the the land back.

Unfortunately, most of the documents she dug out of her boss's garbage were useless, but every once in a while, she struck gold.

Tonight, she spotted a thin, almost transparent sheet of paper that had been torn into pieces.

It looked like a letter, but there was no signature on it.

Marie's instincts told her these were no everyday scraps.

She tucked the papers into the waistband of her skirt, finished cleaning, and headed out to deliver the note to her French spy handler.

Marie hurried through Paris, guided by the gas lamps flickering above her.

She ducked into a dimly lit church where a French intelligence officer waited for her in the pews.

Marie handed him the note and watched his face intently as he squinted at each piece.

Surely, he would be able to interpret what it said.

After a minute, Marie's handler looked up.

He told her she had found something very important, a list of secret French French military documents that had been stolen by a spy for her German boss.

They included classified information about artillery formations and troop maneuvers.

Only a French officer on the general staff would have access to these details.

Marie felt a rising wave of anger.

This note was the work of a traitor, someone who had risen through the ranks by the grace of France, only to then betray his people.

But luckily, he wouldn't be free for long.

Thanks to Marie, the military would now be on the hunt for this vile spy.

A few weeks later, on October 15, 1894, Alfred Dreyfus enjoyed the cool fall air as he walked up the stairs of the Ministry of War building.

A few days earlier, he had received a summons to appear along with his fellow staff officers for a general inspection.

The request wasn't unusual, since these inspections happened every so often, though some of the orders seemed odd.

He didn't understand why they wanted him in civilian clothing instead of his uniform.

He assumed it would all become clear after he had arrived.

But when Dreyfus entered the building, he was surprised to find none of his fellow officers there.

Instead, there was just his old professor, Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picard.

As Dreyfus wondered what was going on, Picard led him to another room.

There, Commandant Charlais Dupati de Clom waited for him, along with three other men he didn't recognize.

Then, Dupati made an odd request.

He said he needed help writing a letter because of a sore finger.

Dreyfus's instincts told him something was wrong, but he couldn't think of any reason to refuse.

Dupati handed him a piece of paper and a fountain pen and began dictating.

Dreyfus's stomach churned as he copied down the strange letter.

It seemed to be a list, something about a hydraulic cannon, the island of Madagascar, a field artillery manual.

None of it made any sense.

As Dreyfus wrote, DuPati ordered Dreyfus to stop shaking and take this seriously.

Dreyfus was confused.

His hand wasn't shaking at all.

The three men moved closer, almost breathing down his neck, while Dreyfus forced himself to keep writing.

Then, as he finished the final sentence, DuPati's hand gripped his shoulder.

The commander announced that Dreyfus was under arrest for high treason.

The accusation hit Dreyfus like a lightning bolt.

He demanded to know who had accused him of betraying his country and why.

Depati simply announced that the evidence was overwhelming.

The other man began digging through his pockets, and Dreyfus guessed they were looking for the supposed evidence.

He told them to take his keys and search his house.

They wouldn't find any military documents or notes to foreign governments.

He had nothing to hide.

Ignoring his protests, they dragged him out of the building and into a waiting carriage.

He heard one of the officers order the driver to take them to the military prison nearby.

Dreyfus thought they must have mixed him up with someone else, or maybe this was all just a terrible nightmare.

The carriage eventually came to a halt outside the prison, and the men led him to a dark, dingy cell.

As the heavy prison doors slammed shut behind him, he knew that this nightmare was real.

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Several weeks later, Dreyfus paced inside his small cell.

Solitary confinement had left him pale and gaunt, and he'd been forbidden from speaking with his family.

In fact, nobody spoke to him at all, except when the officers interrogated him.

It was through these conversations that Dreyfus started to piece together what had happened.

The case centered on a single note, an offer to sell French military secrets to a German military attaché.

The German official had carelessly tossed it away, never suspecting that his cleaning lady was a spy.

The note mentioned classified information that only a few people would have known, including Dreyfus.

That's why Dupati had made him write that strange letter.

It was a trick, to compare his handwriting to the spy's note.

Dupati claimed they matched, making Dreyfus the traitor.

But the evidence was flimsy.

Beyond some small similarities with the handwriting, there was nothing linking Dreyfus to espionage.

Dreyfus heard the click of boot heels echo down the hallway.

He knew what that sound meant.

He was about to be interrogated again.

They'd already forced him to give countless handwriting samples with his left hand, with his right, sitting, standing, lying down, all to prove his guilt.

The army's questions infuriated him.

They asked if he gambled, if he was in debt, if he slept with foreign women who might be spies.

They were trying to paint him as a desperate man with a motive to sell secrets.

a reckless womanizer drowning in gambling debts.

It was true that he'd had affairs before marrying his wife Lucy, but his behavior had been tame compared to many other officers, and he had certainly not betrayed France.

His cell door swung open.

DePatty's men were back to ask about the note again.

They told him to just confess, and this would all be over.

But Dreyfus refused.

He threw up his hands, repeating, he was innocent.

After they left, his mind raced.

He believed in the French justice system, but something felt horribly wrong.

Maybe this wasn't just a mistake.

Maybe he was being targeted because he was Jewish.

It wouldn't be the first time.

During his final exams, a general had openly given him low marks for character, stating he didn't want a Jew on the general staff.

Dreyfus began to sob.

He was terrified he would go mad before he could prove his innocence.

In the first week of November 1894, Commandant Dupati settled behind his desk at the Ministry of War.

He had a stack of reports from French military informants to go through.

But first, he'd catch up on the day's headlines in the newspaper.

On the front page, he saw Alfred Dreyfus' name, next to the words, High Treason.

The article claimed the case against Dreyfus was ironclad.

It said he had confessed to selling secrets to the German enemy.

Of course, none of this was news to Depaty.

He'd been the one to test the young officer's handwriting.

It wasn't a perfect match, but he'd seen enough.

A Jewish officer in the general staff had always struck him as an insult to the French military.

Now, even if the evidence was imperfect, it was enough to prove Dreyfus was a traitor.

De Patty smiled with satisfaction.

He appreciated how quickly the press accepted Dreyfus' guilt.

The newspapers had even declared that the traitor wasn't a true Frenchman.

DePatty agreed.

Regardless Regardless of his uniform or rank, Dreyfus would always be an outsider in France.

DePatty savored his victory.

He had been ordered to find a traitor, and now he had one.

Dreyfus would face trial, and France would have its justice.

On December 19, 1894, After two months in prison, Dreyfus was led into a military courtroom.

His wife Lucy and brother Matthew had hired a lawyer, but their demands for a public trial were rejected.

The court-martial would be held in secret.

Solitary confinement had taken its toll.

Dreyfus took his seat in front of a panel of judges, and he felt his mind strain as he concentrated just to follow the proceedings.

But he was determined to prove his innocence.

He scanned the room until he found Dupati.

the man whose flimsy accusations had put him here.

More than 20 officers took the stand against him.

Their accusations built on each other.

Dreyfus had access to military secrets.

He was from Alsace, now under German control.

He even spoke German and visited the region.

And then there was the note, the one piece of evidence at the center of the case.

Of course, he had written it.

But not everyone was against Dreyfus.

Two handwriting experts testified in favor of his innocence.

And as he listened to his lawyer's closing argument, Dreyfus even began to feel hopeful.

The lawyer argued that while Dreyfus did have access to some military intelligence, he didn't have access to the specific information in the treasonous note, and he had no motive to sell secrets.

After all, he had plenty of his own money.

When it was time for the judges to deliberate, a guard led Dreyfus out of the courtroom to wait.

He exhaled slowly and said a silent prayer.

He believed they would find him innocent.

But when he finally heard the verdict, Dreyfus was stunned.

The military tribunal had found him guilty of high treason.

Before he went to prison, he'd suffer one last humiliation.

He would be publicly stripped of all his military honors.

Then Dreyfus would be sent to Devil's Island.

It was a desolate penal colony off the coast of French Guiana in South America, where he would serve a life sentence in solitary confinement.

In that moment, Dreyfus felt life as he knew it was over.

A little over a year later, in March 1896, Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picard sat in his Paris office, tearing into a packet of secret documents.

Eighteen months had passed since he'd escorted Alfred Dreyfus to that fateful handwriting test.

Picard was now head of the French military's counterintelligence department, and part of his job was to clean up the department's records.

Among the documents was a torn letter.

This letter had also been discovered at the German embassy by Marie Bastion, the spy posing as a cleaning lady.

The note was in French and appeared to be signed by a German military official.

It was addressed to a French officer named Commandant Ferdinand Walsen Esterhazy.

Picard furrowed his brow.

So there seemed to be another traitor selling secrets to the Germans.

It disgusted him to think that a second officer was now betraying his country.

Picard decided to investigate Esterhazy Hazy and quickly discovered some troubling facts.

Unlike Dreyfus, this man actually fit the profile of a traitor.

He was a womanizer and gambler drowning in debt, the kind of man who would sell secrets for the right price.

As Picar kept digging, something else jumped out at him.

Esther Hazy's handwriting looked eerily familiar.

Picar compared it to the original note Alfred Dreyfus was found guilty of writing two years earlier.

A pit of terror formed in Picard's stomach.

Esther Hazy's writing was an exact match.

He was the traitor they'd been looking for all along.

They had sent an innocent man into exile on Devil's Island.

Initially, Picar had fully supported Dreyfus' conviction, but despite his own prejudices against Jews, he couldn't ignore such a blatant injustice now.

Before he brought the matter to his superiors, Picar wanted to be sure his instincts were correct.

He requested a secret Dreyfus file from the 1894 court-martial.

As he went through each page, he couldn't believe what he was reading.

There was no confession, no hard evidence, nothing actually tying Dreyfus to the crime.

His colleagues had just made up a story to get the verdict they wanted.

At that point, Picar rushed to tell his commanders what he'd found.

When he finished, he waited for the reaction.

They barely blinked.

Their only concern was that the secret Dreyfus file had never been destroyed.

They told Picar to stop investigating.

They had their man, and reversing Dreyfus's conviction now would only destroy the military's credibility.

Picar returned to his desk, stunned.

The officers in charge had known all along there was no real case against Dreyfus.

They'd needed someone to blame, and they'd found him.

If Picar wanted justice, he would have to turn against the very institution he had sworn to serve.

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Nearly two years later, in early November 1897, Matthew Dreyfus walked down a Paris street and paused outside a storefront.

It was one of several stops he was making that day to finally present evidence in public of his brother's innocence.

He pulled out some supplies and glued a poster to the wall.

It showed two pieces of writing side by side: the treasonous note that had condemned Alfred, and a sample of Alfred's real handwriting.

In the years since his brother's conviction, Matthew had never stopped advocating for Alfred's innocence.

Along with Alfred's wife Lucy and a group of allies called the Dreyfussards, he had been lobbying powerful and influential people to take up their cause.

Eventually, Matthew was able to find the proof he needed to make his case publicly.

A French newspaper had published a leaked copy of the original note, which they'd bought from one of the handwriting analysts consulted in the case.

So Matthew had the posters printed and was now putting them up all over Paris to show just how shoddy the evidence had been against his brother.

A few days later, Matthew got a letter from a stockbroker named J.

De Castro.

He'd seen Matthew's posters and he'd recognized the handwriting in one of the notes.

It belonged to a client of his, a French officer named Ferdinand Esterhazy.

The next day, de Castro arrived with a file of Esterhazy's correspondence.

As Matthew sifted through the letters, his hands began to shake.

The writing was identical.

Matthew rushed the evidence to the vice president of the French Senate, who had been pushing to overturn Alfred's conviction.

The senator studied the letters and nodded slowly.

He didn't seem surprised at all.

He admitted knowing about Estrahazy for months.

The truth had reached him through a complicated chain.

Colonel Picar had discovered Estrahazy's guilt and confided in a trusted friend outside the military.

Despite swearing this friend to secrecy, word leaked to the senator.

That's why he had been quietly fighting for Alfred's freedom, all while protecting Picar's identity.

Matthew was stunned.

But now, with the stockbroker's confirmation that Estrahazey had written the treasonous note, he had what he needed.

On November 16th, 1897, he published a letter in a newspaper called Le Figaro,

calling out the real traitor.

On January 11, 1898, Matthew sat in a packed courtroom, watching Esther Hazy's trial.

More than three years after Alfred's arrest, they had finally forced the military to try the real traitor for espionage.

His brother had spent much of that time in hell on Devil's Island.

It was a former leper colony that was kept so isolated that Alfred was forbidden from even writing to his family.

Matthew learned that Alfred had suffered from malaria and had shackled to his bed at night.

His jailers had even built a wall to block his view of the ocean.

As the proceedings began, Matthew felt cautiously optimistic.

He testified about the matching handwriting samples between Estrahazey's letters and the spy note that had condemned Alfred.

Lieutenant Colonel Picar presented his damning evidence of Estrahaze's dealings with German officials.

The defense had no real answers, only attacks on Picar's character and vague claims about Jewish conspiracies.

When the trial concluded, the judges left to deliberate.

They returned just three minutes later, and their decision stunned the courtroom.

Estrahazy was found not guilty.

The crowd outside erupted in celebration.

As Estrahazy left the courtroom, people cheered, Long live France, long live the army, and death to the Jews.

Down the street, a mob turned on Matthew, Picar, and others who had testified against Esterhazy.

They faced a gauntlet of jeers and threats.

For Matthew, the mockery of justice was complete.

Two days later, still reeling from the verdict, Matthew unfolded a newspaper.

There, taking up the entire front page, was an astonishing letter by Emile Zola, one of France's most celebrated writers.

Titled Je Accuse, it named everyone who had played a role in the scandal, claiming they imprisoned an innocent man because he was Jewish.

Zola exposed how the military had covered up Picard's evidence of Dreyfus' innocence.

He attacked the press for inflaming anti-Semitic hatred.

The letter was a declaration of war against injustice, and Matthew hoped it would be enough to finally get his brother back home.

Almost two years later, in the summer of 1899, Alfred Dreyfus sat inside his hut on Devil's Island, swatting away away mosquitoes.

He was frail and physically exhausted.

In only a few years, he seemed to have aged decades, and he was still not used to the daily burden of insects and disease.

A letter from his wife Lucy had finally arrived after months of silence.

Tears streamed down his face as he read that they would soon be reunited.

His conviction hadn't been overturned, but he was being sent back to France for a retrial.

His eyes widened as he read about his brother Matthew's efforts, about the Dreyfussard movement, and the countless articles by Emile Zola, a national icon.

While he had been suffering alone, an ocean away from home, thousands had taken to the streets demanding justice.

He knew this wasn't just about him anymore.

This was a moment of reckoning for France.

Dreyfus folded the letter into his lap and took a few deep breaths.

Soon he would board a boat for the difficult journey home.

While he knew he wouldn't return as a free man, the promise of seeing his family, even if only across a courtroom, gave him strength to face what lay ahead.

Shockingly, the 1899 retrial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus ended in another conviction.

The military dug in its heels, finding him guilty of treason with extenuating circumstances, a bizarre legal term used after one judge asked to change his vote against military procedure.

Despite this confusing verdict, there was one crucial difference.

For the first time, the proceedings were held openly rather than in a closed military court-martial.

This transparency proved vital.

Just days later, public outcry forced the French government to offer Dreyfus a pardon.

Though some supporters urged him to continue fighting in the courts, Dreyfus was exhausted.

He accepted the pardon and retreated to private life.

In 1906, he was officially exonerated and his captain's rank was fully restored.

Remarkably, Dreyfus remained a patriot.

He even volunteered to serve France again in World War I when he was in his 50s.

He died in Paris in 1935, at the age of 75.

The fallout from the affair was widespread.

Picard, Dreyfus' former professor who helped to expose the truth, served nearly a year in solitary confinement for rebuking the military and helping Dreyfus before being released in 1899.

Writer Emile Zola was convicted of libel and fled to England.

The commandant who first denounced Dreyfus, Hubert Joseph Henry, confessed to forging documents before taking his own life.

But perhaps most outrageous of all, Esterhazy, the real traitor, was allowed to escape to England, where he lived freely for the rest of his life.

The Dreyfus affair exposed systemic anti-Semitism in French society and highlighted the media's powerful role role in shaping public opinion and, ultimately, the course of history.

It demonstrated how deeply ingrained prejudices can lead people to assume guilt based on identity rather than evidence.

Over a century later, the case still resonates.

We continue to see cracks in justice systems worldwide that can lead to the punishment of innocent people.

Prejudice and stereotypes still sway public opinion and even judicial decisions, echoing the biases that nearly destroyed Dreyfus's life.

The legacy of the Dreyfus affair underscores the ongoing importance of holding governments accountable, ensuring equal justice for all, and resisting the dangerous pull of prejudice.

It serves as a powerful reminder that vigilance against injustice and discrimination remains as crucial today as it was over a century ago.

Follow redacted Declassified Mysteries, hosted by me, Luke Lamana, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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From Balin Studios and Wondery, this is Redacted: Declassified Mysteries, hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

A quick note about our stories.

We do a lot of research, but some details and scenes are dramatized.

We used many different sources for our show, but we especially recommend the books France and the Dreyfus Affair, a documentary history by Michael Burns, Alfred Dreyfus, The Man at the Center of the Affair by Maurice Samuels, and the article Trial of the Century by Adam Gopnik for The New Yorker.

This episode was written by Susie Armitage.

Sound design by Ryan Batesta.

Our producers are Christopher B.

Dunn and John Reed.

Our associate producers are Ines Rennie Kay and Molly Quintlin Artwick.

Fact-checking by Brian Pignant.

For Balin Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt.

Script editing by Scott Allen and Luke Baratz.

Our coordinating producer is Samantha Collins.

Production support by Avery Siegel.

Produced by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive producers are Mr.

Ballin and Nick Witters.

For Wondery, our senior producers are Laura Donna Palavota, Dave Schilling, and Rachel Engelman.

Senior managing producer is Nick Ryan.

Managing producer is Olivia Fonte.

Our executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louie.

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