You Are There - The Dreyfus Case

The French artillery officer Captain Alfred Dreyfus is wrongfully
convicted of communicating French military secrets to the German
Embassy in Paris, initiating a political scandal that rocks the
Third Republic.


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The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal that divided the Third
French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906.
"L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise
modern injustice in the Francophone world, and it remains one of
the most notable examples of a complex miscarriage of justice and
antisemitism. The role played by the press and public opinion
proved influential in the conflict.


A scandal that rocked France in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, the Dreyfus affair involved a Jewish artillery captain
in the French army, Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), who was falsely
convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans. In 1894,
after a French spy at the German Embassy in Paris discovered a
ripped-up letter in a waste basket with handwriting said to
resemble that of Dreyfus, he was court-martialed, found guilty of
treason and sentenced to life behind bars on Devil’s Island off
of French Guiana. In a public ceremony in Paris following his
conviction, Dreyfus had the insignia torn from his uniform and
his sword broken and was paraded before a crowd that shouted,
“Death to Judas, death to the Jew.”


In 1896, the new head of the army’s intelligence unit, Georges
Picquart, uncovered evidence pointing to another French military
officer, Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, as the real traitor.
However, when Picquart told his bosses what he’d discovered he
was discouraged from continuing his investigation, transferred to
North Africa and later imprisoned. Nevertheless, word about
Esterhazy’s possible guilt began to circulate. In 1898, he was
court-martialed but quickly found not guilty; he later fled the
country. After Esterhazy’s acquittal, a French newspaper
published an open letter titled “J’Accuse…!” by well-known author
Emile Zola in which he defended Dreyfus and accused the military
of a major cover-up in the case. As a result, Zola was convicted
of libel, although he escaped to England and later managed to
return to France.


The Dreyfus affair deeply divided France, not just over the fate
of the man at its center but also over a range of issues,
including politics, religion and national identity. In 1899,
Dreyfus was court-martialed for a second time and found guilty.
Although he was pardoned days later by the French president, it
wasn’t until 1906 that Dreyfus officially was exonerated and
reinstated in the army.


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Starring: Winston Burdett, Walter Cronkite, Don
Hollenbeck, Edward P. Morgan,  E.G. Marshall, Frances Reid