Dreifuss trial

Are you readers following all this? The letter finally convinced Billot to appoint Henry to investigate Picquart. Commandant Ferdinand Esterhazy, the real traitor. All this might have worked—except for a securities trader named J. Castro had professional dealings with Esterhazy for many years. When he saw a published copy of the bordereau, he immediately identified the handwriting of that of his client. Castro discussed his discovery with friends, who eventually put him in touch with Mathieu Dreyfus.

The High Command knew it was facing a crisis. They might have to free Alfred Dreyfus, or at least provide a new trial. But they worried about their own criminal liability and careers—and about the honor of the army as a whole. One lie had led to another, and now, it seemed, they might be trapped. Perhaps doing nothing was the best approach.

Perhaps the problem will fade away? Predictably, about the only thing the generals could agree upon was the need to punish the whistleblower, Picquart. Novelist and ardent support of Dreyfus, Emile Zola.

Zola realized early on that the fight to free Dreyfus could not be won it the courts alone; it first had to be won in the court of public opinion. Zola also suggested that top military officials were engaging in a cover-up and that the military was afraid of the consequences of admitting its mistake in the Dreyfus court-martial.

Zola understood that is speaking out put him at risk of prosecution for criminal libel. I am waiting! The prosecution made the libel case a choice between siding with Zola and the Dreyfusards or supporting the army. Zola was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison, but the Court of Cassation overturned the conviction on the ground that General Billot, who filed the suit, lacked standing to sue on behalf of the judges.

Zola was retried, again found guilty, and fled to England to avoid imprisonment. Cavaignac ordered a review of the evidence used to convict Dreyfus, including the secret dossier, as well as confession Dreyfus supposedly made on the eve of his degradation.

Indeed, he thought it did just that. He delivered a major speech in which he read the full text of the faux Henry, as well as the text of letters from the secret dossier. When Picquart answered with a letter to the prime minister calling those documents forgeries, Cavaignac ordered his arrest.

The arrest of Georges Picquart. But after Henry confessed on August 30 to his forgery, then slit his throat with a razor the next day, even Cavaignac came around. Dreyfus would finally get judicial review of his conviction. The government filed a petition in the Court of Cassation on September 16, , asking for just that. He was provided with a new suit and hat for the occasion. The same day, all criminal charges against Georges Picquart were dismissed.

Photograph of Alfred Dreyfus in Tensions ran high and police presence was high. Even so, one of the members of the defense team was shot and wounded by an assailant. A month later, the military judges rendered their decision. By a vote of 5 to 2, they found Dreyfus guilty, but with extenuating circumstances. The sentence imposed was ten years imprisonment.

Dreyfus heard the sentence read without the least show of emotion. Photo of court martial in Rennes I take to be this: they were unversed in the law, unused to legal proceedings, with no experience or aptitude to enable them to weigh the probative effect of testimony; they were steeped in prejudice and concerned for what they regarded as the honor of the army and thus, impressed or overawed by the heads of their profession, they gave weight to the flimsy rags of evidence which alone were presented against the accused man.

The Rennes verdict was not well-received outside of France. French embassies around the globe needed police to protect them from mob violence. An appeal would take time and, at best, result in a remand and yet another court-martial that could well produce the same result. So after filing his appeal, Dreyfus was persuaded to withdraw it and seek a presidential pardon.

The pardon was signed by President Emile Loubet on September 19, Long live France! Long live the army! Dreyfus was exiled to a penal colony on Devil's Island, part of an archipelago off the coast of French Guiana in South America.

With Dreyfus languishing in captivity, his family continued to challenge the verdict and claim that he was innocent. Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, who had become the new head of French Intelligence Services, was never convinced of Dreyfus' guilt.

In March , new evidence surfaced implicating a French major, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, as the German agent who had written the bordereau. Despite Picquart's efforts to investigate Esterhazy, his superiors resisted efforts to have the case reopened and eventually had Piquart reassigned to Tunisia.

Nonetheless, the proof that Dreyfus was in fact innocent reached the French senate, where Senator Auguste-Scheurer-Kestner declared Dreyfus' innocence and accused Esterhazy of being the traitor. Meanwhile, on January 13, , the Socialist newspaper L'Aurore published an open letter from the novelist Emile Zola to the president of the republic, Felix Faure. Novelist Zola was found guilty of criminal libel in slandering the army and had to flee to England to avoid imprisonment.

He remained there until he was granted amnesty in The front-page article made a powerful impression in France, dividing the country into two camps. The anti-Dreyfusards, comprised of the Catholic Church, the military, and the right wing, clung to the original verdict and exploited antisemitism.

They feared that a reversal would lead to a weakening of the military establishment. They were opposed by the Dreyfusards, an alliance of moderate Republicans, Radicals, and Socialists. The Dreyfusards protested the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus. They also felt the case had become a test of France's ability to protect truth, justice, and the basic elements of the Rights of Man against the forces of extreme nationalism, antisemitism, and the excessive involvement of the Church in state affairs.

In the summer of , the case was reopened and the original forgeries used to convict Dreyfus were discovered. Public opinion began to shift in favor of Dreyfus. The Supreme Court ordered a retrial. Herzl did not live to see Dreyfus reinstated. He passed away in , eight years after the publication of his book. Those few years of tireless work initiated the meetings of the Zionist Congress, led to the Second Aliyah, the second mass migration to Israel that lasted from till the start of WWI, led to the Balfour Declaration, the Partition Plan and finally, 50 years after Herzl predicted it in his diary, the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

That argument would be akin to saying World War I began as a direct result of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his pregnant wife Sophie. Clearly, things are more complicated than that.

World War I began for multiple reasons including growing militarism, imperialism, nationalism and strategic alliances at the time in Europe and lots of other things I should know about because I am a history major, but forgot since. For 2, years there was a religious and national desire for a Jewish return to the Land of Israel and at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, there had already been movements of young Jews returning to what was Ottoman-controlled Palestine, to work the land in hopes of a future state.

However, Herzl absolutely deserves a huge amount of credit as his initiative to found political Zionism and get the ball rolling in a real, tangible way helped lead to the founding of the State. Today around the world, antisemites accuse Jews of dual-loyalty, of not being faithful citizens in the various countries in which they live , much like how at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, even in enlightened France, Jews were treated as outsiders and scapegoats.

It is a stark reminder to fight the virus of antisemitism at its very core in every country in which it rears its ugly head. He was more like an object. On the one hand, we remember this story because it stands out as a unique moment in modern western history. On the other hand, we remember this story precisely because it is the story of the Jewish people before the State of Israel came into existence.

With the advent of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel, the Jewish people returned to the stage as subjects, who would control their own destiny. Enjoy this podcast with friends by hosting a podcast listening party. Unpacking Israeli History. Dreyfus: An Affair to Remember. Share on twitter. Share on facebook. Share on pinterest. Share on whatsapp. Subscribe to this podcast.

Episode Transcript. The trial and degradation of Alfred Dreyfus In the winter of , behind closed doors, the military espionage trial began. Why does it matter?

OK but why does this story still matter now? Five Fast Facts Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French military officer, was wrongfully accused and convicted of being a German spy — with no proof. Share on email. Topics in this podcast. More on this. Hide Author. When the list of officer trainees was examined, one named jumped out: Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus was a thirty-five-year-old artillery officer trainee. Though widely acknowledged to be competent and intelligent, he was unpopular with some of his superiors for the simple reason he was Jewish.

Captain Alfred Dreyfus When the list of officer trainees was examined, one named jumped out: Alfred Dreyfus.