The Dreyfus Affair in Retrospect: Review Essay

Abstract

The Dreyfus Affair in Retrospect:Review Essay Jack Fischel (bio) Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century, by Ruth Harris. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010. 550 pp. $35.00. For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus, by Frederick Brown. New York: Knopf, 2010. 304 pp. $28.95. Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, by Louis Begley. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. 249 pp. $16.00. Some hundred years after Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was found guilty in 1894 by a prejudiced military tribunal of passing defense secrets to Germany, the injustice continues to resonate among the tragic events that shaped Jewish history in the twentieth century. It may be argued whether a direct link can be made between the Dreyfus Affair and the deportation by the Vichy government of more than 70,000 French Jews during the Holocaust, but it is unquestionable that the framing of Dreyfus in 1894 unleashed a virulent antisemitism in the most democratic country in Western Europe, a miscarriage of justice that continues to evoke strong emotions in contemporary France. The three books under review concerning the Dreyfus "affair" provide a comprehensive understanding of the political, cultural, and social context that permitted the injustice endured by Dreyfus to occur. In the process, the books reveal a great deal about how antisemitism in France helped shape the course of modern Jewish history in the twentieth century. Indeed, Theodore Herzl, who reported on the trial for his Viennese newspaper, wrote, "If France, the home of the Revolution, was susceptible to the basest anti-Semitism, was that not proof of the need for a Jewish homeland?." The Dreyfus affair most definitely [End Page 119] had much to do with mobilizing the nascent Zionist undertaking into the political movement that subsequently contributed almost fifty years later to the creation of the state of Israel. Too often when we think of the Dreyfus Affair, we tend to think of it along the lines of simply a struggle between antisemitic anti-Dreyfusards, who were determined to railroad Dreyfus to a lifetime of imprisonment on Devil's Island despite evidence that proved his innocence, versus the Dreyfusards, who recognized that he was framed by forces that not only hated Jews but were opposed to the idea of democratic constitutional government as epitomized by the Third French Republic. In her indispensable history of the Dreyfus Affair, Ruth Harris, author of Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age, and a fellow and tutor at Oxford University, in her examination of the trial and the ensuing riots against Jews in France and its colonies, does not underestimate the antisemitic factor in the "affair" but also concludes that the division over Dreyfus's guilt or innocence was far more complex. Harris describes how the trial and its aftermath divided families and friendships, if not the nation itself, including a number of anti-semites, such as Georges Picquart, who placed the rule of law above his predilection to dislike Jews. But the likes of Picquart were few inasmuch as most antisemites were ready to overlook the evidence of Dreyfus's innocence because of their visceral hatred of Jews. Other factors that contributed to the division over the Dreyfus Affair included the reluctance of the military to not dishonor its leadership by admitting its criminality in forging evidence against Dreyfus, the clash between the demands of justice versus national security concerns, a theme which is also addressed in Louis Begley's book, and the oppositional role of the French Catholic Church, which associated France's Jews with the secular-minded Republic and its commitment to the separation of church and state. This, however, is not to underestimate the role of antisemitism in France as an important factor in the Dreyfus Affair. Harris notes that the universalism of the Third French Republic was countered by xenophobic nationalists (not unlike its Völkisch counterparts in Germany) who, like Maurice Barres, saw "France's regions as different 'mothers,' whose variety underpinned the country's divergent vitality. Jews and Protestants, on the other hand, were incarnations of cosmopolitanism, and therefore rootless parasites. They loved 'universalism,' Barres believed, because it masked...