5634. The Dreyfus Affair The Scandal That Tore France in Two, by Piers Paul Read (read 25 Jun 2019) This is the fourth book I have read by this author. The others were the stunning and Alive: The
Story of the Andes Survivors, Ablaze: The Story of Chernobyl and a work of fiction, Monk Dawson. I read the book The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus by Jean-Louis Bredin on 19 March 1986 and read Dreyfus: A Family Affair, by Michael Burns, on 6 June 1992,both of which I found to be outstanding. But the case has always fascinated me and it has been years since I read those books and I know that Piers Paul Read is a very able writer so I could not resist reading this book The affair arose in 1894 and Dreyfus was charged with treason and found guilty and sentenced to prison on Devil's Island, a French island in the Caribbean. This book tells of those 4 horrific years more fully than the other books I read. The long effort to undo this gross miscarriage of justice is detailed well in the book and the harm the case did to France is fully explored.. Read is Catholic and examines fully and the anti-Catholic aspects of the case, and of course the anti-Semitic aspects in illuminating detail. This is a very good book. and recalled the fantastic case to me tellingly. ( )

Searing account of one of the great miscarriages of justice in history, one which divided French society at the time and which still resonates in France to this today. In belle epoque France a routine search of materials from a wastepaper basket in the German embassy by French security turned up a torn up document (dubbed "the bordereau") which seemed to indicate a traitor in the French military was delivering secrets to the Germans. Desperate to locate the spy, the French spooks had scoured the document and had the handwriting analysed. They immediately identified, on extraordinarily flimsy evidence, Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer ,as the culprit. Dreyfus was a convenient suspect, he fit the criterai,he was unpopular witrh his fellow officers, and most significantly, he was Jewish, in a era when anti-semitism was on the rise in France. In short order, Dreyfus was arrested, interrogated by officers who were already convinced of his guilt, court martialled, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on the hellhole of Devil's Island of the coast of French Guiana. The case seemed closed and everyone seemed happy, except for Dreyfus' family, who began a long campaign, in the face of virulent anti-semitism and attacks by the right-wing media, to prove that Alfred was innocent. Gradually more and more people were convinced that major miscarriage of justice had occurred, but a backlash from the militray and the right unsured that France split down the middle into Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards. The military was so convinced of Dreyfus' guilt that they manufactured evidence to further confirm his guilt, which was ultimately their downfall. The crisis exploded when the famous author Emile Zola published his inflammatory "J'accuse!" in a newspaper, earning himself a years imprisonment for libel, but which ultimately forced the authorities to act. By this time, the military had actually identified the real spy, a ne'er-do-well officer by the name of Esterhazy, but they simply had too much invested in Dreyfus' guilt to allow the truth to come out. Dreyfus was granted a retrial, which again found him guilty but in the process exposed the fabricated evidence which had convicted him in the first place. He was then pardoned by the President, but had to wait until 1906 to be fully exonerated and restored to the army, but his health had been broken by his ordeal and he lasted only a couple of years in the service. The Dreyfus affair exposed so many splits in French society, between right and left, between Catholics and anti-clericals, between the militray and civil government, thats its effects have been blamed for contrubuting to France's long history of rapidly changing governments, and even to France's defeat in WWII. The books starts slowly but then gathers pace,as the reader is fully apprised of the obvious injustice done to Dreyfus. This isnt the first book I have read about Dreyfyus, but its certainly one of the best, particularly for the general reader. Rather than a dry retelling of facts, it deals with the emotions this saga unleashed and looks at the protagonists as people with human failings. Its a very human story as well as a retelling of a legal case, and as such eminently readable.

Does not break new ground, but is a good, detailed treatment of a complex subject. ( )

Where I got the book: my local library. Yay for the local library, because this one might be thought of as a bit of an obscure subject in America.

You can't do any reading about late nineteenth-century France without stumbling across the Dreyfus Affair. So I knew the basics: a Jewish army captain was wrongly accused of passing military secrets to the Germans (Enemy #1 at the time, not that long after the Franco-Prussian War), interned on Devil's Island, and subsequently released and repatriated when the real culprit was found. Huge, HUGE ruckus involving lots of nasty antisemitism. French author Emile Zola wrote a famous newspaper article entitled J'ACCUSE! in which he lambasted the powers-that-be about the whole business, and the rumor ran that Zola's untimely death (of carbon monoxide poisoning when a chimney became blocked; his wife survived) was linked to the Affair (did anti-Dreyfusards get up on the roof and block that chimney?)

OK the Zola death bit was an aside, following my own interests, but Read covers the actual Affair in meticulous detail. The book is clearly aimed at the general reader with little background knowledge (the footnote informing the reader that the French surname Henry is pronounced "Onrri" was priceless) and Read does a pretty good job of bringing the reader up to speed with the way life worked in France at the time. Among the upper-middle to upper classes honor was paramount, duels were fought to defend it, and lines were clearly drawn on the basis of religion, profession, politics and education. You were this, or you were that. As the Affair became the most talked-about news item in France, you were either Dreyfusard or anti-Dreyfusard depending on your tribal affiliations. Passions were inflated by the newspapers, which were a power on the scale of today's TV networks; the rate of literacy was high in France, and everyone read the news. Antisemitism, unhampered by today's historical hindsight and politically correct taboos, was an acceptable stance, if decried by many, and blatantly antisemitic newspapers fanned the flames. The Catholic church was also under attack from intellectuals whose loss of faith had less to do with God than with the church hierarchy, Jesuit schools, and attitudes towards both a hundred years after the Revolution had (temporarily) ripped out their staunchest supporters, the conservative aristocracy.

Naturally all this hoo-ha involved a huge cast of characters, and Read efficiently keeps them in line in the reader's mind without resorting to too many reminders of who they are. The main players: Dreyfus, Esterhazy, du Paty de Clam, Henry and so on, are sketched in with pleasing economy, and the chapters are arranged logically without too much departure from strict chronological order. Dreyfus' suffering is vividly portrayed in the one chapter that covers his living conditions on Devil's Island.

The Affair led to the separation of church and state in France, to the dissolution of religious orders, possibly (I'd have to check this) to Zionism, and to vast changes in the Army. It went a long way to shaping 20th-century France. So if you're interested in things French you've really got to tackle the Dreyfus Affair in detail at some time or the other, and this very readable account would be an excellent place to start. Recommended. ( )