Dreyfus Affair

Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer, was convicted of passing military secrets to Germany in 1894 on the basis of weak and manipulated evidence. Later discoveries pointed to another officer, but elements within the army concealed evidence and used forged documents to protect the original verdict.

The case divided France between those demanding legal review and those defending the army, nationalism and the conviction. Émile Zola’s open letter J’Accuse intensified the public crisis. Dreyfus was eventually pardoned and then fully exonerated, but the affair exposed institutional antisemitism and the political power of the press.

The Prague Cemetery places forgery and antisemitic propaganda beside the forces that made the Dreyfus Affair possible. Robert Harris’s An Officer and a Spy gives the case a more direct investigative treatment. The context suits fiction about military justice, secret evidence, divided public opinion, journalism and the state’s defence of an acknowledged lie.