Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair

by Maurice Samuels

An insightful new biography of the central figure in the Dreyfus Affair, focused on the man himself and based on newly accessible documents
 
On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In this book, Maurice Samuels gives readers an entirely new insight into Dreyfus himself—from the point of view of the man at the center of the affair. He tells the story of Dreyfus’s early life in Paris, his promising career as an officer, his being falsely accused and imprisoned for selling secrets to Germany, the pardon he was eventually granted, and his life of obscurity after World War I.
 
Samuels’s striking perspective is enriched by a newly available archive of more than three thousand documents and objects donated by the Dreyfus family. Samuels argues, unlike other historians, that Dreyfus was far from an “assimilated” Jew. Rather, he epitomized a new model of Jewish identity made possible by the French Revolution, when France became the first European nation to grant Jews full legal equality. This book analyzes Dreyfus’s complex relationship to Judaism and to antisemitism over the course of his life—a story that, as global antisemitism rises, echoes still. It also shows the profound effect of the Dreyfus Affair on the lives of Jews around the world.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Jewish

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2024

Reviews

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story traces the history of antisemitism in Europe through the imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus for espionage that was fabricated by a military trial. The outcome of this event was the rise of Zionism by Theodor Herzl who was living in Paris. The French antisemitism and deprivation during imprisonment was the prototype for Holocaust which began 40 years after the Dreyfus affair. This information is also addressed in Hannah Arendt’s Rise of Totalitarianism although Maurice Samuel’s well researched book does not agree with Arendt’s conclusions.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 5 out of 5]

"To write a 'Jewish life' of Dreyfus is something of a provocation." Dreyfus was not an observant or particularly spiritual person, and the large worldwide effort organised on his behalf tended to avoid focusing on his Judaism, and make it instead a question of justice and human rights. However, this book takes it up, focusing on Dreyfus's own Jewish identity and the broader context of antisemitism in France and the affair's impact on Jewish history.

Dreyfus came from a family with lots of money and privilege. His income was far more than that of an average officer. This is part of the reason that his family was able to launch such a large and ultimately successful struggle to exonerate him. This was noted even by some Dreyfusards like W.E.B. DuBois, who saw this as a struggle for minority rights, but with a much higher profile than that of the countless black victims of lynching.

After being falsely accused of spying and a rushed, secret trial, he was judged guilty and exiled to Devil's Island, a prison even less pleasant than it sounds. Dreyfus was chained to his bed at night, developing bedsores and unable to move the insects that crawled over him. He wrote memoirs while there, knowing they would be read, carefully curating his thoughts about patriotism, yearning for his family, and stoicism. He claims that despite being starving, he threw away bacon when offered (shades of Agam Berger!)

Unbeknownst to him (as his letters were censored, although he was surprisingly not denied books to read), a large effort had begun on his behalf, and began to tear France apart. Although there was much antisemitism in the anti-Dreyfusard camp, there were also antisemitic Dreyfusards and non-antisemitic anti-Dreyfusards. The core of the argument was about the depth of France's commitment to liberal universalism, and to what extent these commitments could overcome the influence of the Church and army. (The army had realised early on that it had caught the wrong man and had engaged in a cover-up, including falsifying documents, so to exonerate Dreyfus would be a humiliating blow.)

Socialists were torn, since they had no great love for the army elite, but tended to see this (correctly, to some extent) as an inter-elite fight that was irrelevant to the working class. Léon Blum, Jew and future socialist Prime Minister, was a strong Dreyfusard. There was a schism between Jules Guesde (anti-Dreyfusard) and Jean Jaurès (pro-), basically a split between revolutionary and democratic socialism. Jaurès was instrumental in bringing the party over, portraying it as a question of whether rights apply to everyone. (And arguably as a direct result of the affair, a left-wing Dreyfusard government under Émile Combes enacted in 1905 the formal separation of Church and State, the core of laïcité.)

Clemenceau (another future PM) rallied a large group of academics, scientists and artists around an 1889 Manifesto of the Intellectuals (the origin of the modern use of the term "intellectual"). There were plenty of anti-Dreyfusard intellectuals - for instance, among the Impressionists, Monet, Pissarro, Paul Signac, and Mary Cassatt were Dreyfusard, while Cézanne, Rodin, Renoir, and Degas were anti-Dreyfusard.

The most famous Dreyfusard, of course, was Émile Zola. He could arguably be called an antisemite:

for instance, in his novel L’Argent (Money) in 1890, he described the area around the Paris Stock Exchange as «toute une juiverie malpropre…une extraordinaire réunion de nez» ("a whole filthy Jewish quarter…an extraordinary meeting of noses")

but his famous J'Accuse…! blew the case open, triggering multiple libel suits that forced him into exile in Britain. Antisemitic riots broke out in France and Algeria. When it was discovered that Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry had forged a document incriminating Dreyfus, Henry committed suicide, and the antisemitic newspaper La Libre Parole launched a campaign to raise funds for a memorial, drawing thousands of contributions and letters expressing chilling fantasies of genocide decades before the Holocaust:

One priest prayed he might have a "bedside carpet made of kikeskin" so that he could step on it morning and night. A physician proposed "vivisection of Jews rather than harmless rabbits." Many of the contributions came from workers and craftsmen in industries, such as clothing manufacturing, which had been "invaded" by Jewish immigrants. Other contributions came from working people who felt humiliated by Jewish financial power more generally: "Jeanne, ex-maid for kikes," "a concierge for Jews who is disgusted by kikes," "Three embroiderers of Bains-les-Bains (Vosges), who, working for a Jew, earn 14 sous in 15 hours," "a laborer without work."

A disturbingly large number of the contributions came attached to messages calling for physical violence against Jews. "Long live the saber that will rid us of all the vermin." "A patriot awaiting the saber to avenge us." "For God, for his country and the extermination of the Jews." "The flood of insults against the Army will be washed away in rivers of blood." Some of the messages eerily presaged the Holocaust. One contributor gave 25 centimes, one quarter of a franc, "to rent a deportation car." A resident of Baccarat, the capital of crystal manufacturing, wanted to see "all the kikes and kikettes and their kiddy-kikes placed in glass furnaces.

Arendt (discussing the affair in The Origins of Totalitarianism) says that French Jews wanted to give up their Jewishness in order to assimilate into French society. Samuels strongly disagrees, thinking that this is a projection of the situation of German Jews. France had been the first country in the world to emancipate its Jews and French Jews (or Israelites) believed they could have both. True, there was antisemitism, but it was also possible to advance, as the Dreyfus affair shows: he would never have gotten so high in the first place in other European countries. Arendt also bizarrely calls Dreyfus antisemitic. She accuses the Jewish community of passivity during the affair, in order to try keep out of trouble (as she says German Jews did with Nazism). Zionists such as Max Nordau said the same thing. While there is some truth to it, it ignores the fact that a lot of Jews kept quiet because they thought that Jews openly lobbying for Dreyfus would be counterproductive, reinforcing conspiracy theories about Jewish power. There were even some influential Jews working backchannels who tried to keep their work secret (even planting stories in the Jewish press about Jewish apathy to the case).

While French Jews tried to keep a low profile and allow non-Jewish allies to be the face of the struggle, Jews around the world cared deeply about it. "I'm not sure if the Dreyfus affair made such a noise in other cities as it did in Kasrilevke," wrote Sholem Aleichem, in his story about the frenzy it stirred up in his fictional shtetl. Herzl and Max Nordau (both Austrian-Jewish journalists) covered the affair and were led by it to Zionism; Nordau's 1892 novel Degeneration was inspired by what he saw as the corrupt decadence of French and European society. On the other hand, integrationists (such as the philosopher Hermann Cohen) saw the eventual exoneration of Dreyfus as proof that the proper place of Jews was in Europe. The (strongly integrationist) American reform movement, via its organ the American Israelite , initially compared Dreyfus to the traitor Benedict Arnold and "expressed sorrow that the abolition of capital punishment in France meant that he could not be put to death". However, as public sentiment, the movement began to support his vindication, while vainly cautioning that "the Jews have no especial interest in Dreyfus personally".

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this I have a new appreciation of the role of Dreyfus himself in the events. If he had given up, the case would be simply something for historians today to argue against. Anti-Semitism would not have been defeated in battle. And it is an enjoyable book. but having said that, let me get to all the material I disagree with. Maurice Samuels writes in the introduction that,

“One question that has haunted me, as I researched this book, is what it means to focus on the injustice done to one upper-middle-class (or as the French say, bourgeois) white man when the injustice that was constantly being perpetrated upon less privileged people in the nineteenth century often goes unremarked. Lest critics accuse me of anachronism in mentioning this qualm, I would point out that this was very much a question asked at the time of the affair, when the dominant assumption of the Socialist Party was that the working class should not get involved in the case because a rich military officer like Dreyfus could take care of himself.”

But here I think that Maurice Samuels is looking at late 19th and early 2oth century socialism, not in terms of what it actually was, a mass movement of the working-class, but through the eyes of petty bourgeois (roughly middle class--contrary to Samuels, the bourgeoisie has not been the middle class since feudalism--It is now the ruling class) Woke and cancel culture liberals. It is frequently Anti-Semitic as well; the Democratic [Party] Socialists of America certainly are.

Lenin writes in What Is to Be Done?: Burning Questions of Our Movement that,

"... the Social-Democrat’s [the term used by all socialists at that time] ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalize all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat...."

Let us turn now to Rosa Luxemburg's 1899 piece on the Dreyfus affair [It unfortunately appears to be a poor translation, from the Marxist Internet Archive]. She was a Polish Jewish socialist living at the time in Germany,

“As concerns the Dreyfus Affair in particular, the intervention of the proletariat in the case need not be justified either from on general point of view, on the subject of bourgeois conflicts, nor from the point of view of humanity. For in the Dreyfus case four social factors make themselves felt which give it the stamp of a question directly related to the class struggle. They are: militarism, chauvinism-nationalism, anti-Semitism, and clericalism. In our written and spoken agitation we always combat these direct enemies of the socialist proletariat by virtue of our general tendencies. It would thus be totally incomprehensible to not enter into a struggle with these enemies exactly when it is a question of unmasking them, not as abstract clichés, but through the use of living current events.

"The very participation of socialists in the movement provoked by the Dreyfus Affair cannot be put in doubt from the point of view of the class struggle. It can only be a question of the how of this participation. From this point of view, the role of the socialist working class distinguishes itself in its very essence from the role of the “revisionist” bourgeois elements [By “revisionist,” Luxemburg here means those elements close to the ruling class who question Dreyfus' guilt]. While for the latter it was only a matter of the correcting of a legal murder, the case presented socialists with the rare occasion to make evident the disintegration of bourgeois society. While bourgeois elements, in acting upon military headquarters, wanted to cure militarism of its abscess in order to enable it to live, socialists on the contrary were forced to combat the very militaristic system in its decadence and oppose to it the demand for militias and the arming of the people. {In my opinion, the demand for militias was outdated by this time; arming of the people was not dated].

“The attitude of the socialist party can thus be so fundamentally differentiated from that of bourgeois Dreyfusards that we don’t have any need to speak of any kind of support for the world of bourgeois “revisionism” on the part of the socialists, since the latter have found this an occasion to carry on a totally independent struggle, that is to say, a clearly characterized class struggle which differentiates it from other factions of the movement.

“To what extent this movement did, in fact, have this character is another question. It seems to us that from time to time the point of view of abstract justice and the defense of the person of Dreyfus were put too far in the forefront by our comrades, and that we somewhat neglected agitation in favor of the system of militias. As a result, the proletariat acquired less class-consciousness that it could have. But criticism is easy, art is difficult. And in any case, the French comrades will have many occasions to use, for the benefit of the class struggle, the teachings of the Dreyfus affair, once all of the socialists in France will have seized the full import for the proletariat of this social event.

“Properly speaking, the political importance of the Dreyfus Affair consists, for us, in that the affair gave the possibility of making a great movement, one which shook the entire country, the object of the class struggle; and in this way we spread, in a short amount of time, more socialist consciousness than we could have developed over many years by means of abstract propaganda for our principles.

“It is for this reason that the movement swept up in its irresistible current the socialists of several organizations. And if the Dreyfusard movement has provoked a strong revulsion in socialist ranks this comes, according to us, from the real, though instinctive feeling that no great spontaneous movement of the French proletariat stops at the limits of the different organizations, but risks sweeping them away. But it’s precisely because of this that the gathering of the scattered forces of French socialism has appeared as the necessary condition for any large and energetic action.”

In other words, the big majority of the fractured socialist movement in France leapt into the Dreyfus movement, but with very different goals than the bourgeoisie had. For more Rosa Luxemburg, see Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, which includes the second half of Socialist Crisis in France, on Millerandism. (it’s a long piece—book length).

What splintered French socialism again was the opportunism of French socialist leader Millerand who accepted a cabinet post in a bourgeois government (which included one of the butchers of the Paris Commune). As Luxemburg explains,

“With the entry of a socialist into the government, and class domination continuing to exist, the bourgeois government doesn’t transform itself into a socialist government, but a socialist transforms himself into a bourgeois minister. The social reforms that a minister who is a friend of the workers can realize have nothing, in themselves, of socialist; they are socialist only insofar as they are obtained through class struggle. But coming from a minister, social reforms can’t have the character of the proletarian class, but solely the character of the bourgeois class, for the minister, by the post he occupies, attaches himself to that class by all the functions of a bourgeois, militarist government.”

All the attempts of “socialists” to reform capitalism, including that of oft-mentioned-in-this-book Léon Blum, resulted in disaster for the working class. Millerandism was the first form of what Stalin would later call a “Popular Front” government, a coalition between the bourgeoisie and working class allegedly to fight fascism. (The Communist International had already devised a means of fighting fascism, which Stalin never attempted). The second form of the Popular Front was the Kerensky government, overthrown by Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolsheviks.

"But if Socialism attracted many Jews, its appeal was not uncomplicated. A long tradition of Socialist antisemitism associated Jews with the capitalist enemy. Marx had called Judaism a religion of 'huckstering' that worshipped the 'worldly God' of money, and his disciple Pierre-Joseph Proudhon had gone so far as to call for the expulsion of Jews from France in the 1840s.” So says Samuels. But let us examine this.

On the Jewish Question, written before Marx and Engels were communists, hardly represents their mature thinking. And the ”scholars” who bring this up never quote anything from Part I, which is a clear case for Jewish emancipation in the form of a polemic against fellow Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer who argued against it! Part II contains some material that is the foundation of the Marxist view on the Jews, and other material, in Young Hegelian form, that has been variously interpreted.

There is nothing whatsoever in any of the three volumes of Capital, starting with Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Volume 1, that suggests that Marx thought that Jews were instrumental in the formation of capitalism (not that he would have held that against them, since as any honest person who reads The Communist Manifesto knows, Marx viewed capitalism as a huge advance over feudalism, and spends much time on this.

Proudhon was not a disciple of Marx! They were friendly when they first met in Paris. But before the Communist Manifesto was written, Marx published a scathing critique of the French anarchist’s work in The Poverty of Philosophy, a polemic against Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty. The academic "experts" on Marx are usually both ignorant and deceitful.

I don’t claim to know anything about how non-socialist Jews in France responded to the Dreyfus case, but I know that racism and national chauvinism of every kind has to be fought without hesitation. This gives some guideline from the Marxist labor leader Farrell Dobbs: Counter-Mobilization: A Strategy to Fight Racist & Fascist Attacks.

For a Marxist view of Jew-hatred, see The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation. For the fight against it see The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch. For an understanding of fascism, see Daniel Guerin’s Fascism and Big Business and Leon Trotsky’s The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany.

As we see in the United States, with the big upsurge in anti-Semitism, it is the educated petty bourgeoisie, especially on college campuses that takes the reactionary position. The working class is little affected by it. So it was in Germany, with the addition of the lumpen proletariat, long-term unemployed workers turned toward criminal activity. This is the element that Hitler was forced to jettison in Night of Long Knives, to become acceptable to the capitalists. Hitler physically eliminated those who actually believed that National Socialism was a form of socialism.

But there is no such thing as national socialism, either with the capital letters of Hitler or without, as in Stalin’s theory of “Socialism in One Country." Socialism can only be built on an international basis, which is what the Cuban leadership, as well as the US Socialist Workers Party and its sister parties always tried to do.

While Israel must be defended as the only nation in the world that guarantees asylum to the Jews, Trotsky remains correct that “the Jewish question cannot be solved within the framework of capitalism.” I support the right of self-determination of the Palestinians too, but there is currently no organization interested in forming a state. Hamas only wants to kill Jews. And the Palestine Authority is also anti-Semitic but is mostly interested in living off United Nations welfare (which Hamas is likely receiving even more of). I'm not a Zionist, though, it is a form of Jewish nationalism, which at some points crosses into open racism, which is why I'm an internationalist.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing a review that focuses on the Jewish aspects of Alfred Dreyfus, (and borrowing the book’s sub-title) the man at the center of the Affair that shares his name, will be about as difficult as writing a book on it. Diving right into things, as the author attempts—and rather well—to find how Judaism shaped the life of a man whom being perhaps at the wrong rank at the wrong time turned a progressive country on its head and for all we know, could have been the spark among sparks that led to even greater tragedies for Yiddishkeit decades later, we find something quite sobering: while born Jewish and raised in a semi-religious family, the man himself did not really seem to identify with it.

There are already several books on Alfred Dreyfus in English (including a historical fiction account of his supposed escape from Devil’s Island published about a decade ago!) which makes one ask: what can another book bring to the table? Being part of the Jewish Lives series published by Yale University, the answer is simple: a succinct yet well-written account containing—yes, some things most any armchair historian of the Affair may know—but also a worthy attempt to find ways to tie the person of interest to Judaism.

As noted, this in particular is a tall order because it seems outside of marrying ‘in’ (though being noted before the affair at least as libertine-leaning) and keeping his lodestar set on justice, he was more of a financially secure Frenchman of a non-Catholic persuasion than anything else. As we learn in the book, fame is not want he wanted. Studying Talmud? Not at all. Keeping kosher? Doubtful. We’ve a man who was born in the situation he was born into and just wanted to serve his country well via military service and unfortunately due to long-seated antisemitism that sprang to the forefront, his desire was denied, but his faith in the greater good remained iron-clad.

So who is this book for then? If you know the Affair through and through, you can probably skip this. If the Wikipedia page on it feels ‘good enough’, like our above historian the benefit to reading this may be muted. But it does have an audience (else this review would not exist!). If one is interested less in the man, but the Jewish response around him, the politics on all sides throughout the arrest, trials (and retrials!), and the aftermath all penned in a readable manner that does not run too long, then this book is for you.

---Notable Highlights---

On being Jewish (or his lack of it):
“Dreyfus was not a spiritual or religious person. He rarely spoke of God in either his personal or public writing. He also rarely evoked what we would call today his ‘Jewish identity.’”

and:

“It is important to note that Alfred Dreyfus rarely mentions God in his writings and never refers to his Jewish faith.”

but:

“Although he makes no mention of observing kosher dietary laws, he repeatedly states in his journal that he tossed his ration of conserved lard (bacon) into the sea, even in the early days when he was literally starving.”

And in spite of all this:

“You are perhaps more Jewish than you know,” he told the rationalist Dreyfus; “through your unflinching hope, your faith in something better, your almost fatalistic resignation. It is this indestructible principle that comes to you from your people, and it is this that has sustained you. A Christian, you would have died praying for divine justice. A Jew, you wanted to live to bring it about.”

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You are perhaps more Jewish than you know, through your unflinching hope, your faith in something better, your almost fatalistic resignation. It is this indescructible principle that comes to you from your people, and it is this that has sustained you. A Christian, you would have died praying for divine justice. A Jew, you wanted to live to bring it about."

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched and written historical account of a man that many likely don’t know the story of (outside the French and Jewish worlds). The Affair that gripped Dreyfus’s life influenced countless people and what came to happen in the early 20th century. Definitely a denser read and one that will pose questions around identity, democracy, and more.

[Anna Klosowska · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the best, most gripping book I read all year! I love history and could not put down this one. It made me laugh and cry. Totally ADDICTIVE. Run, don't walk! For context, I read a book every day, most of the day, for work.

[Jeffrey R. Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hatred and Ignorance Know no Bounds

The book does a great job of showing what Dreyfus went through while still loving his country. Horrible what his fellow soldiers and country did to him.

[Boris Feldman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the audio version of this biography. The writing generally was good. The life, quite engaging. There was a bit too much fighting with prior biographers over Dreyfus' character and especially his identification with Judaism.

[Genevieve Cocchi · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF.
Focuses on the lives of French Jews in general and not Alfred Dreyfus as the title suggests.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and organized.
I easily grasped the impact of the Dreyfus Affair on the world order.

[Jean Mehochko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book that taught me a lot--about Dreyfus, France -- both at the turn of the century and the reverberations from "the Dreyfus Affair" that echo today.

[Miriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written account of the Dreyfus Affair and how anti-semitism played an overwhelming role in it.

[Micebyliz]

Ought to be required reading.

[JUDY MILLER]

Leon

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my article on intellectuals. The book is a great introduction to the Dreyfus affair but it is a very slim volume and there are other much more scholarly works to chase up in the footnotes...

[aurora · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5

[Allan Nemer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply moving book. Well-written. Great place to start reading