Facts of the Dreyfus Case (Essay Sample)

Dreyfus Case
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Facts of the Dreyfus Case
The case came up after a French spy in the German embassy unraveled a handwritten note, addressed to Major Maximilien von Schwartzkoppen who was German military representative in Paris and that offered to sell secrets about the French military. The French army was a center of Catholics, monarchists, and was permeated by anti-Semitism although considerably democratized. The French armies attempt to fetch out the traitor on Dreyfus as the suspect, and he was a wealthy Alsatian Jew whom the press accused of Jewish treason. He was tried by a court-martial in France, convicted of the mistakes and sentenced to life imprisonment. The matter came up again in 1896 and divided the Frenchmen into two factions, Col. Georges Picquart, uncovered evidence showing that Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was the real author of the secret note (bordereau) but Picquart was silenced by the army authorities. Esterhazy was tried in January 1898 and acquitted; Zola a supporter of Dreyfus wrote a letter to the French president accusing the court-martial of obeying the war office orders that acquitted Esterhazy. Zola was charged and sentenced for imprisonment but later escaped. The case became a major issue for the militarist, royalist, and nationalists on one hand and the socialists, republicans, and the anticlericalism on the contrary.
In 1898, it was discovered that the evidence used against Dreyfus was forged by the army intelligence Colonel Henry who later committed suicide while Esterhazy fled to England.
The Dreyfus case was sent to the court of appeal, and the military tribunal did not admit committing error by sentencing Dreyfus wrongly but sentenced him to 10 years of imprisonment.
However due to pressure the President Émile Loubet pardoned Dreyfus, he was exonerated in 1906 and reinstated as a major and served as a colonel of the artillery in World War I.
Hostility towards the Jews had existed even before the term anti-Semitism was used for the first time in 1879. For example, Jews had in fourth century AD been labeled as the ones who killed Jesus. The Jews’ methods of worship were used against them and very few of them were given Roman citizenship. However, in the 19th century in central and parts of central Europe anti-Semitism continued to grow and was completed in 1971 after the formation of the German Empire. Various legal reforms were put in place in Germany to end religious discrimination but this was soon changed by anti-Semitic political parties that were formed after economic crash of 1873 the Franco-Prussian War. In Germany, anti-Semitism was adopted in 1933 as the official policy for the Nazism government. A Christian Socialist party in Austria advocated for the anti-Semitic agenda. The clerical and royalist divisions in France held up the anti-Semitic principles due to the separation of the state and the church, they adopted the anti-Semitic principles from the German’s racist’s theories that were circulated in France through various publications like the La Libre Parole newspaper. The status quo regarding Anti-Semitism was strongly advocated for in France until the 1906 Alfred Dreyfus liberation.
Russia was also a region of high anti-Semitism; so Jews were not allowed to own property and were allowed to occupy certain regions in the country. There were organized raids on the Jews aimed at killed and displacing the Jews and eastern Europeans. The raids came up after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Further the Jews were blamed by the Russian government for the social instability that resulted from the Tsar Alexander II’s assassination and the Russian Revolution.
Racial discrimination- anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism spread in the period
Racial anti-Semitism was widespread globally at the time, for example, some politicians used the racial superiority propaganda to get votes. For instance, Karl Lueger (1844-1910) blamed the Jews for the bad economic times in Austria hence appealing to anti-Semitism. Karl Lueger became the hero to Adolf Hitler born in 1889, and this contributed to the shaping of Hitler’s views on the Jews. Hitler's ideas, and his views about the Jews were made during this time, ...