The Dreyfus Affair: The Spy Scandal that Shook France
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It started with an inconsequential piece of military intelligence, scrawled on a piece of paper and left in a waste paper basket. But over the next decade, the infamous Dreyfus affair would mutate into a scandal that shook nineteenth-century France and stunned the world.
Ruth Harris is a Professor of History at the University of Oxford and author of 'The Man on Devil's Island'. She joins us to explain what a Jewish artillery officer's wrongful conviction tells us about the deep divisions within French society, and explains its long-lasting implications for modern nationalism and even the Zionist movement.
Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.
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| 1:56.1 | Hi everyone. Welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. It didn't look like something that would rip the French |
| 2:03.4 | nation apart. Offending item was a list written on such thin note paper that was almost transparent. |
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