It was a case of military injustice that threatened government stability and shaped the future of human rights. The Dreyfus Affair is a tangled story of espionage, deceit, abuse of power, warring political factions, and the future of France in the twentieth century. It's also a story of bad mathematics.
At the core of the 1894 controversy was a memo discovered in the trash at the German embassy in Paris. The memo conveyed secret information about the French military, leading French Intelligence to seek a traitor. Within a matter of weeks, Alfred Dreyfus, a rising young officer of Jewish descent, was arrested.
