Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

February 28, 2019

How the Dreyfus Affair Gave Rise to the Tour de France

Blame the Jews and the bicyclists.

France in the 1890s saw both a bicycling craze and the Dreyfus Affair, in which the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus was framed for passing military secrets to Germany, sparking an intense controversy. In 1899, a few years after Dreyfus’s conviction, Emil Loubert, known to sympathize with him, became president of France. Nick Gendler writes:

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