However extraordinary the Dreyfus Affair may have been, in many ways Captain Alfred Dreyfus was typical of hundreds of Jews who served as career officers in the French military in the late 1800s. Like most of his peers, Dreyfus attended the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique, which trained civilian engineers as well as officers for the artillery and engineering corps. Dreyfus then attended the recently established Ecole Supérieure de Guerre, as did several other Jews who went on to long and successful military careers.

From the mid 1800s through 1930s, military careers were important sources of social mobility for French Jewish men. Jewish army officers often came from humble backgrounds (Dreyfus was an exception) but thanks to the prestige of a military commission, Jewish officers married women from well-to-do families and enjoyed considerable prestige in their communities. At times Jewish officers parlayed their military expertise into business success, particularly in French Indochina.

Dreyfus' downfall came when he entered the newly revamped General Staff, where old notions of advancement through noble birth and family connections were challenged by new demands for meritocracy. Although Dreyfus was not the first or only Jewish senior staff officer in the French army, he was the first to serve in the new General Staff. Even here, many of his colleagues thought well of him, but resentment built up against the wealthy, brilliant and somewhat arrogant young officer. Dreyfus' zeal and excellent memory, combined with his being a Jew from Alsace, lent credence to the unjust accusation in October of 1894 that Dreyfus was a German spy.