Mata Hari, byname of Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, née Zelle, (born Aug. 7, 1876, Leeuwarden, Neth.—died Oct. 15, 1917, Vincennes, near Paris, France), dancer and courtesan whose name has become a synonym for the seductive female spy.
She was shot by the French on charges of spying for Germany during World War I. The nature and extent of her espionage activities remain uncertain, and her guilt is widely contested.
Just years before her death, however, Mata Hari was renown and celebrated throughout the whole of Paris, she became famous in the beginning of the 20th century by performing in private salons, and eventually at the Musée Guimet, France’s National Museum for Asian Art.
There, she indulged a rapt public in the dance traditions that she had learned during time spent in the Dutch East Indies with her ex-husband, a Dutch naval officer.
She and MacLeod divorced in 1906.
Jeanne-Louise (1898–1919)
Daughter of Mata Hari. Name variations: Jeanne-Louise; called “Non” or Banda or Bandda MacLeod or Macleod.
She was born Juana-Luisa MacLeod in Toempoeng, Dutch East Indies, in1898
She died Aug 9, 1919; daughter of Captain John MacLeod and Margaretha Zelle (Mata Hari).
After her parents separated (1902), she lived briefly with mother until abducted by father (1903) who kept her mother from contacting her; died mysteriously and unexpectedly on eve of departure for her 1st teaching assignment in the Dutch East Indies, at 21.
In an age when every rich and influential man wanted a beautiful mistress on his arm, Mata Hari was acknowledged as the most glamorous, fascinating, and desirable woman in Paris.
She was seen with aristocrats, diplomats, financiers, top military officers, and wealthy businessmen, who kept her in furs, jewels, horses, silver, furniture, and chic accommodations simply for the pleasure of being in her company.
For years, she danced in sold-out performances in nearly all the major European capitals.
Mata Hari continued to travel, which brought her to the attention of the counter espionage world.
Hallaure sent her to 282 Boulevard Saint-Germain, which housed both the Military Bureau for Foreigners and the Deuxième Bureau.
There, agents told her she could visit her lover if she agreed to spy for France. Mata Hari agreed, and her reward would be a million francs, enough to support Massloff after they married, in case his family disowned him.
She did not want to have to deceive him with other men, she wrote.
Ladoux instructed Mata Hari to go back to The Hague via Spain and wait there for instructions.
Tellingly, despite several meetings, Ladoux never asked Mata Hari for specific information, never targeted a specific man to seduce, and never provided a reliable means of communicating any secrets she learned to him, or funds.
She finally wrote him a letter, sent by regular post, saying she must have an advance to refurbish her wardrobe if she was going to seduce important men.
Returning by sea from the Netherlands to France in December that year, she and all of the passengers were questioned in Folkestone, a British port, by an intelligence officer.
Nothing incriminating was found in a search of her person and luggage, but the officer noted: “[She] Speaks French, English, Italian, Dutch and probably German.
Handsome, bold type of woman. Well and fashionably dressed.” His verdict on her? “Not above suspicion . . . most unsatisfactory . . . should be refused permission to return to the U.K.”
The fall of 1915 found her in The Hague, where the exotic dancer was paid a visit by Karl Kroemer, the honorary German consul of Amsterdam.
He offered her 20,000 francs—equivalent to $61,000 in today’s currency—to spy for Germany.
She accepted the funds, which she viewed as repayment for her furs, jewels, and money the Germans had seized when war broke out.
In Falkenhayn’s view, Britain’s “real weapons” in the war were the French, Russian, and Italian armies.
In a letter to German Emperor William II in late 1915, he argued that Britain was the most formidable of the Allied powers, but he conceded that it could not be assaulted directly, save by submarine warfare, as the British sector of the Western Front did not lend itself to offensive operations (an assessment that would be proved correct at the First Battle of the Somme).
He regarded Russia as already paralyzed and Italy as unlikely to affect the outcome of the war, concluding, “Only France remains.”
Falkenhayn stated that a breakthrough en masse was unnecessary and that instead, Germany should bleed France to death by choosing a point of attack “for the retention of which the French would be compelled to throw in every man they have.”
The fortress of Verdun with its surrounding fortifications along the Meuse River was selected because it threatened the main German communication lines, it represented a salient in the French defenses, and the loss of such a storied citadel would be an enormous blow to French morale.
The keynote of the tactical plan was a continuous series of limited advances that would draw the French reserves into the mincing machine of the German artillery.
Each of these advances was itself to be secured by an intense artillery bombardment, brief for surprise and making up for its short duration by the number of batteries and their rapidity of fire.
By this means the objective would be taken and consolidated before the enemy could move up its reserves for counterattack.
Local command of the operation was given to Crown Prince William, the eldest son of William II.
Confronted with a massive logistical challenge—main rail lines to Verdun had been cut or were under constant barrage by German artillery—French officers organized a motorized supply chain on an unprecedented scale, transporting men and matériel to the front in a fleet of more than 3,000 trucks.
The 37-mile (57-km) dirt road connecting the railhead at Bar-le-Duc to Verdun came to be known as La Voie Sacrée (“the Sacred Way”) for its critical role in the French defense.
At 7:15 am on February 21, the Germans commenced a massive bombardment of a front some 25 miles (40 km) long, from the Bois d’Avocourt to Étain.
At about 4:45 pm the first German infantry attack was launched, initially by teams of scouts who surveyed the damage done by the opening barrage.
If French defenses had not been shattered in a given area, the scouts retired and directed additional shelling.
Combat engineers then followed, ahead of the main body of the advance.
German troops made significant gains by the end of the first day, occupying the Bois d’Haumont and penetrating the French lines.
The following day the Germans capitalized on their gains, repelling a French counterattack.
In three days the Germans had overrun the first line of French defenses, and both sides hastily reinforced their positions.
Thousands of French troops, placed in untenable positions in open country, were almost immediately wiped from the field.
MI5 monitored Mata Hari after she settled in the Hague, and the files on her have been recently published, showing that she was being paid by the German embassy.
An intelligence report in February 1916, said that she was “in relation with highly placed people and during her sojourn in France she made the acquaintance of many French and Belgian officers“.
“She is suspected of having been to France on important missions for the Germans,” the report said .
In November 1916, British authorities took Mata Hari off a steamer that had docked at the port of Falmouth while going from Spain to Holland.
They thought she was another German spy, Clara Benedix.
Taken to be interviewed by MI5 and the police, she told them she had been recruited by a Belgian officer, to work for his country’s intelligence service.
There was insufficient evidence to detain her and she was sent back to Spain.
But on her return to Spain she met and had a fateful affair with the German military attache, Major Kalle.
He sent a message to Berlin which the Allies could read, saying that spy “H21” had proved valuable.
According to one account, in the spring of 1916, while she was living in The Hague, a German consul is said to have offered to pay her for whatever information she could obtain on her next trip to France.
After her arrest by the French, she acknowledged only that she had given some outdated information to a German intelligence officer.
In the murky world of the spy, however, the French suspected her of being a double agent. In February 1917 Mata Hari returned to Paris and immediately arrested; charged with being a German spy, when she tried to cross into France to visit one of her lovers.
Initially, she admitted to taking money from Germans but claimed it was for love, not spying.
When presented with secret ink found in her room, she claimed it was part of her makeup.
Under later interrogation, however, she confessed to being H21 and was put on trial in Paris.
Her trial in July revealed some damning evidence, the dancer was unable to adequately explain. She was convicted and sentenced to death.
A French intelligence report said: “Mata Hari today confessed that she has been engaged by Consul Cremer of Amsterdam for the German secret service.” She admitted sending “general information of every kind procurable“, though she mentioned no military secrets.
In the court judgment handed down against her, she was described as “one of the greatest spies of the century, responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers”. Mata Hari was deemed guilty and condemned to death.
Execution
In the early hours of Oct. 15, 1917, Mata Hari – one of the most famous spies of the 20th century – was shaken awake in her prison cell. Her time had come
She was taken by car from her Paris prison cell to an army barracks on the city’s outskirts where she was to meet her fate.
A police photo of Mata Hari, in 1917, before her execution as a spy
“I am ready.”
Henry Wales was a British reporter who covered the execution.
We join his story as Mata Hari is awakened in the early morning of October 15. She had made a direct appeal to the French president for clemency and was expectantly awaiting his reply:
“The first intimation she received that her plea had been denied was when she was led at daybreak from her cell in the Saint-Lazare prison to a waiting automobile and then rushed to the barracks where the firing squad awaited her.
Never once had the iron will of a beautiful woman failed her.
Father Arbaux, accompanied by two sisters of charity, Captain Bouchardon, and Maitre Clunet, her lawyer, entered her cell, where she was still sleeping – a calm, untroubled sleep, it was remarked by the turnkeys and trusties.
The sisters gently shook her. She arose and was told that her hour had come.
‘May I write two letters?’ was all she asked.
Consent was given immediately by Captain Bouchardon, and pen, ink, paper, and envelopes were given to her.
She seated herself at the edge of the bed and wrote the letters with feverish haste. She handed them over to the custody of her lawyer.
Then she drew on her stockings, black, silken, filmy things, grotesque in the circumstances. She placed her high-heeled slippers on her feet and tied the silken ribbons over her insteps.
She arose and took the long black velvet cloak, edged around the bottom with fur and with a huge square fur collar hanging down the back, from a hook over the head of her bed.
She placed this cloak over the heavy silk kimono which she had been wearing over her nightdress.
Her wealth of black hair was still coiled about her head in braids. She put on a large, flapping black felt hat with a black silk ribbon and bow.
Slowly and indifferently, it seemed, she pulled on a pair of black kid gloves.
Then she said calmly:
‘I am ready.’
The party slowly filed out of her cell to the waiting automobile.
The car sped through the heart of the sleeping city. It was scarcely half-past five in the morning and the sun was not yet fully up.
Clear across Paris the car whirled to the Caserne de Vincennes, the barracks of the old fort which the Germans stormed in 1870.
The troops were already drawn up for the execution. The 12 Zouaves, forming the firing squad, stood in line, their rifles at ease.
A subofficer stood behind them, sword drawn.
The automobile stopped, and the party descended, Mata Hari last.
The party walked straight to the spot, where a little hummock of earth reared itself seven or eight feet high and afforded a background for such bullets as might miss the human target.
As Father Arbaux spoke with the condemned woman, a French officer approached, carrying a white cloth.
‘The blindfold,’ he whispered to the nuns who stood there and handed it to them.
‘Must I wear that?’ asked Mata Hari, turning to her lawyer, as her eyes glimpsed the blindfold.
Maitre Clunet turned interrogatively to the French officer.
‘If Madame prefers not, it makes no difference,’ replied the officer, hurriedly turning away. .
Mata Hari was not bound and she was not blindfolded. She stood gazing steadfastly at her executioners, when the priest, the nuns, and her lawyer stepped away from her.
The officer in command of the firing squad, who had been watching his men, like a hawk that none might examine his rifle and try to find out whether he was destined to fire the blank cartridge which was in the breech of one rifle, seemed relieved that the business would soon be over.
A sharp, crackling command and the file of twelve men assumed rigid positions at attention.
Another command, and their rifles were at their shoulders; each man gazed down his barrel at the breast of the women which was the target.
She did not move a muscle.
The underofficer in charge had moved to a position where from the corners of their eyes they could see him.
His sword was extended in the air.
It dropped. The sun – by this time up – flashed on the burnished blade as it described an arc in falling. Simultaneously the sound of the volley rang out. Flame and a tiny puff of greyish smoke issued from the muzzle of each rifle. Automatically the men dropped their arms.
At the report Mata Hari fell. She did not die as actors and moving picture stars would have us believe that people die when they are shot.
She did not throw up her hands nor did she plunge straight forward or straight back.
Instead she seemed to collapse. Slowly, inertly, she settled to her knees, her head up always, and without the slightest change of expression on her face.
For the fraction of a second it seemed she tottered there, on her knees, gazing directly at those who had taken her life. Then she fell backward, bending at the waist, with her legs doubled up beneath her.
She lay prone, motionless, with her face turned towards the sky.
A non-commissioned officer, who accompanied a lieutenant, drew his revolver from the big, black holster strapped about his waist.
Bending over, he placed the muzzle of the revolver almost – but not quite – against the left temple of the spy. He pulled the trigger, and the bullet tore into the brain of the woman.
Mata Hari was surely dead.”
Her physical remains were buried at the graveyard in Vincennes. Mata Hari left a stack of letters for her lawyer.’
In England, the crown paid homage to it’s soldiers from WWI, in 2014.
The major art installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London, marked one hundred years since the first full day of Britain’s involvement in the First World War.
Created by artists Paul Cummins and Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies were used in the installation.References:
Henry Wales’ account was originally published in newspapers through the International News Service on Oct. 19, 1917 republished in Carey, John, EyeWitness to History (1987); Howe, Russell Warren, Mata Hari: The True Story (1986).