She told some journalists that she had been born in Java to European parents, and others that she was the daughter of an Indian temple dancer. In Greta Garbo played the spy in the film Mata Hari, which fictionalised the details of her life but kept her death by firing squad Credit: Alamy. And she had no shortage of high-society lovers to keep her in the style to which she was becoming accustomed.
After all, she spoke several languages, she travelled around Europe and she was intimate with numerous officers, politicians, aristocrats and industrialists. Who better to hear what the great and the good were saying behind closed doors?
Georges Ladoux, head of the French counter-espionage bureau, agreed. He proposed that Mata Hari spy for France, and she accepted, neglecting to mention that she had already accepted a similar offer from the enemy.
She was either brilliantly cunning or stupidly naive. Most Mata Hari scholars believe she was the latter. She did so little in the way of actual spying that some biographers doubt whether she should be classified as a spy at all.
She sent uncoded letters to Ladoux through the ordinary mail; she telegraphed him openly, she called at his office repeatedly What chance had such a woman of being a successful spy, much less a double agent? Both children fell ill, probably from congenital syphilis. When the family was reunited, MacLeod called the base doctor. Used to treating grown men, the doctor overdosed both children, who spewed up black vomit and writhed in agony. When their two-year-old son died, everyone on the base guessed why.
The couple did not bother to disguise their mutual hatred. In they returned to the Netherlands and separated. A divorce would ensue: Although Margaretha initially won custody of her daughter, Louise Jeanne would be raised by her father. A profound and fateful transformation took place in the young Dutchwoman. Colored by her travels and sorrows in the Indies, Margaretha Zelle reinvented herself as something startling and new: an exotic dancer called Mata Hari.
Mata Hari presented utterly novel dances in transparent, revealing costumes, a jeweled bra, and an extraordinary headpiece. Under any other circumstances, she could have been arrested for indecency, but Margaretha Zelle had very carefully thought through her position. At each performance, she took the time to explain carefully that these were sacred temple dances from the Indies.
Mata Hari was sensuous, beautiful, erotic, and emotional; she told tales of lust, jealousy, passion, and vengeance through her dancing, and the public lapped it up.
She was able to skirt obscenity laws by claiming dances were based on Eastern temple rituals. One must always translate the three stages that correspond to the divine attributes of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—creation, fecundity, destruction. 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. As Mata Hari aged and her dancing career began to wind down, she was still in demand as a courtesan and enjoyed the company of rich and powerful men.
The outbreak of World War I in did not alter her extravagance. She seemed not to grasp that ordinary people resented her ostentatious lifestyle while French families were doing without basics: coal, clothing, and foodstuffs. They were sending their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons to be killed in the war while she continued to live in comfort and plenty.
Mata Hari continued to travel, which brought her to the attention of the counterespionage world. The fall of found her in The Hague, where the exotic dancer was paid a visit by Karl Kroemer, the honorary German consul of Amsterdam. She accepted the funds, which she viewed as repayment for her furs, jewels, and money the Germans had seized when war broke out. Even so, she did not accept the job. 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.
Handsome, bold type of woman. Well and fashionably dressed. Having returned to Paris, she lived at the Grand Hotel, which had been largely spared the ravages of war. They opened her mail, eavesdropped on her phone conversations, and kept a log of who she met, yet they found no evidence of her gathering or passing important information to German agents. In the war was going badly for the French. Two of the longest and bloodiest battles of the war—Verdun and the Somme—pitted the French against the Germans for months at a time.
The mud, bad sanitation, disease, and the newly introduced horror of phosgene gas led to the death or maiming of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Eventually, French troops became so demoralized that some refused to fight. Ladoux felt the arrest of a prominent spy could raise French spirits and recharge the war effort. Oblivious to the role being prepared for her, Mata Hari was preoccupied with other matters: She had met and fallen deeply in love with a much decorated, young, Russian captain, Vladimir de Massloff, who was fighting for the French.
Before long, Massloff had been exposed to phosgene gas, losing sight in one eye and in danger of going completely blind. Still, when he proposed marriage, Mata Hari accepted happily. Her career lasted about a decade until she lost ground to younger and more athletic imitators. But she still possessed abundant charm and was fluent in several languages, and was able to find success as a courtesan, seducing the wealthy and powerful from multiple nations, including high-ranking government officials.
Because her home country remained neutral during World War I, she was allowed to cross borders with comparatively little hassle. But during the War, it also elicited suspicion of espionage. Whether he began to regard her as a nuisance or a liability, he sought to dispose of her. So, using a code that he knew the French had already cracked, he transmitted a message easily identifying her as a spy.
Mata Hari was arrested in a luxury Paris hotel in February , and her closed-door trial took place five months later.
Though the prosecution blamed her for the deaths of 50, French soldiers, no specific evidence or explanation was provided as to how she caused these fatalities.
But by , the French military was war-weary; morale was low and some military divisions had even begun to mutiny. On July 25, , the French military government found her guilty of espionage.
The Dutch government did not intervene to any significant degree on behalf of its citizen, who was executed after having spent months enduring malnourishment and incarceration in vermin-infested conditions. Rumors circulated that the French executioners had fired blanks, enabling her to escape. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Pierre Laval, the puppet leader of Nazi-occupied Vichy France, is executed by firing squad for treason against France.
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In a demonstration staged by the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, some of the first public burnings of draft cards in the United States takes place. These demonstrations drew , people in 40 cities across the country.
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