The exotic dancer and courtesan Mata Hari was executed by firing squad at Vincennes prison on Monday, October 15th, 1917 - exactly 90 years ago. Her life, trial and death ensured that her story would never be forgotten in France or throughout the world. Much has been written about her and two films were produced - one with Greta Garbo, who claimed to be her daughter, in the title role.
Margaretha Zelle was born in Holland in 1876. She had an unhappy and impoverished childhood after her father's business failed and her parents divorced. When she was 14, her mother died. No doubt seeking security rather than love, she married Rudolf MacLeod, a Dutch army officer of Scots descent, stationed in Java. He treated her dreadfully and when they returned to Holland they divorced. They had two children, a son who died in childhood and a daughter, of whom MacLeod retained custody.(She died at 21.)
Margaretha decided to seek a new life exploiting her beauty and personality and a talent for promoting herself. She moved to Paris and, in an extraordinary career move, reinvented herself as a Javanese dancing girl named Mata Hari, claiming to have been raised in an Indian temple devoted to the god of love, Shiva.
Small wonder that, with an exotic dance routine that involved much frenzied movement followed by an almost complete striptease, she became a sensation in the capitals of Europe. She also became a high-class prostitute with a string of aristocratic lovers that included Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany, a Russian grand duke and other notables such as the composer Puccini and numerous German and French senior army officers and officials.
During the first World War, as she was not a citizen of any of the warring powers, she was able to move from country to country without restriction. She continued to meet prominent people. For a time she became a Red Cross volunteer nurse in a military hospital in France. No doubt, like many others, she was kept under surveillance by the French authorities.
Eventually she was arrested in Paris and charged before a military tribunal with espionage. Reading the trial proceedings 90 years later, an impartial mind would doubt she was a spy. What information could she have obtained that would be of any use to the Germans?
Military intelligence might be a contradiction in terms, but surely the authorities would not circulate information to thousands of people who had no need to know it. Are we expected to believe that wounded allied soldiers would know the plans for the Somme offensive? In any case, why would the Germans need a spy to tell them what was very obvious - the steady build up of armaments and armies in the Somme region?
Of course she received large sums of money but her explanation to the court sounded reasonable: "Yes, as a courtesan, but never a spy. Harlot, yes I am that. But traitress, never."
When she was asked by the prosecutor, "Do you expect us to believe that you were given a cheque for 15,000 francs for one night of love?", she replied, no doubt to the amusement of those present: "Well, that is my price."
German intelligence files revealed after the war did not record any information received from Mati Hari and the Germans never acknowledged that she worked for them in any capacity at all. Stranger still, the Germans were completely unaware that in May 1917 the French Army was crippled by widespread mutinies among the long-suffering soldiers. Thousands of government and military officials were well aware of this crisis. If the Germans had a functioning espionage system with or without a Mati Hari they would have known this and exploited the situation.
But Mata Hari was sentenced to death. Perhaps she was a sacrificial lamb. With the disastrous record of the French generals, and the appalling casualties on the Western front, a scapegoat had to be found. Why not blame a femme fatale?
In 1894 another "spy" had been uncovered - Colonel Dreyfus, whose innocence was admitted after he had spent many years in the penal colony at Devil's Island. He was Jewish, and therefore vulnerable. Mati Hari was a woman with an unsavoury reputation. Blame her, not the generals, for the misfortunes of France.
Her courage on the morning of her execution astounded the prison authorities and the firing squad. She ended up consoling a nun who was keeping her company. She refused a blindfold and, according to some accounts, blew kisses to the firing squad.
It is indeed hard not to feel sympathy and a certain admiration for her. And even if she was guilty her crime was small indeed compared with the guilt of the "royal freebooters and metropolitan thieves" who drenched Europe in the blood of their working classes in a wretched squabble over power, trade and colonies.