Betrayer betrayed as exotic dance rand defiant spy blows a kiss to her firing squad
She was the alluring dancer who spied for Germany in the First World War – and paid with her life when her spy-masters ultimately betrayed her.
However, while Mata Hari’s name has become synonymous with a female agent who seduces men into revealing state secrets, the truth about her life, and her execution for spying on October 15, 1917, is very much different.
Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was born in 1876 in the Netherlands. At 18, Zelle answered an advertisement in a Dutch newspaper placed by Dutch Colonial Army Captain Rudolf Macleod, a descendent of the Macleods of Skye, who was living in the Dutch East Indies and was looking for a wife.
The couple married but it was not a happy marriage – Macleod was an alcoholic who regularly beat his wife.
Seeking distractions, Zelle studied Indonesian culture and joined a local dance company. She adopted the artistic name of Mata Hari, the word for “sun” in the local Malay language.
The couple returned to the Netherlands, and in 1902, Zelle moved to Paris, first finding work as a circus horse rider, then as an artists’ model.
By 1904, Mata Hari began to rise to prominence as an exotic dancer. Promiscuous, flirtatious, and proud to show off her body, she was an overnight success.
During the war, Zelle’s Dutch nationality meant she could cross national borders freely, bringing her to the attention of espionage services. After her lover, a Russian pilot serving with the French was wounded in a dogfight, agents of the French secret service approached Zelle and offered her a deal – spy for them and she could travel to see him.
The target was Crown Prince Wilhelm, eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II and a German general on the Western Front. The French believed Zelle could obtain military secrets by seducing him, not realising that the drunken womaniser had no real military authority.
In late 1916, Zelle travelled to Madrid, where she met with the German military attaché, Major Arnold Kalle, and asked if he could arrange a meeting with the Crown Prince. She also apparently offered to share French secrets with Germany in exchange for money.
But when Kalle sent easily decoded radio messages to Berlin describing his new recruit, it was obvious to the French who she was.
The French set her up – giving her the name of a suspected double agent. When the man was executed by the Germans, the
French believed they had their proof. Zelle was arrested and put on trial as a German spy. Looking for a scapegoat, the French blamed her for their recent military disasters.
After a rigged trial – her lawyer was not allowed to cross-examine the prosecution witnesses – Zelle was shot by firing squad. According to an eyewitness account by British reporter Henry Wales, she was not bound and refused a blindfold. She defiantly blew a kiss to the firing squad.