History
Mata Hari: The Scapegoat Who Got Killed For Seducing Rather Than Spying
“I am a woman who enjoys herself very much; sometimes I win, sometimes I lose.” — Mata Hari
Mata Hari’s name is very famous in the spying stories. She is probably the most fatal female in spying history.
She was an exotic dancer, courtesan, and seductress spy for different people.
Her story is remembered for her execution during WWI for spying.
Mata Hari was an adopted name, which she used for herself for a different persona as a dancer. Her real name was Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod and was born in the Netherlands in 1876. She was also affectionately called M’greet by her family.
According to some historians, Mata Hari had partly Jewish, Malaysian, and Indonesian ancestry, but some denied it and referred that she had no Jewish or Asian ancestry, as both of her parents were Dutch.
Her father was running a hat shop, and he also made some investments in the oil industry. He was an affluent businessman that gave his children a lavishing lifestyle. But a family tragedy hit and her father went bankrupt in 1889, her father divorced her mother.
A few years after her divorce, Margaretha’s mother passed away. Her father remarried and settled in Amsterdam. Her whole family fell apart. Margaretha was sent to live with her grandfather. Where she started studying to be a kindergarten teacher but her teacher started flirting with her, and because of this she had to leave the institution.
The Dutch Colonial Army Captain Rudolf MacLeod posted in Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) was then looking for a wife. He liked Margaretha, and they married. In Indonesia, she developed an interest in Indonesian dance.
When she went back to Europe, she introduces herself as an exotic dancer named “Mata Hari.”
Mata Hari is a Malay word that means “light of the day.” At the time, when WWI broke out in 1914, she grabbed the attention of the French, British, and German Officials.
As WWI changed the world so to Mata Hari’s life.
She had two children — a son and a daughter. Her son was poisoned by a nanny for unknown reasons. Later she filed for divorce and moved to Europe. She didn't get any alimony and had custody of her daughter at the same time.
It was tough for a single mother to make money, so she left her daughter with her ex-husband and moved to Paris alone.
Mata Hari rapidly got famous and became the biggest female celebrity of that time. She was known as the Indonesian princess, who used to perform Hindu classic dances. Her dancing costume was a reflection of Indonesia’s exoticized version, and she used to wear heavy jewelry while performing.
She was well known for her performance “Dance of the Seven Veils,” where she used to remove all her clothes until her jeweled bra remained.
It is also reported that while performing nude dances, she used to wear a flesh-toned bodysuit most of the time. She became the crush of every man in Paris, all the men wanted her as their mistress.
According to some legends, she was a maneater, who used to live in luxurious apartments with her rich gentlemen.
Recently her one letter was unearthed, she wanted the custody of her daughter, but her husband showed her photos to the court to convince them, why she shouldn’t have gotten the custody.
As she started aging, her money started to dry up. So she did what she must not.
During WWI, she used her status as a Dutch citizen (the Netherlands was neutral during WWI), so she could freely room around between Germany and France. She even had a relationship with a young Soviet pilot, later who was shot down in a battle. She wanted to meet her wounded lover, but she got permission under the condition of spying on Germany for France.
Her first target was to seduce General Prince Wilhelm and take out some military secrets from him. She was passing the German secrets to France, but when Germans officers forced and offered her money, she switched sides and started passing on the French military secrets to the Germans.
However, in this process, French officials claimed her for selling French secrets to German. After the trial, she was found guilty and condemned to death.
Though the prosecution, was blamed for the deaths of 50,000 French soldiers, there was no specific evidence or explanation provided by the authorities as to how she caused these fatalities. Although she wasn’t found to be loyal to any side, and no evidence existed that proves the claim of her spying for any nation.
“I was not content at home. . . I wanted to live like a colorful butterfly in the sun.”
― Mata Hari
On October 15, 1917, on her execution day, she refused a blindfold and said “I am ready” to the firing squad at Vincennes.
That’s how her life ended.
Over time, many legends about her life are gossiped such as she was one such slut who slept with everyone just for the sake of money, danced naked, betrayed the French(good side) during WWI, and died because of this.
In 2017, on the 100-year anniversary of her execution, the full files, evidence, arrest, imprisonment, trial, and execution were unsealed under French law. In February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in a luxury hotel in Paris, and her closed-door trial took place for five months.
Pat Shipman in Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari wrote:
“no one ever identified any specific defeat or leak of information that could be blamed on her,” which described her legacy as a “rich mélange of myth and legend that still persist.”
During her trial, the Allies were not in a good condition in the war, they needed to divert public attention from the massive amounts of casualties on the front.
They needed someone to blame, to punish — to defeat. The nudity and sexuality of Hari Mata were considered to be lewd at that time. So they found a perfect scapegoat who had shamelessly seduced men from all armies. The execution of Mata Hari was a big win for them.
After her execution, nobody came forward to claim her body, because she hadn’t made any real relationship, so her body was given to the Museum of Anatomy in Paris.
They kept her embalmed head till it was found missing in 1954.
She was an untrained recruiter, who was sent on a mission of espionage in the war.
She was a scapegoat, who was targeted only for her brazen promiscuity, exotic charm, and defiance of societal norms of the day.
“I had long since lost any illusion of being loved for who I was and now accepted, with a clean conscience, flowers, flattery, and money that fed my ego and my false identity.”
― Mata Hari
