Erik Sass is covering the event of the war on the dot 100 old age after they happened . This is the 267th episode in the series .
9 February 2025: French Arrest Mata Hari
It ’s strangely fitting that the most infamous undercover agent of the First World War was probably shamefaced of nothing more than ego - aggrandizement and bad judgment .
The alien dancer and courtesan known as Mata Hari was bear Margaretha Geertruida in 1876 , to a middle - class Dutch family with breathing in to social nicety ; her male parent was a struggling chapeau - Jehovah and her mother a low - ranking patrician with expensive taste . Although citizen of the Netherlands their ancestry draw back to northerly Germany , yield “ Margreet ” a cosmopolitan air , which was only reinforced by her dark feature article and “ ethnic ” appearance , fueling racist rumors of ancestor from India or Indonesia ( recall a scandalous allegation pull down at Britain ’s former First Sea Lord and the inventor of the dreadnought , Jackie Fisher ) .
Two years after her father declared bankruptcy , when Margreet was 15 her female parent died and she was sent to live with her godfather . Noticing the effect her “ exotic ” appearance seemed to have on men , when she was 19 age old she responded to a newsprint personals ad localize by a Dutch compound ship’s officer , Rudolf MacLeod , wait on in the Dutch East Indies ( today Indonesia ) , seek a married woman . She moved to the Indies to be with MacLeod , married , and had two children by him , but tragically her honest-to-god son was fatally poisoned , apparently by an furious handmaid .
This calamity spell the ending of their brief , disruptive man and wife , and abide by their return to Europe in 1901 Margreet leave for Paris , where she parlayed her ( mostly fictional ) exotic background and appearing into a career as a terpsichorean , supposedly do the ritual dancing of the lascivious Far East – of course need a good quite a little of nudity – under the name “ Mata Hari , ” translate as “ Eye of the Day ” in Malay . As expect of someone with such a scandalous occupancy , she also worked as a high - class prostitute as she toured the capitals of Europe ’s cosmopolitan pre - war societal view , notching up countless lovers , including assignations with many of the continent ’s most famous and powerful men .
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As it happened , May 1914 found Mata Hari in Berlin , where she had a abbreviated affair with a German officer in the “ morals ” ( vice ) division . On the outbreak of state of war she attempt to come back to Paris , hoping to reconnect with old supporter there , kindle the suspicions of German official who confiscated all her property , leaving her destitute . Undaunted as always , she managed to restore herself in the Netherlands as the mistress of a Dutch baron , and by December 1915 she was back in Paris , visiting all her onetime haunts and patron . There she converge and fell in lovemaking with a much younger Russian officer , the 21 - year - old Vladimir de Masloff , who seemed to be every bit infatuated with the aging dancer .
Fake Spy, Real Spy
However Mata Hari was also already falling under intuition from confederative news agencies . The chief French counterintelligence officer , George Ladoux , believed ( with no grounds beyond her amorous encounter with the German police officer ) that she had accept an offering from German intelligence to become a paid operative , using her liaisons with powerful men to gain access to cardinal secrets , which she would go back via unnamed handlers .
In fact , Mata Hari had been approached by a German federal agent in May 1916 in the Netherlands , and accepted an fling of 20,000 francs to work for Germany , along with a codename , “ H21 ” – but all in bad trust , she would afterward insist , claiming she hold up along chiefly out of a desire to recoup the early loss of her property at the hand of German officials . Unfortunately for her , this misstep would come to light when France ’s fortunes were at a particularly dispirited ebb .
The suspicion of Mata Hari was part of a new moving ridge of undercover agent mania that swept France in 1917 , as politicians , the press , and administration propaganda sought answer ( or excuses ) for the land ’s continuing unfitness to expel strange encroacher , who always seemed to be one footstep ahead of them – literally , in the showcase of the German Army ’s impend strategic coitus interruptus to theHindenburg Line . Amid raise social tempestuousness at dwelling and mutinous rumblings at the front , the consistent whipping boy was internal perfidy by mass of in question background , reviving the xenophobic and anti - Semitic themes of the Dreyfus Affair from 1894 - 1906 .
The demonization also reflect a numeral of overlap fears and insecurity resulting from social and ethnic trends , which had grapple France and the rest of Europe by the third year of the warfare . These included widespread distrust of outsider , including not just the opposition but also treacherous Allies and potentially treacherous neutral , as well as unease over cleaning lady ’s growing economic force , and moral affright over the commute intimate Sir Thomas More of the younger generation ( stand for by paternal concern about untried women volunteering at hospitals where they could mix with Isle of Man , and over untried men at the front bring down prostitutes and contracting venereal disease ) . aberrant sexual activity , espionage and blackmail were closely entwined in the pop imagination , thanks in part to the pre - warRedl affairandCaillaux affair .
Although surveillance turn up nothing incriminating , Ladoux was so confident that Mata Hari was a spy that he offered to make her a double agent in return for large sums of money , with a new mission of infiltrating Germany ’s web of spy in France and overseas . Already under hunch of being a German undercover agent , in constant pauperization of money , and with her lucrative terpsichore career mostly behind her , Mata Hari merrily accepted the pass to become a real undercover agent for France .
Unfortunately for her this glamourous new career proved brief and fatal . On her first and only “ mission ” she traveled to Belgium and then Spain , and in November 1916 she continued her journey via Britain . When the ship put in at Cornwall , however , British agent arrested her on suspicion of being a spy and took her back to London . Here she told interrogator that she was indeed a spy – but one working for Gallic counterintelligence .
For some reason ( perhaps excessive secrecy , or just veneration of looking unskilled to his British workfellow ) Ladoux now deny any connexion with Mata Hari . Nevertheless the Brits , probably reason out that a launder - up alien dancer was too implausible to be a real undercover agent , release her and shipped her back to Spain . In December 1916 , still hoping to prove her worth to Ladoux , she seduced the German military attaché in Madrid , Major Arnold Kalle , stringing him along with slimy chit-chat and made - up secret about French politics , and draw out what she trust were important military secrets in return .
This patch of extramarital espionage proved her unfastening . The amateur spy failed to infer that Kalle had realized precisely what she was up to , and was flow her out - of - date and made - up information , deceiving her just as she believed she was lead astray him . When she passed these fake “ enigma ” on to Ladoux , it only seemed to reassert that she was in fact a German double factor , as he ’d primitively suspected . Worse still , on December 13 , 1916 French spies supervise German radio traffic detected a occult infection from Kalle to Berlin , in which he passed along secrets he attributed to her , using her codename “ H21 ” – even though she claimed that she only received this codename of late . For this codename to already be get it on to Berlin , Ladoux concluded , she must have been in communication with German intelligence operation long before , and had therefore been hoodwinking the French all along .
However Ladoux failed to see that this was was all in fact an elaborate counterintelligence gambit perpetrated by Germany ’s spymaster . The Germans were aware that the Allies had cracked this special cipher , and were using it with the cognition any content they send would be decoded , all in an attempt to sow confusedness and hopefully trick the French into revealing some of their intelligence plus . Caught in the middle of this war of deceit was Mata Hari , a cheerful self-seeker who now found herself far out of her profoundness .
After she return to France , on February 13 , 1917 , at Ladoux ’s order French counterintelligence agents hold back Mata Hari as a German agent . take to military prison , she immediately denied the thrill , writing , “ I am innocent . Someone is fooling with me , ” and pick “ Gallic counterespionage , since I am in its armed service , and I have only acted on its teaching . ” Nonetheless her notorious reputation , and her habit of embellishing or fictionalizing part of her own past , in effect sign her death warrant : the French press and world were all too quick to trust that a foreign woman , famed for her loose morals and ability to make brawny men , had sell out the Republic , lead to the deaths of thousands of brave young Frenchmen .
Mata Hari ’s trial began on July 24 , 1917 , but with cards stack against the 41 - year honest-to-goodness former exotic dancer , its issue was never really in doubt . The prosecutors never presented any cogent evidence that she had in reality been work for German intelligence information , except for a cryptical reception showing a payment of 5,000 francs , which it turn out was actually a talent from her sometime lover the baron ( sent anonymously , of course , to protect his repute ) . The court also forestall her defense lawyers from calling the power or Mata Hari ’s maid in the Netherlands to testify to realise up this apparently incriminating detail .
The authorities did present grounds of her legion encounter with Gallic military officer and functionary – suggesting ( but scarcely proving ) that she had extracted secrets from them ; unsurprisingly , near none of her old lovers make out forward to testify on her behalf , as this would have tarnished their reputation as well . Then the tourist court learn of the ill - fated trip to Spain , the stay by British intelligence agency in Cornwall , and the intercepted radio messages in a cracked cipher , which nobody knew had been charge on intention to seal her doom . Most damnatory , Mata Hari herself admitted to receiving the codename “ H21 ” earlier than she had previously state , at the May 1916 meeting .
Duly convict on eight charges of espionage , on October 15 , 1917 , “ the greatest woman spy of the century , ” who was in world no such thing , was fritter away at 5 a.m. by a firing team of twelve men at a barracks in Vincennes , a suburban area of Paris . Her final word : “ It is unbelievable . ”
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