Flashback! The time is 1914. The event...World War I. Kaiser Wilhelm has launched the world in the first of it's all encompassing world wide conflagrations that engulfed the European maps in bloodshed and war. It would end in 1917, but later Hitler would double that indemnity again in 1939! New armored and advanced weapons of war were introduced. Mustard gas filled the battle trenches, spies were recruited and put to work on both sides to gain valuable intelligence on the "enemy" who is defined as anyone in the opposite camp. Enter Mata Hari, exotic dancer, performer, temptress, seductress, courtesan and the most sexual spy of all time who used her wiles, fetching good looks and ample body parts and not just a little bit of nudity to work to her magic on her victims extracting information from them in greater quantities than a male ejaculation. In fact, in many cases, it was the male erection that enabled her to lead her prey around literally by the short hairs for the long run, until....she was finally unmasked..and this is where the confusion comes in. Was she a spy for the French? The Germans? The English? The Dutch?
Mata Hari, real name Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, a contemporary of Isadora Duncan, was born in the Netherlands in 1876. Her mother died in 1891 and her fathers remarriage didn't last and Margaretha went to live with her godfather where she studied to be a kindergarten teacher. It was during her student years her body began to blossom and attracted more than a passing infatuation with her from the schools headmaster. The family was enraged when they found out about it and promptly pulled her from the clutches of the academy. She had however discovered her prowess ad power when it came to controling men with the application of a little subtle seduction, and a taste of what a hymen can do when it came to the attention of the maleable male of the species.
When she turned 18 she became a mail order bride to a wealthy Dutch Army Colonel, 20 years her senior, who was serving in the Dutch East Indies, Indonesia on todays globe. The marriage produced two children, a son and daughter. Soon the dark side of the Dutch colonel manifested itself in drunken rages that culminated in his beating Margaretha unmercifully. The good colonel also kept a concubine on the back burner, which was socially and totally acceptible in the Dutch colonies at the time. It was however, not acceptible to young Margaretha. So she left and found solace and safety in the home of another Dutch Officer. Those damned Dutch. It ain't all about delf and wooden shoes is it? While in the care and arms of the her knight in shining armor she joined an Indonesian dance troupe studying Indonesian traditions. She became quite adept at dance in the fashion of Indonesia that in 1897 she adopted her famous stage name. Margaretha was now..Mata Hari! Which loosely translated means "sun" Indonesian and "goddess" in anciant Sanskrit.
In the meantime her husband left for the Netherlands with the children. (Mata Hari granted him a divorce in 1907.) But this was 1903 and it was time for Mata to take Mata matters in hand. She had nothing left of a life in Indonesia so left Asia for the City of Lights, Paris...the Left Banke...arts...literature..liberal sexual attitudes and politics. It was a melting pot of fomenting ideas in performance arts and literature and was setting the world on fire. Fully locked and loaded with talent and the temperment of a temptress she was ready to through artistic gasoline on the fire that was feeding the creative arts...but...before that would happen she did odd perferformances as a circus horse bareback rider and posed nude as a model for artists.
Soon she was making the rounds of the local cabaret stages as an exotic dancer. Sex appeal was dripping from every pore on her body on stage and few men, and some women, couldn't resist her gyrating gravitational pull. She was a whole package of promiscuity and flirtatiouness with a body that was built as shapely and as firm as the Arc d' Triomph. It wasn't long before she became the mistress of a wealthy Frenchman She passed herself off as a Javanese princess of royal Hindu birth, and they were buying it faster then water pouring from a broken dike.She was shown off and privately performed for her benefactors friends and would perform and pose in the nude for photographs. Her fame spread faster then the legs of a ten dollar whore offered a one thousand dollar bill.
She was soon A List. A hot property. Her most famous trademark was her stripping for the audience, slowly and deliberatly to let each layer of clothing shed and flesh revealed to claim victory over the male hardon and the protuding nipple factor of her female admirers in the audience. She soon was shed of clothing, (a skin toned body stocking was worn however) and all she would end up wearing was a gaily colored jewelled bra with a dazzling disply of arm bracelets and ornaments. A her Parisien fame spread, more and more, her clothing was shed. More nude photos, more nude dancing which all led to liasons with both sexes and multiple partners at the same time. Of course the effete artsy crowd thought her act cheap and tawdry, and maybe it was. 10,000 Male Erections Can't Be Wrong!
Along with fame she was a courtesan to numerous wealthy patrons propelled into Parisien romps under the covers by her sensuality and eroticism. She primarily had numerous affairs with military men from different countries in Europe. These same military men would be sworn enemies in time on the battlefields as World War One would break out soon. Some high in the military hierarchy were aware of their officers pecadillos with the flirtatious minx with small breasts and a hungry sexual appetite. She was a true Bohemian but the intelligence agencies of all countries in Europe began to see her as a dangerous woman because of her promiscuity, and also as a valuable tool to garner intelligence information from the enemy for the same reason. While her vagina would do all the talking, she would listen carefully. The mystery gets murky here as there is myth and misconceptions and misinformation that got out of the geni's bottle and still to this day surrounds the final events that ended up with Mata Hari facing and dying before a firing squad as a double agent!
She was a victim of circumstances it seems. During the War, the Netherlands remained neutral and Mata was allowed to travel to other countries freely to entertain. In 1916 as a ship she was on from Spain docked in England where she was arrested and interrogated as a German spy. According to government records (You know how credible they are!) she admitted to being an agent for French Intelligence. The transcipts of her interrogation are in Britains National Archives if you want to read them. Just walk in the building and tell them you work for French Intelligence! The French government never back up her claims. Why? Was she lying or were the French embarrassed that she was discovered? We'll never know the truth for sure, but as they said on X-Files...The Truth is out There!
Mata was released as they had no real evidence to hold her and she began her travels again through a Europe at war preceding Bob Hope by about 30 years and her idea of entertaining the troops was much more in keeping with the need for escapism dancing nude than listening to wise cracking Hope and his stale jokes.
The British had managed to break the German codes and in 1917 they intercepted a message from Berlin describing the activities of a code named spy categorized as H-21. The Brits sent to de-coded message to the French who claimed H-21 was the designation for Mata Hari. Some in the conspiracy camp think the Germans deliberately faked the message to discredit Mata with those who managed her spy activities to eliminate her from the field.
She was promptly arrested by French authorities in her hotel room in Paris and was put on trial accused of spying for Germany and thereby responsible for the deaths of thousands of Frenchmen in battle. There still was no concrete proof or evidence to convict, but then again, there was none to absolve her of guilt either. Her attorney was denied permission to cross examine witnesses nor could he put his own client on the stand to question her openly. She was found guilty..and was killed by a firing squad on Oct. 15, 1917 at the age of 41. She refused a blindfold and as the bullets ripped her body apart she fell crashing to the ground.
Secret documents were opened in Germany in the 1970's and show that she was spying for the Germans and was recruited by them in 1915. Her coded messages were found as well in the files and along with the name on the master list of Mata Hari was the telltale H-21. There was also evidence that she had turned in six Belgian agents to her German handlers for extermination. After her execution no one claimed her body so it was used for Medical study, her head removed and kept in a museum in Paris. The head was reported as "disappeared" in the 1950's. Today if you visit the Netherlands, of course, stop in Amsterdam for sex and drugs, but don't forget to visit the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden. They have the one and only Mata Hari Room with scrapbooks of hers and other memoribilia. A statue of their most famous citizen also graces the grounds of the park.
She was an original. The first Femme Fatale that even James Bond would have fallen in love with given out secrets known only to Britains MI-5. It was a film noir scenario, before there was film noir. She managed to be a Bond Babe before there was a Bond, and when it came to sex and spying Mata Hari was the original Pussy Galore!