Dan Snow's History Hit - Mata Hari: The Truth Behind The Legend

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

More than 70 years after her death, Mata Hari is still a household name throughout the Western world. So who was this daughter of a Dutch hat-maker, who was executed for espionage after a secret trial during the darkest days of World War One? Julie Wheelwright joined me on the pod to guide me through the world of female espionage, the forces behind patriotic hysteria and the perpetuation of the idea of the seductive and dangerous temptress. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got the Mata Hari on the podcast today, the legendary Mata Hari. In fact, we don't have Mata Hari because she was executed during the First World War, but we've got the very brilliant Julie Wheelwright on the pod, who's a writer who's been on this podcast before. Actually, she's talked about women warriors through history, and she's a biographer of Mata Hari. She's written a very successful book called The Fatal Lover, Mata Hari, and the Myth of Women in Espionage, in a very successful book called The Fatal Lover, Matahari, and the myth of women in espionage, about the life of the spy, the woman executed during the First World War by the French,

a woman who has fascinated and excited people ever since, almost still her household name, been played by Marlena Dietrich and Greta Garbo on the silver screen, and yet who you will be unsurprised to learn the reality of the story bears very little resemblance to the myth that is portrayed. She was called Margarita Zelia MacLeod. She was from Holland. She would meet a grim end in front of a French firing squad on the darkest days of the First World War.

If you want to watch documentaries as well as listen to audio, don't forget we've got History Hit TV. It's the world's best digital history channel like netflix for history hundreds of documentaries hundreds of podcasts exclusive podcasts all sorts of things the live weekly zoom call when i can get the technology right very very exciting if you go over to history hit dot tv and use the code pod one pod one you get a month for free and then you get your second month for just one pound euro or dollar you can just check the whole thing out see if you like it i hope you do thanks for all your support in the meantime everyone here is fantastic julie wheelwright

julie good to have you back on the old podcast yeah it's great to be here dan so last time we met you told me that you had a special interest in matahari now i don't know nearly enough nearly enough about, she's a household name, she's a legend. You need to educate me. First of all, what is the legend? Okay, well, the legend is that she is the ultimate femme fatale. She was a Dutch woman who made her name in 1905 in Paris, basically as an exotic dancer. And her real name was Margaretha Zella MacLeod. She was married to a Dutch officer and they lived in the East Indies for a while. She had two children, one of them died, the couple came back to Holland and they divorced. So she always had this wonderful story about how, you know, she just kind of thought what does a runaway wife do? Or a runaway wife goes to Paris and becomes an exotic dancer.

So she was known, I mean, she was incredibly famous in her day. She was compared to Isadora Duncan. She actually was kind of pioneering a form of dance that is still popular in France. So she appeared on stage, you know, metal breastplates, veils, took off her clothes, was extremely popular and became very well known. But her career sort of took a bit of a slide because, you know, she was approaching her late 30s. She didn't really know that much about dance. So, you know, she tried different kinds of performances and they never really quite took off. She was also known as a courtesan. So these were sort of high class sex workers in Paris, who also had incredible connections. So she knew a lot of famous and very influential people like

Puccini, for example, was one of her lovers. She also was the Minister of War before 1914. So her career kind of begins to take a bit of a slide. 1914, she goes to Berlin and she's about to stage this comeback with a new dance called The Profane Vision. So she's got this six-month run booked at the Metropole Theatre. War is declared and because she's considered a French citizen, she's got this six-month run booked at the Metropole Theatre. War is declared. And because she's considered a French citizen, she's considered an enemy alien. So all of her furs and her jewels are seized from her. Her bank account is frozen.

She's stuck in Berlin. So she finally makes her way back to Holland, to The Hague. And she is penniless. So what does she do? She looks up her contacts, and one of them was a banker named van der Schlack. And van der Schlack, we now know, actually had connections to the Dutch espionage service. So we now know that's probably where her espionage career began, way back in 1914. And through him, a year later, she meets someone called Karl Kramer, who's the military attaché in The Hague. And through him, she's recruited for the Germans.

1915, she goes to Cologne. And I love the delicious irony of this. She's actually trained by a young German woman named Fraulein Schragmuller, who was actually an academic. She had a PhD in economics. And Walter Nicolai, who's head of the German Secret Service at the time, writes this diary account. And he describes how Schragmuller doesn't quite know what to do with this, as he called it, golden fish that has swum into our hands. So Schragmuller actually trains Mata Hari on how to use secret inks. She observes her in the theater, just sort of sees how she interacts with people.

So one of the things about espionage during this period is it's very much a kind of amateur affair. So it's sort of becoming professionalized, it's becoming organized. And one of the things that I found when I was doing my original research was looking at all the forms of secret ink that were being used. And, you know, I was reading these sort of fictional accounts, and I was also reading documents in the Imperial War Museum and

in the French military archives. And you come across these stories about women, for example, having secret ink impregnated into their knickers. And so the idea is, you know, you just wash out the knickers and you've got a whole basin full of secret ink. Well, that actually happened. And I also came across an account in the Imperial War Museum where one of the things that was suggested was that maybe sperm would make a wonderful chemical for secret ink. So all this stuff is going on, right? And it all sounds really fantastic. So nonetheless, Mata Hari is trained in using secret ink. She's trained by Elizabeth Schragmuller. She's made contact with Walter Nicola and she goes back to The Hague. The story was always that she

was really bored in Paris. And so that's why she decided to make a trip to Paris in 1915 to collect her possessions because she had been renting a house in Paris. Her furniture and her goods and chattels were there. So she goes, but actually this was the first assignment from the Germans. Okay. And we should say, because the Netherlands was neutral. So you could travel to Germany and France from the Netherlands? So she was able to travel between Holland and Germany, but to get from Holland to Paris, she had to come through the UK and through Spain. So the route would be from Holland.

She ends up in Falmouth at one point by ship and then goes down to Spain and then takes the train back to Paris. So 1915, she makes her first trip to Paris through this acutest route. And by that time, the British intelligence service is already suspicious of her. But, you know, they let her go. She makes her way to Paris.

Her first report to the Germans, she writes from Paris in 1915. And she writes to her controller, Captain Hoffman. She gives him this useful information that for the time being, the French had no intention of mounting an offensive against the Germans. So one of the things about Mataari's story is always that people have sort of either regarded her as being responsible for the deaths of 50,000 soldiers or as being a complete sort of flighty entertainer who really didn't do anything. But actually, this new information suggests that she did. actually this new information suggests that she did. So she writes this report in 1915 to her German controller about the Allies, rather the French, mounting an offensive against the Germans.

The report would actually have been really useful to German high command because it was then preparing for its attack on Verdun in February 1916. So she is paid for this information, 20,000 francs, which was, you know, a lot of money at the time. And then it's in 1916, sorry, spring of 1916, she goes to Frankfurt. And that's when she's trained by Elizabeth Schragmuller, who's head of the French section of military intelligence in Antwerp. So then spring of 1916, she applies for a transit visa to travel via the UK, which is refused because she's considered an enemy agent. But she ignores that and she arrives in Paris in June 1916, where the French counterintelligence has already received a British report that she might be a German agent. So May 1916, she's back in Paris. And at that

point, she's actually being followed by two detectives, Tarlet and Monnier. She's not aware of this at the time. So she's not aware that she's under suspicion. And she also falls in love with a Russian officer named Vadim Drozdov, who she would always claim was the great love of her life. officer named Vadim Drozdov, who she would always claim was the great love of her life. And she would also claim that because of this affair, you know, she was actually hoping to marry this man, that he would enable her to retire from basically from the sex trade and from spying. Can I interrupt and ask about the spying? I mean, why did she get into it? Was she desperate? Given the Germans had taken everything off her, why did she agree to spy for them? Well, that's a really great question, and she gives several different answers to that.

So when she's prosecuted by the French in 1917 after her arrest, she says that she did it kind of out of revenge, because she said that when Cramer came to see her and offered her this 20,000 francs, she took the money because the Germans had taken all this. They'd taken her furs, they'd taken her jewels, they'd made her penniless, and so therefore she felt it was adequate recompense. And her version of the story was that Cramer says, you know, you're going to Paris, we know you're going to Paris. If you can find out anything interesting for us, we will pay you this money. So he also gives her three bottles of secret ink. And she says that she goes outside

her front door because she's living near a canal in Hague. And she just dumps it in the canal and says, I had no intention of doing anything. So that was one version of the story. But the other version of the story is she did it because she was always skint, and she was always looking for ways to make money. So she lived a pretty hand-to-mouth existence. I mean, there was one time when she was on the stage in Paris, kind of in her glory days, around 1905 to 1910, when she was making a lot of money, but she also spent a lot of money. I think there was a big financial motive. But I think the other thing was that, you know, she was a performer, and she was someone who reinvented herself as,

you know, this exotic creature. She would tell different stories to the press about how she was an Indian princess, and she was a Hindu princess. And, you know, she was married to an earl. I mean, she just made up these fantastic stories, and the press lapped it up. And so I actually think psychologically, she thought, well, this is just another performance and I can make a lot of money doing it, which suggests that she was incredibly naive because, of course, she didn't realise what was at stake. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows

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to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. For her. By 1916, she ends up coming, sort of another trip to Paris from Holland. Yes, so she's in love with the Russian guy, you said? She's in love with a Russian guy, and she decides that she's going to visit him at Vittel because he's got some leave and she wants to spend some time with him. So she has to apply for a permit so that she can go to Vittel. She goes to the police bureau. And while she's there to get this permit, she meets Georges Ladoux, who's head of the counterintelligence services. And they have this kind of slightly strange conversation where he says, well, you might be able to do something for us. And the long and the short of this

is that he hires her to be a double agent. Now, the thing that she didn't do, which most double agents, someone in her position would have done, would have disclosed that she'd already had these contacts with the Germans. But she doesn't do that. And they have this sort of odd idea between the two of them. They concoct this idea that she's going to make her way to Belgium and she's going to seduce the crown prince of Germany, which would have been, I don't know. I don't know how possible that was. Probably not very possible at all. But Ladou says, well, I'll give you a million francs if you can pull this off. And even though all this stuff sounds like it's out of kind of spy fiction, you know, all Allied and the Axis intelligence services were really interested in people's contacts and

people who could get to men in positions of power. I mean, I don't know whether you've ever heard about rumours about the Black Book, but that was certainly something which was very rife during the First World War, this idea that the Germans had this little Black Book, and in it they had basically the dirt on all these powerful men, what their sexual proclivities were, how much debt they had. And so Mata Hari would have been able to supply that kind of thing because she had so many contacts. So in any case, there would have been good reasons for Mata Hari to have been hired by Ladue. She goes to Vidal, she gets her time with Vadim, and then she leaves Paris on the 5th of November 1916. And she's traveling back to Holland via Spain.

She's traveling, I mean, I love this because she gets picked up in Falmouth and she gets searched and taken to New Scotland Yard. And she's traveling with 10 trunks of luggage. And that actually, I have to say, was one of the reasons why I wanted to look in. I mean, I just got fascinated by her because I read her file in the National Archives. And there's a list of all the contents of those 10 trunks. And I thought, who does that? You know, who travels around war-torn Europe with 10 trunks of luggage? In any case, she makes her way to Spain. And while she's in Spain, again, you know, this illustrates how useful her contacts were. She sends a card to Kalle, who's the German military attache. And she goes to his office and she basically gives him this false information,

this kind of made-up intelligence. And he gives her made-up intelligence as well. But then she goes back to her hotel and not writing anything in secreting, but just in ordinary planning, she writes down this sort of report for Ladue and puts it into the hotel post. Now, this is a really interesting moment because it sort of reveals whatever training she had with Elizabeth Schragmuller, she was a pretty poor spy. I mean, these are all things that you just don't do because, of course, Spain is also a neutral

country and there are hotel staff who are in the pay of the Germans, but they're also in because, of course, Spain is also a neutral country, and there are hotel staff who are in the pay of the Germans, but they're also in the pay of the French. You know, it's back very quickly to Calais that Mata Hari has betrayed him, that, you know, she is working for the French. So what he does is he sends a series of telegrams back to Berlin in a broken code. So he's writing in a code, these series of telegrams, in a code that he knows the French can read. So he sets her up. She arrives back in Paris early 1917, and the 13th of February she's arrested and taken to

Saint-Lazare prison and interrogated. The French are really quite brutal to her because the Saint-Lazare prison and interrogated. The French are really quite brutal to her because the Saint-Lazare prison for women was also where they sent the prostitutes. She's chucked into a cell, you know, the food is terrible, it's freezing, she starts to get sick. And, you know, she's subjected to this continual eroding of her sense of self-worth and confidence this continual eroding of her sense of self-worth and confidence through these interrogations where, you know, she's continually being asked these questions over and over and over again. By May, Pierre Bouchardon, her main prosecutor, tells her about the telegrams. And that's when she cracks. And she says, OK, well, I did accept money from the Germans, but I was always a double agent. I was always really working for the French. And I didn't tell the Germans anything. You know, by that point, her fate is in Bouchardon's hands. By July, she's put on trial. She's found guilty and is sentenced to be executed.

Why did the Germans set her up? Because they thought she'd been turned by the French? thought she'd been turned by the French. One interpretation of why she would have been set up is that she had taken the money and she hadn't produced anything. She'd become dangerous. She'd become a liability and they wanted her out of the way. So what happens then is you have almost this kind of perfect storm because the Germans want her out of the way. And for the French, it's a great propaganda coup because they've caught this spy red-handed. It's 1917. Things are going very badly at the Western Front. And she can be put on trial because she's a foreigner. So, you know, she's from a neutral country. She's described as one of those international women. So there's a whole kind of layer of sexual politics going on as well. I mean, she's a courtesan. She's got this reputation as an exotic dancer. So there's no sympathy for her whatsoever. But it's really fascinating sort of reading the

trial transcripts and reading, you know, the press reports about not so much her trial, because that was held in camera, but all the press stuff that appears immediately afterwards. And she's made into this kind of Messalina figure. You know, she's responsible for the deaths of 50,000 men. You know, she's kind of the epitome of the sort of woman that the French wanted to be rid of anyway, the kind of past, that decadent fin de siècle past. And when she's executed on the 15th of October 1917, she's executed in secret, so there are very few witnesses. And there were rumors that started going around Paris that she'd actually escaped, that a white charger had gone through the woods, scooped her up and taken her away, or that she'd been wearing a fur coat and she'd thrown it open and her naked body was so

dazzling to the men executing her that they misfired and she escaped. And I actually found reports from, you know, the 1930s that claimed that she had, you know, it's a little bit like Elvis Presley is still alive, you know, that she'd escaped and gone to live on an island in the South Seas. And from that moment onward, she becomes this mythic figure. And even sort of today, you can still see these references to a Mata Hari. And really what that suggests is that there's this really powerful connection between the idea of a woman who betrays a man and a woman who betrays a nation or a nation that's betrayed by these difficult, untrustworthy women. And I found that theme came up again and again and again in, you know,

there's been so much written about Mata Hari, so many biographies, so many press reports. And I find it really ironic that so often they'll say, you know, this is a really mysterious story, and we don't understand very much about it. And actually, this is one of the best documented First World War espionage cases. It strikes me as very interesting. It's classic of the misogynist genre, which is that you're both saying that she's a kind of weak and feeble woman. And you're also saying that she's a super spy on whom you can blame the fact that the war hasn't been going as well as it ought to for the French. Absolutely. And there's no kind of reality here. There's kind of nothing in the middle. And one of the things that has come out recently,

there was a series of letters that was published by a Dutch archive. And it was an exchange of correspondence between Margaretha Zella MacLeod, so before she becomes Bathory, when she first goes to Paris. 1902, she goes to Paris. She's divorced. Her former husband won't give her any money. She's had to leave her daughter behind in someone else's care, and she's trying to make a living. So what she does is she applies to be a lady's maid, and she applies to teach German conversation, and she was also wanting to become a mannequin, so another model, because the first catwalks in Paris were in 1908. None of these really pan out, but what's available to her is becoming an artist model. And that's very lucrative. And that's very lucrative, because these women were also working as, you know, sex workers, there was a really clear connection there. But it's also through those connections that she actually gets into the

theatre. So you can see that, you know, she didn't have a lot of choices, but her story is so typical of so many women of that period. And the thing that she had going for her, I think, was that she understood her image, she understood the importance of her image, and she understood something, I suppose, really essential about celebrity. She knew how to tell a story. I mean, she did pioneer this sort of form of dance, but she probably wasn't that talented. And she once, for example, auditioned for Diaghilev, the great sort of impresario in Paris, and he kind of laughed her off the stage in this quite cruel way. So she probably didn't have a great deal of talent, but her talent was a really modern one in being able to be famous for being famous. And one of the other

things that was going on was that there are dozens and dozens of photographs of Mata Hari from this period. And she's always posing. I mean, she's always, you know, at the L'Enchamp races or she's at the theatre and she's wearing, you know, the most exquisite clothes. And what she would do, which was what a lot of female performers would do at that time, is that they would get designers to give them clothes. So for example, she had Cocteau design clothes for her, which she would wear on the stage. So Matauri is kind of the product of this kind of really fascinating culture that thrives just before the First World War. And then it's all shut down again. And so she's someone who's just trying to survive.

And, you know, espionage comes along as another form of performance. But the tragedy is she's executed. And really, her career as a spy didn't really come to much at all, the poor thing. No, it didn't. Although I think, you know, we have to bear in mind that a career as a spy is a quite nebulous thing during the First World War. And there were women involved. I mean, it's so interesting to read about Elizabeth Schmagnuller, because she probably was one of the most professional female intelligence agents, rather. money for information. So I suppose they would be regarded as spies, but they're working at a very low level. So it would be sort of nannies or barbers or women in the sex trade would also be selling information for money, but not in the way that Mata Hari was because Mata Hari was actually

trained and she was paid a lot of money and a lot was expected of her. And she did have, you know, extraordinary contacts. Thank you so much indeed for coming back on the podcast and talking about Mata Hari, the myth and the reality. We see you've got your most recent book out, but tell us any book that you want us to know about. Well, I suppose there's still some copies of my book, my biography of Mata Hari. It's called The Fatal Lover, Mata Hari and the Myth of Women in Espionage.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. One child, one teacher, one book, and one bed. give it an absolutely glowing review. Purge yourself. Give it a glowing review. I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather. The law of the jungle out there. And I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome. But if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.