Mata Hari (Margaret Gertrude Zelle) is a famous dancer, a burlesque queen, a sex symbol of the early twentieth century, a spy and just a fatal woman. All these titles are attributed to an ordinary woman who did not want to live a gray life, raise children and farm, she wanted recognition, big money, luxurious lovers and she managed to conquer Europe with her frivolous dances at that time.
So, the future star was born in the usual Dutch family factory hatter. The girl studied well at school, but her studies with time ceased to interest. Mata grew up, life in the family began to depress her and to get rid of obsessive family care the girl decided to become independent, using a proven method of marriage (in the newspaper she found the announcement that the captain of the Dutch army, Rudolf McLeod, is looking for a companion of life and already in 1895 she married him at the age of 18).
A young wife and her husband went to the island of Java in Indonesia (at that time this island was a colony of the Netherlands). Initially, the young girl liked the family life, but very quickly she was disgusted with her. During her marriage, Mate liked to go with her husband to officer secular parties and dance before the venerable audience, her husband, naturally, did not like it very much and as a result, the couple had already divorced in 1903.
Hari left her baby to her husband, and without money and education she went to conquer Paris. Mata divorced her husband, because he beat her, drank and blamed all his problems.
Paris of the early twentieth century was fond of the East and everything connected with it. Adventurer Hari decided to act as a dancer, because during her marriage she studied Indonesian dances and she liked it. After watching the dance number of Isadora Duncan, no less famous dancer of the time, Hari decided for herself that in the future she would make dances for bread.
Within two years she was paid by the whole beau monde of Paris. With her ideas she traveled the best theaters in Europe. Her performance started with dancing, and ended with striptease, so no wonder that in the conservative European countries her performances were very popular, because few of the dancers were denuded on the stage.
Mata was a sensible woman, because before she began to speak, she invented a resounding nickname, dissolved mysterious rumors about herself, and also thought out the design of the stage and the costumes in which she performed. Hari had a small breast size, so during the performance she barely hinted at her, but hid her under the ornaments.
Mata Hari loved men, and they worshiped her. She changed lovers like gloves, she was asked with gifts that were worth a fortune, because of her they were ruined, but she was not interested because she liked the variety of men. Hari in the open took money from men for their intimate services. Later, at a trial of espionage, she acknowledged the fact that she was a highly-paid representative of the ancient profession, but not a spy.
Rich men interested her as hunters are interested in trophies, and in most cases this woman herself was looking for contacts with a man who liked her and then the relationship developed exclusively according to her scenario. The list of her lovers included the entire French elite, as well as many foreign bankers and statesmen.
Mata Hari was the most expensive and sought-after courtesan, despite her far from model parameters of her time. As we see, she did not lack men who asked her with money and gifts, but she loved to live in luxury and play cards, so despite the fact that she had large sums of money, she often lost and borrowed them, so this woman was always in search of money.
During the First World War, she worked as an espionage (since in wartime she could not give presentations and her dancer's career came to an end, but the men continued to be interested in this woman), she managed to work immediately for two reconnaissance (French and German). When the First World War began, Mata Hari was just on tour with Germany and she barely managed to return to Paris. Here she realized that she could no longer earn dances and began to look for other methods of earning. At this time, Hari renewed relations with his longtime admirer, the Russian military Vadim Maslov, he fought on the side of France. The dancer soon decided to visit Maslov, who was lying wounded in the hospital, but to see him, she needed a military pass issued by French intelligence.
French intelligence has long suspected this woman of espionage and with the issued pass she was followed by surveillance. However, Mata was not seen in espionage and the French intelligence authorities invited the woman to dinner, at which she was asked to start espionage activities in favor of France. Hari agreed and asked for her services a million francs, but she was offered only 25 thousand for each exposed German agent in France.
Mata hands over one spy and soon leaves for Madrid. Spain at that time was a neutral side and many countries were conducting their espionage activities in it. Having received no exact orders from either German or French intelligence, she began alternately to provide secret information to both countries, she received it from her high-ranking Spanish lovers, whom she, as is known, had on two opposing sides.
The paradox of her espionage activity in Madrid was that the Germans and the French gave her knowingly the information that was already known to everyone. As a result, both the Germans and the French began to look for a way to get rid of a useless spy.
In the winter of 1917 Mata Hari returns to Paris, but then she is arrested and begins to judge, accusing of spying on enemy Germany. She initially disagrees with the fact that she is charged, but later admitted that she had once taken money from a German spy, arguing that she did not have enough for fur.
The French press, which used to idolize the dancer, began to mix the name with dirt on the spilled sheets of newspapers. The court sentenced Mata Hari to a death sentence, and none of the high-ranking officials-lovers stood up for her. No matter how hard her lawyer-lover tried, Hari was not pardoned. Before her death, she wrote two letters to her ex-husband and daughter, but they never reached them, and all her correspondence was transferred to the prison archive. October 15, she was shot. The body of the dancer was not requested by any of the relatives, so in the future it was used for anatomical purposes.
After her death for more than a decade, disputes over whether she was really a spy did not abate and it was only in the late 1930s that German intelligence officially announced that Mata Hari had been recruited in 1915 and had received appropriate short training. It turns out that she simultaneously served in two reconnaissance and was the victim of espionage games of the two great powers, because the data she obtained were of little value.