A Spy Executed

On October 15, 1917, Mata Hari was brought before a firing squad outside of Paris, France, and executed. The Dutch exotic dancer had been convicted of spying for Germany during World War I. Because her trial produced no hard evidence, her execution remained a controversy for years.

She had been born in the Netherlands on August 7, 1876, and named Margaretha Zelle, the first of four children to a hatter and his wife. Margaretha was the only girl, and it is said she was spoiled during her early years. However, when she was thirteen, her father's business failed, her parents divorced, and her father remarried. He and his second wife had no children. During this time, Margaretha went to live with her godfather and trained to be a kindergarten teacher. However, the headmaster at the school became overly familiar with her, and her godfather removed her from the school.

At age eighteen, Margaretha answered an ad for a wife placed by Dutch Colonial Army Captain Rudolf McLeod. She married him in 1895 and moved to Java where he served. The marriage allowed her financial security and to move into higher Dutch society. Although the couple had two children, the marriage was less than successful. McLeod was an alcoholic who beat his young wife, twenty years his junior, and openly kept a mistress.

In Java, Margaretha learned dances of the region. For a while, she abandoned her husband to live with another officer. In 1899, their children fell violently ill, and only the daughter survived. There were rumors the whole family had syphilis. The couple moved back to the Netherlands and divorced in 1902. Margaretha gained custody of their daughter. McLeod never paid the support he was ordered to pay, and he did not return his daughter on one occasion she visited him. Margaretha didn't protest since she didn't have the means to support the two of them.

Margaretha first worked as a circus performer and artists' model. Then she earned fame as an exotic dancer, pretending to be a Javanese princess and calling herself Mata Hara, a name for the sun. However, she soon fell out of favor with many for her extreme "exhibitionist" performances. When the war broke out, a Russian pilot whom she called "the love of her life" was shot down and taken prisoner. The only way she would be allowed to see him was if she agreed to spy for the Germans. She was arrested several times and questioned over the next two years and was brought to trial in July 1917 for spying and causing the death of at least 50,000 soldiers. It was not until Germany unsealed certain documents in the 1970's that the evidence came to light. She had indeed been a German spy.

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