Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

She's charged with high treason.

(dramatic music)

It's a female spy, a female spy.

Well, that's exciting.

The famous exotic dancer represents beauty

and feminine temptation.

Mata Hari is mystery and fantasy.

The courtesan has intimate relationships

with powerful figures.

Sex and death together.

I think that's what she is.

But one question

is still unanswered 100 years later.

Was she a spy?

Was she guilty or not?

Narrator] Will it remain a secret?

(dramatic music)

(suspenseful music)

Paris, February, 1917.

World War I has been ravaging Europe for three years.

In the palais de justice,

one of the most famous women of the era is brought

to the investigating magistrate for questioning.

Mata Hari was surprised

when she was arrested

because she was convinced she could wiggle

her way out of any situation.

Will she succeed?

(gun explodes)

In 1917, the German and the French face each other

as implacable enemies.

The initial enthusiasm for war gave way long ago

to revulsion of the constant horrors.

Mata Hari was arrested at a time

when one looked for spies absolutely everywhere.

One must remember it was 1917.

There were hundreds of thousands of deaths every month

and no progress.

As the French army was not defeated

but couldn't manage to win,

public opinion was convinced that there were spies within.

That this woman who was

in close contact with men in senior positions.

She wanted to be something, do something.

And she wanted to be free as a woman.

(bright music)

At the beginning of the 20th century,

Paris offered the opportunity for an independent life.

Everything seems possible in a salons

and variety theaters with such extravagant delights.

This is the path Mata Hari chooses.

She was the Madonna of her days

because she was, in one moment to the other,

she was very famous.

Mata Hari was a mix of sex and elegance.

And that mix made her so sexy.

Here in Paris,

Mata Hari makes a breakthrough as a dancer in 1905.

She knows that mystery has great power.

She leaves it unclear who she is, where she is from.

All the same,

she was a woman who revolutionized her era

because she invented the striptease

and it played on the subconscious in particular with men.

People were fascinated with this phenomenon

that appeared clothed in mystery

and finished in a sort of orgasm.

It has to be said like it is.

Mata Hari's dancing contains

the promise of the exotic,

the erotic and sex.

The most influential men

of her day surrender to this, quite shamelessly.

(sultry music)

She was always incredibly self-conscious

about how she was being viewed,

how people were looking at her, but she did,

I think what we all desire to do,

which is to live out our fantasy,

to just do something completely outrageous

and to pull it off.

This woman made famous through her body,

appeals to people's fantasies to this very day.

(sultry music)

But did Mata Hari really commit treason

as her influential lovers claimed when put under pressure?

Is she guilty of that charge?

I met Mata Hari when I was extremely young

because my great-grandfather was the prosecutor

at her trial.

Mata Hari will spend six months

in the palais de justice, fighting to save her neck.

She's interrogated 17 times.

If you believe that the French were really looking

for a spy and they believed

that she could be that spy, then she had a chance.

The most sexy part of a story is indeed the myth.

To fully understand the myth and the entire story,

you really do have to know the girl behind the myth.

Sexy is hardly the word

to describe the Dutch province of Friesland

or the small town of Leeuwarden,

looking just the way you might imagine it.

It's in these dreary surroundings,

that Mata Hari is born on the 7th of August, 1876.

And there's nothing at all Oriental

about her name, Margaretha Zelle.

Her father owns a shop and soon makes quite a fortune

on the stock market.

(speaking in foreign language)

Her father was a pathological liar, too.

He called himself a Baron and made people believe

that he was an aristocratic origin.

He was someone who always over-exaggerated his importance

who always lived in a never, never land.

Adam Zelle loves his daughter.

He spent lavishly on her.

He bought her this goat cart, a Boken Vogan

and she had dresses made of silk and velvet

in bright colors, which was something

that her other friends didn't have.

And one of her school friends remembered her

as being an orchid amongst a sea of buttercups

which I think is a wonderful kind of symbol.

So life began and she was very much adored by her father.

And then there were these series of tragedies.

So her father loses his money.

Her mother dies.

(somber music)

16 year old Margaretha

is left with an uncle and aunt.

They sent her Leeuwarden to become a kindergarten teacher.

The story goes that once she got there, she had an affair

with the headmaster of the school, a sexual affair.

And so she was expelled from school, but he wasn't.

He was allowed to remain in office.

The beautiful Margaretha is now 18-years-old.

Without any family or money, her salvation, marriage.

Her husband, she met because of an advert he placed

in the local newspaper.

He was an officer who was on leave from the Dutch Indies

where he served.

She tried to escape, tried to make something of her life.

And of course, for her, this marriage

would be a very advantageous one

because he came from a good family.

His mother was a Baroness.

His uncles were generals, admirals.

In 1895, Margaretha married John McLeod.

I remember letters that she said, "Oh, Johnny, Johnny

I'm longing for you."

And I don't think it lasted very long, but yes,

she was really in love.

She was attracted to him, physically attracted also.

Yes.

And he to her.

John is almost 20 years older than Margaretha.

McLeod did love women and not only his wife,

but also other women.

So that might've jeopardized her marriage

from the beginning a bit.

In 1897, they sailed to the colonies,

to the Dutch East Indies.

McLeod has been serving

with the Dutch army there for many years,

a son Norman and a daughter Jeanne are both born there.

There's that image of her on the Prinses SS Amalia

when they're going off to the Dutch East Indies

for the first time

and she's wearing a very conventional outfit

with a hat and she looks quite somber.

And I wonder whether she didn't really try very hard

in the beginning to be a conventional wife

and to be a conventional mother to her children.

The Dutch East Indies today Indonesia

has been a Dutch colony for many decades.

McLeod is appointed commander of the Garrison

and Margaretha, discovers a new world.

(cheerful music) (children chattering)

It must've been this extraordinary adventure for her

to go off to the Dutch East Indies to observe the dancers.

And she became involved in an amateur dramatics society.

But the downside of all of that was that

they were living in a military Garrison

and I think that she was probably also much younger

than a lot of the other wives

and her husband was very jealous.

Margaretha is an avid letter writer.

It's only recently the letters have emerged

which record the agony of her marriage.

One Sunday afternoon,

he went completely wild and almost killed me

with a bread knife.

Our doctor calls it tropical fever.

Other people simply describe it as sadism.

(dramatic music)

Those letters are like a bomb

because everybody has now the feeling

that there's a poor woman who was having pain,

who was struggling for her life

and trying to do the best she could.

In 1899, Margaretha's son, Norman dies.

For a long time, it was believed

he had been poisoned by natives

but her letter suggests another cause of death.

Margaretha describes how her husband infected her

with venereal disease.

Her daughter is also treated with mercury,

at that time a common treatment for syphilis.

That would explain the boy's premature death.

His father had syphilis, infected Margaretha.

And so as fetus, he would have become infected as well.

So that is a possibility.

It's also possible that the syphilis itself

wasn't caused by the treatment.

It was treated with mercury, which in the end is poisonous.

McLeod, Johnny blamed her for Norman's death

and the marriage couldn't survive that.

I mean, I think it brought out all

of the terrible tensions that were lying underneath.

Margaretha returns to Holland

with her daughter, Naan.

We also know from the letters

that Naan was ill after that, and also had to be treated.

Margaretha fights for the right

to keep her daughter but she has no money.

From now on, Naan will live with her father.

Margaretha would never see her daughter again.

She actually says in the letters that Naan

and being a mother is what keeps her

from sort of sliding into a position of being a courtesan.

And once Naan has gone, then that opens the door for her.

Margaretha McLeod, dreams of Paris.

In 1904, it's the center of the world.

"The men find me beautiful,"

we read in her letters.

This will be her major asset

in the capital of sophistication.

Very early on, she began with the tactic

that she would use all her life bluff

as she knew she had nothing to lose.

She went from one bluff to the next.

Margaretha is determined

to leave behind the shackles of marriage

and she's prepared to do almost anything to achieve this.

The girl from small town Holland transforms herself

into a lady of the world.

(cheerful music)

(speaking in foreign language)

She had no money.

She had spent the money and in Holland

with her charms on new outfits and cases that made her look

like a wealthy woman.

She entered their Cafe de la Paix

and instantly became the center of attention

for Parisian society.

She was that type of woman.

The high society salon

and restaurants appeal to Margaretha.

That's where she wants to be.

And she will succeed.

I don't think she had the intention of being a dancer.

I think that she had the intention

of living out some other life.

She must have realized that Orientalism was,

it was hot, it was sexy, it was popular.

And perhaps she thought, well, I know a thing or two.

I saw a thing or two.

Let's give it a shot.

Let's try it.

Nobody from her former life remembers

ever having seen her dance, but Margaretha has courage

and the good luck to meet the right men,

one of whom gives her a new Oriental name.

Mata Hari means "eye of the dawn" in Malay,

or "the rising sun".

And I think it's well chosen

because the rising sun symbolizes a new beginning,

a new day, new adventure.

And that is what happened.

What must have made her worth going to see is some sort

of incredible joie de vivre, some sort of incredible spirit

that she put into her dance.

(sultry dance music)

It couldn't have been because of her technical ability

because she didn't seem to have much.

So she must have had something.

Margaretha Zelle from Leeuwarden isn't content

with merely adopting the exotic name, Mata Hari.

She invents a new art form to go with it,

exotic nude, dancing

Beautiful photograph, beautiful head wear.

Her personal album brings to life the magic

and all the tricks of this fascinating woman.

There is still one veil beneath.

So you can't see anything really

but the illusion is that she's naked.

And if we go over here, it's rather nice.

You can see her in another pose

and the last veil she's dropping it.

So she's almost completely naked.

An exhibition in the Friese Museum

of Leeuwarden commemorates

the most famous daughter of the town.

Mata Hari's personal albums are here.

On these pages, she stuck all the photographs

and clippings of her spectacular career.

We have a Dutch newspaper article, English, French.

There are some Italian articles in here, Spanish as well,

a few German articles because she danced in Berlin.

She performed in Vienna.

She danced at Scala Theater in Milan.

She danced all over the world.

Really.

Even then, her personal life story is stylized

and presented as a myth.

She told journalists different stories about who she was,

where she came from.

She was a princess born on the Island of Java.

She had an English father, married to a Scottish nobleman,

a variety of different stories, but always with elements

from her own parts that really happened, but just made up

into a completely different story or different stories.

And I think the stories well they helped her, obviously.

There is one letter where she says,

she thinks people just came to see her take her clothes off.

But I don't think that is enough of an explanation

because other women began

to take their clothes off on stage as well.

I think it must've been something more

than just showing off her body.

And I think you could see that even from the photographs,

I mean, she certainly looks extraordinary

and you do get a sense of this very powerful personality.

Almost like she's impersonating something on stage.

Paris in the early years

of the 20th century becomes her stage.

This is the only known film footage of Mata Hari.

That was most paramount for her to be accepted in society,

preferably high society, of course,

because she would have regained what she lost

when her father went bankrupt.

She was accepted in Parisian high society

and German high society and everywhere in Europe.

She went to the horse racers.

She lived as a socialite.

Mata Hari, the girl from a small town,

leads the life of a society lady.

She's extremely beautiful, corresponding precisely

to the standards of the day.

And well aware of it.

There are people who are saying,

because she was abused by her husband,

she couldn't have enjoyed having sex with other men,

but well, I think, you must enjoy it a bit to do it

as many times as she did.

The men throw themselves at Mata Hari's feet.

She allows this and she enjoys it.

My understanding of a courtesan is that that is someone

who strikes their own deal around the selling of sex.

So she doesn't have a pimp.

And there was only a certain class of women

who would do that.

And actually, there was a lot of sex for sale in Paris

at the fantasy (speaking in foreign language)

Mata Hari permits wealthy men to keep her.

They finance her magnificent clothes,

fine jewelry, race horses, and houses.

There were different lovers, but each of them was a member

of high society

and directly or indirectly, very influential.

Paris, the city of love.

For Mata Hari, the city of lovers.

They include influential government ministers, aristocrats,

industrialists, the super rich,

French, Spanish, Italian and German.

In Berlin, she meets the Prince of Hanover,

the Kaiser's son-in-law and probably,

even the German Crown Prince.

Mata Hari meets her admirers quite openly,

showing a preference for men in uniform.

She wasn't ashamed of loving men in uniform

and she openly dined one night with one officer,

the next evening with completely strange,

completely other officer

and next evening with someone else entirely.

But time takes its toll.

A few more years and Mata Hari will be well over 30.

Her infrequent performances now bring in less money.

Another reason why friendships with men

are increasingly important for the aging courtesan.

She had less success for several reasons.

Every fashion goes out of fashion.

Also Mata Hari had set a trend.

So others followed her example.

They were Isadora Duncan, Maude Allen and Louise Fuller.

Where she had once been alone,

now she had many competitors.

It's becoming harder and harder

for Mata Hari to maintain her extravagant lifestyle.

When she became Mata Hari,

I think even in her private moments,

she was always this creation,

this person that she had made herself into.

And so I think that when things began to go wrong,

it was when she realized

that she couldn't pull it off anymore.

The performance was wearing thin.

People could see through it

In summer 1914 now age 38,

she travels to Berlin.

Finally, she has another show lined up

as a dancer, a comeback.

She had actually written her own ballet,

which she called "Chimera"

and it was the story of a priest falling in love

with a goddess.

I mean, it was very, very Mata Hari.

But you know, she'd written it herself.

She'd got this long run at the Metropole Theater

and this is gonna be her big comeback

but unfortunately of course,

the war breaks out and there's another story.

On the 3rd of August, 1914,

the German Rhein declares war on the Republic of France.

World War I is just a few days old.

It will develop into a bloodbath,

the like of which the world has never seen.

At the exact moment of war broke out,

she was having dinner with the chief of police

who was also a lover of hers.

Interesting small facts but...(laughs)

The show is canceled.

Though unpolitical herself,

she is trapped between the two sides.

She became a persona non grata in Germany.

She was considered a foreigner by the Germans

as she had lived 10 years in France.

This led to all her money in Germany being frozen also

because her show was canceled and she got on badly

with the costume maker.

He garnished all her furs to cover the cost

of his costumes.

So Mata Hari wound up penniless in a hotel.

The only thing left for Mata Hari

is to go home.

A benefactor in Berlin pays for her journey to the Hague.

She will live in Holland for almost a year

working as a fashion, a photographic model.

She did have a lover then, and he was keeping her

and he was paying for her flat in the Hague.

But I think she was very bored.

And I also think

that it must've been extremely uncomfortable

for her to have to come back to Holland.

I mean, she wasn't living with her daughter.

She didn't have any contact with her daughter.

She didn't really have a life in Holland anymore.

What Mata Hari doesn't know

is that she's been under observation

for a long time from London.

Her name first appears

in the files of the British Secret Service in 1915

They did know something because they had had a report

from one of their agents in Holland about her.

They didn't have any evidence, but she was a sort

of person of interest.

But then again, you have to remember the context

of the time.

I mean, people were picked up

for collecting seaside postcards

After all, Mata Hari was in Germany

when war broke out.

So is she working for the Germans?

The countries that are at war, see spies everywhere.

Women in particular, come under suspicion.

And there's this idea of the female spy.

You know, the lady in the hat, sitting on a train

you know, sort of taking notes as people talk.

Wouldn't this Mata Hari

who knows everybody everywhere

be eminently suited for espionage?

The British don't have any proof,

but in the nervous atmosphere of the war years,

suspicion alone is enough.

There's lots of reports of people leaving candles

in a particular pattern in their window,

or someone'S seen setting a bird off

with a bit of paper on its leg.

I mean, all of these kinds of things or women, certainly

in France, in Northern France,

women laying out their laundry in particular patterns.

And so I think all of that was a kind of manifestation

of this anxiety about sort of

you know, the enemy within, at that time.

Mata Hari knows nothing of all this.

She just wants to get away from Holland.

She longed for Paris, she missed Paris.

When you live in the Hague and you know how it is in Paris,

Well, you don't hesitate, you go back to Paris.

In June 1916, after a long and arduous journey,

she arrives back in Paris.

Mata Hari didn't understand

that things had changed

between LaBelle Park, where everything was permitted

and where women were queens and the first World War

where male morals regained importance

and where one should always tell the truth.

During these years,

millions die on the battlefields of humans.

(gun cannon explodes)

To this day, the first world war

is considered one of the biggest catastrophes

of the 20th century.

Paris is a mere shadow of its former self.

The sophisticated mood of the pre-war era is per se.

Mata Hari returns to a different alien city,

marked by war and death.

In spite of the rose tinted glasses

she permanently wore,

she was obliged to notice

that things were not quite like before.

She saw that Paris was undoubtedly less fun than before.

Only because the young, handsome officers

she used to meet before

were either fighting in the trenches or dead.

The Chateau Von San is located on the outskirts of Paris

to the Southeast.

The confidential files of the French state,

are kept in this military archive.

(gentle music)

(speaking in foreign language)

I was lucky to get the authorization to work

on Mata Hari's file.

That's how I got my hands on a file that is about

a thousand pages long.

And I must say that the file

is absolutely exciting and moving.

Most of them are not released

to the public for 100 years.

Interrogations, surveillance records, photographs,

Mata Hari's personal letters.

(speaking in foreign language)

For example, we take the calling cards

that Mata Hari had in a hotel room

where she was arrested by Commissioner Pierre there,

we can immediately understand

why the archives remained relatively secret.

We have Colonel Denvignes, the superior officer stationed

in Madrid, who was one of her lovers.

And in any event, one of those responsible for her fall.

We have the even more important Mr. Messemy

who was minister for war.

In 1920, after the war,

one cannot imagine Mr. Messemy's calling card

being revealed to the public

even though it was common knowledge that he was her lover.

And then for example, this very rare calling card

belonging to Vadim de Maslov.

Vadim Maslov a young Russian officer

in the SaaS army.

It's unclear exactly

when Mata Hari met him for the first time.

He is Mata Hari's last great love.

By the time she meets Vadim de Maslov,

she does want to give up the kind of life that

she's been leading.

It's not a great life really because she's very peripatetic.

She never knows where her money's going to come from.

She knows that her career on stage is pretty much over.

She doesn't even have, she doesn't have any kind of home.

And so I think that she probably wants to settle down.

For years, she's been wandering restlessly

around Europe without any real home, without a family.

Then comes the great love

which will later inspire script writers.

She was smitten, very, very by him

And he could have been her son because he was so young.

I think she just was in love and it'd never happened before.

So it was a new feeling for her.

Since a dear Johnny, she hadn't been in love.

Rumors also circulate about her in Paris.

The British Secret Service has informed the French

that Mata Hari may be a German spy.

At that time, French counterespionage

is headed by George Ladoux.

Ladoux is interested in Mata Hari.

He had her followed thinking that she would make contact

with other German spies.

But in fact, she didn't.

In the late summer of 1916,

Ladoux and Mata Hari meet in the ministry of war.

She's planning a trip to Western France.

Permission is required for areas near the front.

Ladoux asks about her time in Germany.

Mata Hari senses money in the air.

It will prove to be a fatal encounter.

She suggested that she could work for the French.

In return, she asked for about a million franc

which is an incredibly large sum of money, it's insane.

But yeah, she offered,

"I can spy, I can work for you.

I can help you to obtain some information."

Ladoux accepts this offer.

Exactly why is not clear.

But for several months now,

France has been on the brink of defeat

and is desperate for success

while the dancer needs money for her lover.

(speaking in foreign language)

Mata Hari's plan

was to marry Vadim de Maslov.

Her espionage plans were a little more complex.

She first offered Ladoux to go to occupied Belgium

to steal the movements of the German armies.

Her scoop here was that she was to once again meet

the Duke of Cumberland,

who was in fact the Prince of Hanover

and the cousin of the German emperor

and convince him to break away

from the German Alliance to join the English

thus provoking civil war in Germany.

This meant that Mata Hari was in absolute dreamland

and that her love led her to believe

that anything was possible.

Margaretha Zelle McLeod, alias Mata Hari

has found a new role.

She was playing a spy like she was playing a dancer.

She was playing a courtesan.

It was playing all her life.

Yes, I think she enjoyed playing so much.

The would be spy embarks on her adventure.

She invented herself anew every time.

That worked wonders with the press.

It was much more serious later when she was

in the spy network.

If you tell police or customs officers

that you're one thing and then another

then they will either think that you're mad

or a spy and then arrest you immediately.

Mata Hari plans to reach Belgium by ship,

via Spain and Portugal,

but she doesn't get further than Great Britain.

In November, 1916, she's arrested in the port of Falmouth.

It's a mistake.

She's believed to be

a different German spy, Clara Benedicts.

The name Margaretha Zelle

is entirely unknown to the British.

But they soon realize who they're dealing with, Mata Hari.

She travels like a society lady as noted in great detail

by the British Secret Service.

She's traveling around Europe.

There's a war on and she has these 10 trunks of luggage.

And they're all these items that were listed.

You know, everything

from her riding boots to her cigarettes, to her costumes

In London, nobody is sure

how to treat this curious traveler.

Is Mata Hari, a German spy?

What is she planning?

She was sent to Scotland yard in London.

She should have remained discrete but Mata Hari told them

she was in fact a French spy hired Ladoux.

The British inform Ladoux.

Ladoux writes back

that he has long had suspicions about her,

and only recruited her as a ploy.

Ladoux distraught, realized

that he'd stepped on a mine

with Mata Hari who in fact could be a German spy.

Ladoux was a scoundrel.

He committed her without wanting to commit himself

and without wanting to pay her.

Mata Hari is sent back via Portugal again

and Spain to Paris.

She arrives there in early 1917.

And once again is placed

under round-the-clock surveillance.

You have the two inspectors who were following her

around Paris and they described very poignantly

one night when she's sitting alone in the hotel restaurant

and she's crying.

And I think that the fact that she's doing that openly

suggests that she knew that things were very, very serious

and she hadn't heard from Vadim.

So it's almost like all of these things are piling up.

As dawn breaks on the 13th of February, 1917

the police come to her hotel room.

Mata Hari is arrested and taken straight

to the examining magistrate, Pierre Bouchardon.

She's accused of spying

for Germany of betraying state secrets.

She came in and said, listen

I'm an agent for the French Secret Services.

Your information is wrong.

So let's stop everything here.

And my great-grandfather said, no

sit back down and then had her arrested.

So she fell from a great height

and showed great naivety when arriving

in prison where the first thing she said

was that she wanted a telephone and a bath.

She wasn't able to recover her toiletries

or clothes at all for six months,

which meant that Mata Hari

was not able to change her underclothes.

Did Mata Hari reveal to the Germans

what her lovers told her in moments of weakness?

And once the story

with Vadim Maslov who when interrogated

would deny that they plan to marry?

She knows that the trap has been set for her,

the walls are sort of closing in.

Bouchardon and Ladoux

didn't have enough evidence against her.

So what was going on in those interrogations

is that they are pushing her psychologically

because they want her to crack.

Mata Hari attempts

to contact her influential lovers, in vain.

She writes countless letters

to her accuser, Bouchardon as well.

Mon Capitaine,

you have injured me spiritually and physically.

I beg you to stop.

If my request for clarification of the situation

is the reason for this waiting.

If that would offend the vanity of Captain Ladoux,

then ask him to set me free.

I shall never tell anybody what has happened

to me here in Paris.

(ominous music)

On the battlefields, French soldiers are dying.

The war could end badly for France.

Are Ladoux and Bouchardon simply looking for a scapegoat?

She's interrogated a total of 17 times.

Again and again, she denies everything.

But Bouchardon has concrete evidence.

French counter intelligence has intercepted telegrams

to Mata Hari sent by the German military attache in Madrid.

(speaking in foreign language)

This telegram conclusively shows

that Mata Hari, alias H-21 was a German spy.

Why?

Because contrary to all the rules of espionage

the telegram enables her to be clearly identified.

There are the lists of the sums that she received

from Germany, the banks, where she collected this money,

even the name and forename of her servants

the faithful under allegiance.

In short, upon reading this

as Bouchardon read with joy, one is sure of one thing,

H-21 equals Mata Hari, equals German spy.

But is this conclusive evidence

that she was spying on France?

Let's take a look at her last long journey.

At the end of 1916, the British sent Mata Hari back

to France via Portugal and Spain.

She stomps off in Madrid

and she remains there for several weeks.

And among the people she meets

is the German military attache.

According to what she said

during interrogations with Captain Bouchardon

is she wanted to continue her mission.

And she said, if I can't do it in my original mission

then I'll do it here in Madrid.

So what she did is she got

in contact with the German military attache, Major Kalle

and she tried to obtain some information.

That is what she said she did.

Even in Madrid, Mata Hari only does what she's been doing

for a long time.

She meets men.

This is indicated by the files

of the British Secret Service

which is also watching her there.

Several meetings with Major Kalle are recorded.

She tried to obtain information

from Kalle to report it to Ladoux,

but Mata Hari was totally naive.

And when staying at the Ritz,

wrote all of this to Ladoux

and asked what else he needed.

What she didn't know was that the whole Ritz staff

in particular, the postal staff were German secret agents

which meant that Kalle as soon as Mata Hari gave

in her letter at the desk at the Ritz,

even before Ladoux received the letter,

immediately learned that Mata Hari

was in fact a French agent making a fool of herself

and Kalle would get his revenge.

Under interrogation, Mata Hari insists

she only wanted to extract information

from the German military attache, Kalle for the French.

But the question remains.

Are these telegrams revenge

on the part of the Germans

or were the telegrams forged by the French?

These telegrams were sent in a code

that the Germans knew the French had already cracked.

So they knew they could decipher the contents.

The problem with these telegrams is that we don't know

if any original telegrams still exist.

We only have the French translations.

So perhaps it almost is too beautiful, too good to be true.

These telegrams as evidence.

What motive could the French have

for forging telegrams

from the German military attache?

Is Mata Hari the victim of political intrigue?

(speaking in foreign language)

My great-grandfather had faith in Ladoux

who was the head

of the French Secret Services who told him

that this woman was a spy

and should be executed for France's sake.

Unfortunately, it was easy to prosecute Mata Hari

and she had committed many errors

Mistakes like this.

On the 21st of June, 1917,

she's interrogated again.

Up to now, Mata Hari has denied working

for the Germans in any way,

but today, she would change her story.

(suspenseful music)

"Today I'm going to tell you the whole truth."

This is how she begins.

"Up to now, I've been too ashamed."

She talks about The Hague where she lived in 1915

after having to leave Berlin in a great hurry

and it's in the Hague

that she meets the German, Karl Hubert Kroemer.

Kroemer, who was the German consul

in Amsterdam was in fact

the head of the German Secret Services in Amsterdam.

Kroemer was no fool and knew who Mata Hari was.

He observed her and saw that she was bored

to death and knew quite well

that she was an important Parisian celebrity.

Mata Hari very much wants to return to Paris.

The German offers her 20,000 francs.

if she works as a German spy in France.

She can always use money,

as Mata Hari explains during interrogation.

Her code name is H-21.

By the time she meets Kroemer,

who was the German counsel in the Hague,

I think that this is probably when the notion

of her operating as a spy first presents itself.

And I think that, you know, various things go

on in her head and she thinks, oh, I could do that.

I really could do that.

When questioned, she admits

to having received further payments from the Germans.

And yes, she really was H-21.

This is the end for Mata Hari.

I think when she says

"Today, I'm going to tell you the truth,"

and tells them about the money

that she received from Kroemer,

I think that is her absolute undoing

because that was the evidence that they needed to say,

look here we have,

we've caught this spy red handed

and she's actually confessed to spying for the Germans.

And in fact, in terms of French law,

I think that's all they needed

Mata Hari feels she was owed the money.

After all, when war broke out,

she was obliged to leave her jewelry and furs in Berlin.

In the German military archives,

there's a report compiled

by a senior German counter intelligence officer

in the 1930s.

It mentions Mata Hari H-21.

And the writer of the report describes H-21

as the most intelligent woman he has ever encountered.

The report describes how Mata Hari

was sent to Cologne and later Frankfurt

in the late autumn of that year.

In these cities, she was taught

the craft of espionage by German counter-intelligence.

The study of her schedule,

which has a gap for this period

would enable one to think so.

Mata Hari did speak with this, but at another time.

There is a permanent struggle between the truth,

the probable and falsehood.

Major Kemp's report was compiled long

after Mata Hari's trial.

And as evidence, it's certainly questionable.

There is no evidence at all

proving that she had any spy training.

It could have been that there was evidence.

But again, during the wars,

it could have been destroyed

or they destroyed it themselves.

You don't know.

(somber music)

But whether she underwent training or not.

one thing is clear.

To do justice once and for all

to everything that has been said

and written about Mata Hari,

none of the information delivered

was of any value to anyone.

Neither the French nor the Germans.

But Mata Hari made it easy for her accusers.

Not only was she involved with Germany,

she was also involved with French counter-intelligence

and also suspected by the English.

Normally, in a war situation, you would try to,

don't interact with any of the major players.

Keep out of it all

keep a low profile and don't get in any trouble.

And she was in trouble with not one,

not two, but three major players in this conflict.

That is, well, you're asking for trouble.

Let's put it that way.

She was the worst spy in the world

and wound up being the symbol for the best spy.

But Mata Hari was a catastrophe as a spy.

Her trial begins on the 24th of July, 1917.

It lasts only two days.

(dramatic music)

The death sentence is unanimous.

(sad music)

The story goes that on the day of the execution,

she was brought out, stood in front

of the firing squad and she refused to be blindfolded.

And she met her death head on.

(gun fire explodes)

(sad music)

That was on the 15th of October, 1917.

The war continues for more than one year.

Nobody wants Mata Hari's body,

but her life immediately becomes the material

for a whole range of myths.

Remember her trial was held in camera.

So there was a kind

of vacuum of information about what she'd actually done.

There wasn't a lot of press coverage.

The press weren't allowed to the execution.

There was only a few reports that came out

and there was no grave.

So there were these rumors that spread around Paris

that she'd appeared in front

of the firing squad in a fur coat.

And she flung it open and her body was so beautiful

that the men misfired.

There was another report

that one of her Spanish lovers appeared from the woods

on a horse and swept her up and took her away.

The exotic temptress, Mata Hari

is a victim of men,

of international politics, but above all

of her own personal hubris.

And yet, it is this sad end that makes her unforgettable.

Mata Hari was lucky, twice lucky in fact.

Firstly, she was lucky to die

while still young and beautiful.

If she had died a wrinkled 60,

I fear she would have been forgotten.

Secondly, she was lucky to become a universal myth

which means that her guilt may be debated forever.

Later, films and books will embellish

the life story of Mata Hari

and the most beautiful actresses will play her.

In this way too, the myths overshadow

the real person of Margaretha Zelle.

She fulfilled what she always dreamed of,

becoming one of the greatest stars.

This dreadful story transformed her

into what she always dreamt of being.

(slow sexy music)