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Mata Hari 1932
I don't get all this passion for this woman ... I mean, here it is the truth about this "superstar":
The lady on top of you is the infamous Mata Hari. Lips don't come much looser than hers. The name means, "Child of the Dawn" in Hindi, or "Eye of the Dawn" in Malay. She was, they said, the daughter of a Brahmin and an initiate into the rituals of sacred Kandiswami dance. The Follies Bergere nearly had drool ditches cut into the floors for the Frenchmen gathered in mobs to admire her... cultural diversity. They apparently thought she was pretty OK, even though she shaved her armpits. Who says the French are intolerant? She arrived in Paris with nothing but her clothes. And, hearing once that 'Less is More', shed those, along with her previous identity. After that, she wanted for absolutely nothing in life (except a good source of contraception, a steady supply of "Indian Teak" body stain, and a strong dose of Penicillin now and then). Eventually, WWI started, and Mata found out that she had a uniform fetish; and the more stars, bars, ribbon and doodads on it the better. Her boudoir became the hospitality suite of French High Command. The German army showed Mata how her hunger could be turned from fun to profit, and soon her vast range of pillow talk became military intelligence for the Kaiser.
Dutch spy Mata Hari wasn't as important as everyone seems to believe. Accused of being a double agent for both the French and German army during the Great War, Mata Hari was executed in 1917 by a French firing squad.
She was born in the northern Dutch town of Leeuwarden as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. She moved to France where she started a career as a nude dancer where she became famous and moved in the highest circles of Europe. So, the French Secret Service asked Mata Hari to mingle with the Germans. However, during her first mission something went wrong and she was arrested by the British intelligence service. For a long time, historians have thought her arrest was mere coincidence. But the British kept Mata Hari under close surveillance from 1915 on. In the meantime, the French too got suspicious. Mata Hari had lovers on both sides of the border.
It also became clear that German army officers were paying her. Officially, it was to keep them company but the French intelligence office wasn't so sure about that. What if she was paid for passing on sensitive information? When she tried to cross into France to visit one of her lovers, Mata Hari was arrested by the French Secret Service and interrogated. During one of these long sessions, she succumbed and confessed to being a German spy, known under the pseudonym of H21.
The trial that followed was nothing more than a showcase trial. The French were convinced she was "one of the greatest spies of the century, responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers". Mata Hari was deemed guilty and condemned to death. In 1917, she died in front of a firing squad despite her desperate claims that she was innocent. The Dutch Mata Hari Foundation however, still sees possibilities to rehabilitate her with the help of several newly released MI-5 documents. They still think there may be chance that Mata Hari was indeed innocent.
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