 In the early morning hours of October 15, 1917, a 41-year-old woman was led to her death. This woman was a European performing artist and exotic dancer who was quite famous in the early 20th century. She had been charged with espionage and treason by the French government. She was led out to a forest on the outskirts of Paris. Twelve soldiers lifted their rifles at her. And right before she took her last breath, she very famously blew the kiss. It's been over a hundred years since her execution and many, many people believe that this woman was nothing but a scapegoat and a pawn in powerful men's game of war. But before we go any further, you know what to do, please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always, such a very, very big thank you to all of our producers and our patrons here on Esoteric Atlanta. If you would like to join the Patreon or producer community, there is a link in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today we are going to be talking about the scandalous life of Mata Hari. Now if you're watching this video or if you have been on this channel for a while, then you are probably a lot like me. You are somebody who's curious. You're somebody who likes to investigate, especially investigate oddities, legend, folklore, scandalous stories and conspiracies. My whole life, I've been a huge fan of history. Growing up and in all my years of education, not once have I ever had to study for a history test. I find history to be one of the most fascinating subjects that we study. Why? Because it's the story of humanity. Every time period of history that we look at, observe and study is nothing but human beings like you and me trying to live life to the best of their ability. Throughout the course of history, our technology might have changed, but our emotions haven't. We still experience jealousy, betrayal, heartbreak, love and joy. Now with that being said, just recently I stumbled upon the story of Mata Hari quite frankly by accident and as I looked at the pictures of Mata Hari and started to slowly learn her story, I decided that to the best of my ability I needed to tell her story. Because frankly, even though Mata Hari was born over a hundred years before me, I feel like there's a part of her in me and I think most women watching this can relate. How many of us have been used and abused by powerful men? How many of us have been used as commodity for our looks and nothing more? In my opinion, Mata Hari was a very intelligent woman who did what she had to do to try to survive. But before we get into the story, I do want to go ahead and give a great big thank you to our sponsors. I am extremely grateful for my sponsors because without them, I would not be able to give you guys videos for free. 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If you take this product for 30 days and you don't notice a change, you absolutely can get your money back, no questions asked. If you are interested in this product and you would like to speak to a representative and get more information on this product, on the pricing plan for this product, or perhaps how to get this product at wholesale prices, then please text Bryce Info to 321-216-8047. Again, that is Bryce Info to 321-216-8047. If you are texting from another country outside of the United States, please make sure to put plus one before the phone number. Alright, you guys, with that being said, let's get into the story of Mata Hari. Like any good story, there have been many television, movie, and theater adaptations of Mata Hari. Just recently, there was a 12-part series produced by a Russian entertainment company on Mata Hari's life. I actually did watch the full 12 episodes when I was researching and learning about this story, and I will have to say, obviously in the story, compared to my research, there was a lot of embellishment, but it was really good nonetheless. After I watched the series, I listened to a lot of the actors in this series talk about their preparation for these roles, just to see if I could see any insight into the psychology behind Mata Hari and behind the people involved in her story. One of the actors said something that I felt like was pretty poignant. He said something to the effect of when somebody is really good at something, when somebody becomes extremely successful at something, there's always going to be an air of mystery around this person. We're always going to wonder why this person out of all the people in the same industry blew up the way here she did, and that is part of the mystique around Mata Hari. How did this woman, who for all intent and purposes, wasn't a technically talented dancer able to become one of the highest paid and one of the most sought after performance artists in Europe in the early 20th century? Mata Hari has been given credit as the woman to invent striptease. As she would dance her Javanese dances, she would slowly start to take her clothes off. This eroticism was something that wasn't really openly done at this point in the upper crust of European society. This led way to Mata Hari becoming a courtesan, which that basically means she was a fancy sex worker. Because of her mysterious and scandalous life, there have been many people who say that Mata Hari was a sex crazed woman who ended up using her sex craved life to double cross the French in World War One. But now that there's been a declassification of all of her transcripts, and now that we have access to a lot of letters that she wrote throughout her life, we know that this simply wasn't the case. So let's try to figure out who the girl was behind the myth. Monterey De Zell was born on the 7th of August, 1876, in Ludwarden, Netherlands. Ludwarden is located in the north of the Netherlands and is a relatively small town. She was born into a very, very wealthy family. Her father Adam Zell owned a hat shop, but had made a fortune investing in oil companies. As of this, the family lived a very lavish lifestyle that allowed the children to go to very exclusive schools. Margrethe herself was the oldest of four children, the only daughter. With her three younger brothers, her father Adam would spend lavishly on the family. Her father Adam was said to be a very eccentric man who had the propensity to make up stories about his lineage and his pedigree. But sadly, like a lot of new money families, Adam's spending went a little bit too far. By the time Margrethe was 13 years old, her father was bankrupt. Not only was her father bankrupt, but he had abandoned her family to go and marry another woman. This left Margrethe and her brothers and mother at the mercy of extended family. Very soon after her father abandoned them, her mother ended up passing away. This meant that Margrethe had to go live with a uncle and an aunt. At this point, around the age of 16, it was decided that Margrethe would go to school to learn how to be a kindergarten teacher. But soon after, Margrethe was expelled from this school for having a sexual relationship with the headmaster. Now let me remind you that at this point, again, she was 16 years old. She was a child. Fortunately, in today's world, this would be seen as child abuse. But at this time period, at the turn of the century, Margrethe was seen as the problem. Therefore, she was the one expelled and the headmaster kept his job. You see, from a very young age, Margrethe was already seen as being someone very, very beautiful. She was very exotic looking for the area with a dark complexion, dark hair, and dark eyes. And unfortunately, this episode that happened at her school would go on to pretty much become the theme of her life. Because of her looks, she would notoriously over and over and over again be used and abused by powerful men. Now I'm sure looking back at this story through modern eyes, we can also say that there was a possibility that Margrethe had what we call today daddy issues. In the early 2000s, there was a very famous stand-up, a filmed stand-up comedy show done by Chris Rock where he said, and I'm paraphrasing, that they don't grade daddies. But if your daughter ends up a stripper, you fucked up. And even though at the beginning of Margrethe's life, she's not intentionally using her sexuality to get what she wants, she eventually learns that this is the only skill she has in order to protect herself and survive. But nonetheless, after Margrethe was kicked out of school, she entered into a phase for a couple of years where really life seemed pretty hopeless. At this point, she had no money to fall back on. Her father had abandoned her. She had no hope of continuing her education. She was basically living on the charity of extended family members. And this, I have to imagine, must have been even more stifling because she had been born pretty much on the outskirts of the upper class. Even though her father was technically new money, once again, Margrethe and her early life had been afforded a very, very exclusive education. So here we have this woman who is highly educated, highly classy. She speaks multiple languages, but yet probably is like a bird bound in a gilded cage. Because of her father's fall from grace, because of the scandal at her school, she's kind of stuck. It's not like she can go out and just become a housekeeper or become a freaking low-level prostitute. That's not her station in life. And so therefore, because, in my opinion, because of this beginning part of her life, she was set up to be even more enslaved to the system of society that she found herself in. At the age of 18, Margrethe found a sense of hope. There was an article in a local newspaper, a Dutch captain was looking for a wife. This Dutch army captain was Rudolph McLeod, and he was 20 years older than Margrethe. Now I myself have the propensity to date men who are significantly older than me. I find that I get along with men who are older than me, better than men my own age. I feel more security with men who are older than me, but I do have to say I've never dated a man 20 years older than me. The oldest I've ever gone is 15 years. My current boyfriend is 11 years older than me. So I'm not trying to say that there's something wrong with this. At this point, she was 18, it was very legal, it wasn't like there was anything illegal. These were two consenting people, and it is believed through her letters that Margrethe was sexually attracted to him and did quite fancy him. But we can probably assume, give an educated guess, that above all, Margrethe saw this as an opportunity to escape the life that she was in. Rudolph McLeod also came from a very powerful family. He was of Dutch and Scottish descent, and most definitely belonged to the upper class. By marrying Rudolph McLeod, Margrethe had secured herself among the aristocrats and the elite of European society. Even though I don't feel like there's anything wrong with marrying somebody a good bit older than you, we do have to recognize that there probably is a huge difference between an 18-year-old and a 38-year-old. They were married on the 11th of July, 1895, and soon after the marriage, Margrethe would be moved to Indonesia with her husband. This was called the Dutch East Indies time because it was conquered and governed by the Dutch. But living in Indonesia would be a huge turning point for the personality of Margrethe. We know by her letters that she really did just kind of want to be a mom, a wife and a mom. She wanted a stable life, and that is what I believe she thought she was getting with McLeod. But as it turns out, McLeod was an excessive alcoholic and was extremely abusive to Margrethe. Not only that, but McLeod was a womanizer and probably a nymphomaniac from all the records that I read. I don't know if they had that word back then, but obviously if he was an alcoholic, he had an addiction problem, and it looks like sex was one of those addictions for them. He very openly had affairs. So from the very beginning of their marriage, Margrethe knew that she was not the only woman in her husband's life. Yes, she was the woman that carried the benefit of being a McLeod now, but she was sharing her husband with multiple other women sexually. We know from letters that Margrethe wrote in her time in Indonesia to family members and friends that his abuse became quite excessive. There were times when Margrethe was literally fighting for her life, where he would chase her with knives and then rape her at will. During this time, Rudolph McLeod contracted syphilis, which unfortunately was then transmuted to Margrethe, which then unfortunately would be transmuted to their two children. Norman John McLeod was born in 1897 and Louise Yon McLeod was born in 1898. When Margrethe's son was two years old, he developed complications due to the syphilis that he had contracted from his parents. Around that same time, her daughter also got sick. Her young daughter, about a year old at this time, also got sick with complications from the syphilis. Unfortunately, her son did pass away at two years old. It is believed that it wasn't just the syphilis that killed him, but perhaps the mercury that they used to treat the syphilis. Maybe he was given too much, but nonetheless, he did pass away, but her daughter lived. Now, not only was Margrethe's marriage a disaster, a shitshow full of abuse, but because she was 20 years younger than her husband, it stands to say that she was also a lot younger than a lot of the other Dutch people living in Indonesia at that time. So because of that and because of her needing to escape her house, Margrethe really invested a lot of time studying the Indonesian culture and learning Javanese dancing. It seemed that Margrethe really did like to dance, to enjoy dancing, and she probably felt a camaraderie with the local Indonesian women who were probably closer to her age than her Dutch community that she was a part of. She even joined a dancing and acting community in Indonesia. And in this respect, it kind of, in my opinion, shows the innocence of Margrethe that she was so innocent that obviously she did not view the Indonesian natives as being less than her, like many of the Dutch people around her. She was intrigued by their culture. She wanted friends, her age. She wanted to be in a place where she could she could thrive. But nonetheless, a few years after the passing of her son, Margrethe and her husband and her daughter moved back to the Netherlands. At this point, Margrethe was fed up with the abuse and she filed for divorce. The court ordered Rudolf MacLeod to pay Margrethe child support. Again, Rudolf MacLeod comes from an upper class family with custody of their daughter and child support alimony coming in from the MacLeod. Margrethe was basically set up to live a very fulfilling and peaceful life. However, as any scandalous story, this would not be so because Rudolf MacLeod, like many other deadbeat dads in the world, decided not to pay child support. And because of his standing, because of his influence and his power within Dutch society, his family's power, the court never pursued him for child support. So at this point, Margrethe is having to do things like housework, house cleaning, just to make ends meet. But nonetheless, on this one fateful day, Margrethe made a huge, huge, huge mistake. She allowed her daughter to go see her father. And this would be the last time Margrethe would ever lay eyes on her daughter because Rudolf MacLeod kidnapped their daughter. And again, because of the court system and because Rudolf MacLeod was a very powerful man in European society, the court system did nothing to get her daughter back. Because Margrethe lost her daughter, her life now takes a very dangerous twist. I just kept hearing when I was reading and studying about this part of her life, I just kept hearing Janice Joplin's song, Bobby McGee, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. At this point, Margrethe, losing the one thing that she loved the most in her life, her daughter, brought her to a point of reckless abandonment. It also brought her to a point of complete desperation, of constantly trying to make enough money to try with any possible way to pay whoever she had to pay in the court system to get her daughter back. So in 1905, Margrethe decided to move to Paris, France. This time I would love if I could be a time traveler and go back in history. I think this time of Paris, France, right before World War One, would be one of the time periods that I would love to explore. The arts, it was like this mini renaissance of sorts. The arts were exploding in France. There was this Bohemian atmosphere. There was education explosion in France. We're talking about things like the Moulin Rouge, which I do plan on covering the true story behind the Moulin Rouge, eventually on this channel. There's more of an acceptance, again, of this Bohemian lifestyle of sexuality. And so Margrethe decides that she is going to try her luck in Paris. When she first gets to Paris because of her love of horseback riding, she tries to do like a side act with the circus where she's this lady on a horse. And she has her in her act. She is called Lady MacLeod, which is her married name, which, of course, was seen as very distasteful from her ex-in-laws. But there was something that Margrethe hit on that she knew would allow her more money. And this was the role of exotic dancing. You see within this booming expression of artistic development, Orientalism was a fad in Europe. And I can't understand this. If you look back at the European culture, you're seeing women and men who are very stuffy and they're very laced up clothes. They're coming out of this Victorian era of conservatism. And now we look at the the Orient, the East, Indonesia, Asia, India, and these elaborate outfits that they wore that were skimpier, definitely skimpier than what was fashionably accepted in Europe at this time. Now, because Margrethe appeared to have a darker complexion, darker hair, darker eyes, she was able to fabricate this story that she was actually from the Far East, that she her story would change all the time. That's led to this mysticism over who this woman was. In one of her stories, she claimed to be this long lost Eastern princess who was raised in a very sacred cave by these priestesses who taught her the sacred dancing of the Javanese people. Other stories would slightly differ. But again, this created a persona for her. That wasn't the Margrethe zeal from small town, Netherlands, along with this new persona became a new name. And this was the very famous name Matahari and going forth in the story, I will be calling her Matahari and not her birth name, Margrethe. Matahari meant the eye of the day in this new, new woman, this character that she played became the hottest, sexiest ticket in town. She has been described by historians as the Madonna of her day. Now, yes, for somebody who was trained in Javanese dancing would know right away that Matahari was not raised with this, that this was a very amateur attempt at Javanese dancing. Her technical skills were not on par with the technical skills of women who were raised in this culture. But she was able to pull people in with sex appeal. She would wear these beautiful ornate costumes sprinkled in diamonds and over the course of her dancing, she would slowly take one piece of clothing off at a time. So as it's been said, she is the woman who invented the striptease. At the end of the dance, she would notoriously be bucknaked for a split second. This lust, this was more than just prostitution. This was an actual art form of seduction and eroticism. Now, because of Matahari's background, because she was educated, because she could speak multiple language, because she did have experience with the upper crust of European society. She was able to slip quite easily into the role of a courtesan. A courtesan is like a sex worker, a prostitute, except for. Upper class people, you could see them as mostly escort. Some of these courtesans never slept with their patrons, but would just escort and be their dates at big, powerful events. Usually these women, again, were really good at conversation and they had an education and so the ticket price for these women was typically very high. Now, again, the rumor has been that Matahari slipped into this role because she was a sex-craved woman, a very, very calculated, thin fatale of European society. In letters, we see that she wrote to her family, to her cousins. She actually didn't even enjoy sex. In one letter specifically, she says that she had not been able to enjoy sex since her the days with her husband, the amount of abuse and rape that happened to her meant that every time she felt the need to sleep with a patron, it was her literally putting on an act. And maybe that is partially why she had to create a whole new character to play. Maybe this was a form of disassociation. Maybe her trauma was so intense from her abusive marriage and the trauma that led up to her abusive marriage, including the headmaster who raped her. And then she got blamed for and her father abandoning her, made her have to innocent disassociate in order to survive. We also can look at it this way that Matahari had been so abused by men in the past that she decided to take the power into her own hands. And if she was going to be known for her beautiful looks and her sensuality, then she was going to own it and make money at doing that. And so in that respect, as a woman myself, I have to admire her. I have to admire her bravery. I have to admire her ability to do what needs to be done in order to not only survive herself, but do whatever she can to try with all her might to get her daughter back. It is my belief through letters that she wrote that perhaps she had no intention of being this exotic dancer performing artist celebrity for the rest of her life, but instead was trying to work her way into high society and make the money specifically for her daughter, for her mother's love for her daughter. In a sense, she was spreading her legs to do what she could to get that child back and what woman can't relate to that. Pretty soon, Matahari became so famous and so popular that she was traveling all over Europe doing shows. And again, it didn't it didn't hurt that she could speak all the languages. And she ended up having patrons and lovers and all all over the European continent, high, high ranking politicians, high ranking military men, businessmen. She definitely was a woman who had connections. Due to her connections with these high ranking politicians and the job that she was doing, she did also become somewhat of a socialite. So it wasn't just the men, the powerful men that she had influence over. It was also women that she had influence over too. In fact, something I found very, very interesting in my research. And of course, me, being a modern woman born in 1983 myself, when I think of going to shows, I am very heterosexual. I love men. I crave men. I love the male body. I love to feel a man's arms around me. I am not in the slightest sense bisexual. I do not. I can appreciate a beautiful woman, but I am not sexually attracted to women, nor do I want to see another woman's body naked. Man's body, yeah, but not a woman's body. So when I started to research her shows, now, again, Marahari had built up such a huge reputation that she wasn't just performing in little cafes, she was performing in big theaters around the world. And her performance was so art based with Javanese dancing that even women would come and watch this show just to see the artistic expression. So Marahari found herself in the center of all these powerful, powerful people all over Europe, which is exactly where she wanted to be in order to get her daughter back. From 1905 to 1912, Marahari was working constantly. She was being booked and billed all over performance halls in Europe. She had her own booking agents and managers. The girl was again the Madonna of that time period. But around 1912, her career began to decline. This is because Europe was building up to World War One. Now, a bunch of people will say her work started to decline because she herself was getting older and perhaps she was gaining some weight. But listen, listen, Linda, listen, Linda, I'm 40 years old. I'm a year younger than Marahari when she was executed. And I think I look better than I've ever looked in my life. I am super proud of my body. So just because a woman is getting up there in age does not mean that she's losing her sexuality or losing her looks. And I guarantee you I would bet money on it that Marahari looked better naked than most of the women who were her age. Why? Because first of all, she obviously had some sort of comfort being naked, whether that was because she was disassociated or not. It's a whole different story. But common sense would tell you that because she was a dancer, she was exercising all the fucking time. I mean, have you ever seen a dancer's body? They're fucking incredible. So I don't really believe that propaganda for a minute. I think that's the same propaganda saying she was a sex-craved woman. Oh, she was a sex-crazed woman who then got old. No, what was happening, what happened was listen, Linda, what happened was World War One was around the corner. Marahari had to start canceling shows not because ticket sales were down, but because literally war, like literally cities were being invaded by other countries. So it's safe to say and just common sense here, like common sense. It's safe to say that if you're in a city in a country that is being invaded by another country, you're probably not going to be able to go to the theater and watch Javanese dancing. Safe to say there might be extenuating circumstances that would force these shows to be canceled for a while. Bet my bottom dollar that Marahari was not the only person in all of Europe that had their work interrupted in their financial income and stability interrupted by World War One. This would go on to be known historically as the war to end all wars, which I always found kind of ironic because literally a few decades later, we had World War Two, so obviously it didn't end all wars. But nonetheless, this was a huge, huge, huge event happening in Europe. And even though private citizens like Marahari and probably most people in these countries were not in the military and maybe not super invested into the politics of the war, obviously, it's going to affect them. Anyway, just my two cents. I just fucking want to punch men, the men out there who say, oh, no, it was because she was old and fat. No dumbass. It's because World War One was starting. Marahari would end up doing her last show on the 13th of March, 1915, which ironically is 10 years to the day that she did her first ever show. But because she wasn't able to travel and perform, she had to now rely more heavily on being a courtesan. This was literally the only way that she was going to be able to maintain her life and make money was to just strictly be a mistress and escort for high-ranking people in Europe. Now, again, Marahari is on a Dutch passport. The Netherlands stayed neutral during World War One. This meant, as luck would have it, this meant that Marahari was still able to travel into different countries who were at war with each other. She was not stopped at the border because she technically was considered from a neutral country, even though she had lived in Paris for a very long time and adapted France as her second home. She still technically was Dutch. And this is what enabled Marahari to keep up her courtesan lifestyle with all these different high-ranking people all over Europe. She had some lovers who were German and she had some lovers who were French. Oddly enough, the two countries were at war with each other. You see where I'm going with this, how they're going to scapegoat her and set her up as a pawn, as being a spy. This time, something very drastic happened in Marahari's life. Not only was she not performing anymore as an exotic dancer and just solely working as a courtesan, but she ended up falling in love. Which I find kind of cute and like hopeful because again, looking at her letters leading up to this point, the lady was jaded. And I don't blame her for being jaded. She had a rough life. So the fact that she was able to still out of the blue fall in love, I think, gives most of us hope. But this relationship would end up being one of the turning points in this story. She ended up falling in love with a guy with a guy by the name Captain Moslov. Moslov was Russian and he was only 23 years old, a 23 year old Russian pilot who was fighting with the French for World War One. Marahari would go on to say that Moslov was the love of her life. And we all know that love from time to time can make us do stupid things. In 1916, Moslov was shot and severely injured in battle. He ended up losing sight in his left eye. Moslov was hospitalized and in order for Marahari to be able to come into the hospital to see him, she had to allegedly agree to spy for France. Now, the Department of the military that allegedly made this offer to Marahari was the Demi bureau. I hope I'm saying that right. I don't speak French. But I'm sure you guys will correct me in the comment section. But nonetheless, this was a bureau and extremist group or have been now recognized as an extremist group quite like the KBG. And they put Marahari between a rock and a hard place. Again, they told her that she would not be able to see Moslov unless she agreed to spy for France. And I have to say, it's quite clever to use a courtesan as a spy. I mean, we see this with things like honeypots all the time. I mean, basically they were going to use her as a honeypot. They knew, again, Marahari was was known by everyone all over Europe. She was, again, just to put it into perspective, the Madonna of her time. They knew what her job was. They knew who her connections were. They also knew that she was a Dutch citizen. And so therefore, once again, she was going to be able to travel in and out of different countries without any type of issue because technically she was from a neutral country. The story goes that she was tasked at dancing and seducing Kaiser Wilhelm II. Kaiser Wilhelm II was the son of the proud Prince Wilhelm. And to go into detail as to who these two figures are would require a very deep dive into Germanic history. The country of Germany is not really as old as any of the other countries. It was Prussia for a while and it's just a very complex development history. But basically these were seen to be very powerful people in the ruling family of Prussia. Now, it's kind of comical. Well, it would be comical if Marahari had lost her life. The French military or this specific bureau of the French military gave a little bit too much credit to these two particular men. Basically, they were kind of more or less from what I can see in my research figureheads. Like they didn't really conduct or control much of the German military. So they wouldn't have known top secrets of Germany anyway. She was assigned a contact by the name of Captain Le Duc. And this particular person would not only be her her her contact in France, but would go on to be one of her main accusers shortly thereafter. So Marahari, as the story goes, agreed to try to get information from these two people in Germany by seducing them. After all, up into this point, she really had just used sex as a transaction anyway. And if this meant that she was going to be able to be with her, the love of her life, Captain Masloff, that she was willing to do it. Well, I'm not going to get into the complexities of everything that happened because I'm not a war expert. I'm not a war historian. War to me is very complicated. And you can look up the transcripts of all that happened to see what went wrong. But basically, she got accused of being a double agent. Now, once again, we know from all the all the paperwork that has been released, disclosed and declassification, she didn't really get much information from these two people because there was no information to get everything she got from them was basically gossip from social circles of Europe, nothing that would ever do anything to help either side of this war. But nonetheless, the French military ended up receiving coded messages. They intercepted coded messages from the Germans and they tried to decode these messages where they were formed of a spy that went by the codename H21. And according to their decoding, this H21 spy for Germany was none other than Mada Hari. So this meant she was a double agent. She was on paper working for the French, but really working for the Germans. Now that everything has been declassified, we know that this simply was not what the code said. And either somebody made a huge mistake or it was just sloppy decoding work. But there it's safe to say that Mada Hari really was not ever proven by these codes to be Agent H21. Mada Hari was arrested on the 13th of February 1917 in her room at the hotel Elyse Palace in Paris. Her trial started on the 24th of February and for three months, she was interrogated nonstop. She was taken to one of the most brutal, horrific prison camps in all of Paris. So to go from being living in the lap of luxury to being in a rat infested women's prison must have been quite a shock for Mada Hari. It is believed now that Mada Hari was simply used as a scapegoat, a pawn for the French military because at this time during the war, France was on the verge of collapsing. Morale was low and so in order to pick up morale and have a literal scapegoat, they decided to use this sensational performing artist, paint her to be a double agent and blame the pending collapse on her. They told her and told the courts that she alone was responsible for the death of 50,000 French soldiers. Mada Hari had one of the best legal attorneys that money could buy, but it really made no difference because the trial was so corrupt and so unfair. Her attorney was not allowed to cross examine witnesses, nor was he directly allowed to question witnesses in general. Defending Mada Hari was basically a fool's errand. The French military was bound and determined to pin all of this on her. And they were going to do it one way or the other. Remember, the bureau she allegedly was working for was an extremist group. And so it does, you know, extremist groups will go to extreme measures to make their point, to get what they want, to do what they feel like they need to do. Throughout this whole trial, she was most definitely labeled as a femme fatale. She was labeled as a seductress who had nothing but evil intentions against the French people. Now, there's a legend that says that Mada Hari did actually admit to being a double agent, but now we know that simply is not true. In fact, all the way up into her execution, she denied ever being a traitor to France. Very famously, she said a harlot. Yes, but a traitor. No, she was even quoted as saying, my international connections are due of my work as a dancer. Nothing else, because I really did not spy. It is terrible that I cannot defend myself. Mada Hari was found guilty of espionage and treason and was sentenced to be executed by a firing squad. She was taken to a forest outside of Paris in the very early mornings of October 15, 1917, it is said that she had a brand new outfit on for the occasion. And unlike most traitors or people who were executed for being traitors, she was not bound by chains. And it is stated that before she died, she blew a kiss to the 12 men who were tasked with killing her. Her life had been such a fight. She hadn't seen her daughter since she was a little girl. And freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. I feel like Mada Hari, in some sense, at her death, felt like this was the ultimate liberation. Her daughter would go on to pass away herself in 1919, two years after her mother's execution, her daughter passed away just like her son passed away. Her daughter passed away at 21 years old due to complications with syphilis that she had contracted from her parents. After Mada Hari was executed, no one from her family came forward to claim her body. So her body was used for medical experimentation. But to add another mysterious part of the story to our story, after Mada Hari's death and her body was donated to science, they decapitated her and they embalmed her head. They kept her embalmed head at the Museum of Anatomy in Paris. But in 2000. The employees of the museum realized her head was missing. Nobody knew where her head was. Now, we've covered some other mysteriously missing heads on this channel before, and I will link those videos, those older videos down in the description box below. But how the hell do you lose a head of someone that famous? It is believed that the head went missing in 1954 when the museum went through renovations. And it could be that could literally be the truth. I don't want to add conspiracy to where maybe there is no conspiracy. It could literally have been that her head got misplaced in the confusion of. I mean, I've lived in a renovated house before. It's hectic. It's chaos. I can absolutely see that being the case. But part of me wonders. I mean, I don't want to create conspiracy where there is no conspiracy. But is there a conspiracy here? Did somebody steal her head? It was embalm, so it probably still resembles Mata Hari, which is creepy in itself. But nonetheless, her head's missing, you guys. Mata Hari's head is missing to this day. I laugh because that makes me really uncomfortable. Now, even though there is no burial site for Mata Hari, because her body was basically chopped up and used and abused after death, there is an exhibit in a museum in Ludeword, Netherlands, her hometown, where she was the small town girl that became the Madonna of Europe. They have her exhibit now where you can go and see some of her costumes on display. You can go and see some of her letters, all that kind of stuff. So I guess in some respect, there is a place where you can kind of honor her memory. Now, as I said, just recently, all of her trial transcripts were declassified. In fact, there was a total of one thousand two hundred seventy five pages declassified by the French government. And ironically, in 2017, a hundred years post execution and the Mata Hari Foundation is a delegate of people who are trying really hard to get Mata Hari exonerated of these trader charges. Obviously, there was some some some gossip Mata Hari was doing. But with all of these papers, it really she wasn't a trader and she wasn't really a spy. Now, if you watch the mini series that was created by the Russian entertainment company, they do paint her out to be actively working as a spy. But again, I feel like that was mostly an embellishment of an already scandalous story, because I kind of have to agree with the Mata Hari Foundation. I really don't think this woman, she might have tried to do something for the French government to see her lover, but she definitely didn't double cross the French government. I don't think she was super even interested in the politics of war. After all, her her whole life had been its own war leading up to this point. I don't and for a woman who is so invested in trying to get her daughter back, I don't think she was even thinking about trying to commit espionage against France. She loved France. She loved Paris. This was her adopted second home. This is where she she basically had her headquarters war in Paris. So I just I think the Mata Hari Foundation is correct. And she needs to be exonerated of these charges, unfortunately, because it has been over a hundred years since her execution. Obviously, no one is alive still from this time. And so there will always be parts of this story that remain a bit of a mystery. Something that is kind of nice, though, in my research, I did find that there are a lot of nonprofit organizations across the world called the Mata Hari Foundations and these foundations, for the most part, are pretty much doing the same thing. They're established to help women who are in domestic abuse, women who are trying to escape prostitution. And so if anything good has come out of this story, it's that Mata Hari's name is now being used in order to try to course correct the sins of our past. Another thing I think that is so important about Mata Hari's story is that for many, many decades, she was labeled as this sex-craved, scandalous woman who lost her child. She was seen to be the uncouth of the uncouthiness of upper class society, labeled as a traitor, executed for crimes she obviously didn't commit. And I feel like for many generations, many decades, people believed the story, they believed the propaganda. It's easy to believe the propaganda when you know what somebody is doing for a living, when you see the pictures of her using her sensuality. But like most human beings, our stories are so much more complex than that than they appear to be. And I, for one, am very, very, feel very blessed and lucky to as screwed up as our court systems are here in the United States as well. We, our forefathers did get something right, that people can't be found, that people are, that people are innocent until proven guilty. This woman was guilty for just being at the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong life story. And so I'm hoping that Mata Hari's story can also be used as a realization for us as we move into this great awakening. When we see pictures of celebrities and we immediately want to judge them as bad, understanding that there might be more to the story. And the people that you label as bad might not be bad. They might be victims of their circumstances. The story of Mata Hari encourages us as human beings to have a more empathetic heart, a more compassionate heart, a heart that is ready to listen to understand, not listen to react. And a heart that is definitely opposed to vigilante violence.