Female Spies of World War I

The name Mata Hari is probably the most famous in all of espionage. She has been called the worst spy of the century, the most misunderstood and tragic espionage figure in history, and the Spy Who Never Was. Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was a poor Dutch girl who became a European celebrity and brilliantly marketed herself as a Malaysian exotic dancer with the name of Mata Hari. She was eventually accused by the French as a spy for the Germans, an accusation that has been questioned for decades. Ever since she was accused of spying, her real role in French and German espionage has been the source of numerous investigations, biographies, and scholarly studies. She said of herself that she was much better a harlot than a traitor.

As Mata Hari seemingly pretended to be a spy for monetary gain without ever searching for classified information, other women showed extraordinary courage in the war effort and were either actively engaged in real espionage or falsely accused during the war: Sarah Aaronson, Marthe McKenna, Edith Cavell, a mysterious Russian nun, and Marthe Richard.

Sarah Aaronson -

Sarah Aaronson fought against Turkish and German activity in Palestine during World War I. As a Jew she helped her brother Aaron and others run the espionage group Nili. Known as the Joan of Arc of Israel, she was able to execute numerous operations against the Turks. She abandoned a comfortable life with her family in Jaffa, Palestine when heavy fighting broke out close to her home between British troops and the Turks and Germans of the Central Powers. The Aaronsons were pro-British by family tradition and custom and became more so when they witnessed the German's cruelty in Palestine. When German officers forced the Aaronsons to give them rooms in their house, Sarah and her brother eavesdropped on conversations and passed on the information to the British by having Aaron row a boat out beyond the horizon and eventually link up with British troops. During one of these fishing trips Sarah was captured by the Turks and brutally tortured her for the names of her accomplices, which she never revealed. After several days of mistreatment she was murdered. When Aaron learned of Sarah's horrible death and courageous silence that protected him and his friends, he recruited his friends and sought out Turks, in what was now British occupied Jaffa, and used a submachine gun he borrowed from the British to seek revenge for his sister.[i]

Marthe McKenna -

Belgian Marthe Cnockaert McKenna was recruited as a spy early in the war as a young woman when the Germans over ran and ruined her Westroosebeke, Belgium village. In her memoirs, I Was a Spy, McKenna detailed her life as a real woman spy, the foreword of the book was written by an admiring Winston Churchill who wrote, "Marthe McKenna, the heroine of this account, fulfilled in every respect the conditions which make the terrible profession of a spy dignified and honourable."[ii] Working as a nurse she was able to entice secrets out of senior German officers while preserving her virtue and relating her intelligence to others spies in Belgium churches. A large house in her neighborhood was converted into a hospital where she worked with three nuns. While she worked in German hospitals, secretly enticing and conjoling war secrets from German doctors and patients, she was awarded the German Iron Cross for her humanitarian service to the German wounded and later honored with the French and Belgian Legions of Honor for her bravery in securing important military intelligence for the Alliance. For two years she worked for the British Intelligence Service as "Laura," using local churches to pass on her information to other agents.

She spoke Flemish, French, German, and English. She destroyed a telephone link between a priest and Germans that was placed behind Allied lines; arranged the murder of the German who tried to recruit her to spy on the British; found a forgotten tunnel sewer system that ran underneath a German ammo dump and helped place dynamite in a position that destroyed the dump. In her effort to dynamite the ammo dump she lost her watch bearing her initials, a mistake that lead to her capture. She was sentenced to death but because she had won the German Iron Cross her sentence was commuted to life in prison. She was in prison for two years until she was saved by the declaration of armistice. Churchill, in his capacity of Secretary of State for War, decorated her "for gallant and distinguished service in the field," in 1919 in appreciation of Great Britain.[iii]

Edith Cavell -

Edith Cavell's life had similarities to Marthe McKenna's and Mata Hari's. She was an English woman from Swardeston just south of Norwich, England. At the age of 30 she became a nurse and eventually served at the Berkendael Institute located outside of Brussels, Belgium. She became a brilliant teacher who passed the concepts of Florence Nightengale to other nurses and was honored with the title of founder of modern-day nursing. With the advent of the war the Germans took control of the institute that had become a military hospital. German soldiers allowed the British nurses to return home and replaced them with German nurses but Edith was allowed to remain in the hospital, which became a Red Cross Hospital that served all nationalities.

During a battle at Mons, Belgium some Allied soldiers became stranded behind enemy lines. Edith helped the soldiers return to their units, an act she repeated for 200 Allied soldiers. The underground operation was discovered and 35 people were arrested including Edith. A release of secret MI5 documents in May of 2002 told how Cavell was able to communicate with British authorities that her life was in danger just days before her capture by the Germans. She was told that if she cooperated the German military would not be so hard on the others arrested. She made a confession that was interpreted as an act of a spy. Of the thirty-five arrested five were sentenced to death but only two sentences were carried out, a Belgian architect's and Edith's. She was incarcerated for ten weeks and shot by a German firing squad on October 12, 1915. When news spread to England of Edith's work as a nurse who aided 200 Allied soldiers to freedom, voluntary enlistment of the English forces doubled in the next eight weeks.[iv]

The Russian Nun -

Capt. Vassilly Gerson worked as an undercover Russian agent reporting on Austrian military maneuvers for five months. His disguise was the unlikely cover of a nun who worked in a medical unit at the front lines of battle. He provided a large volume of valuable information to the Russians until the Austrians suspected a leak of intelligence and had an Austrian officer investigate the medical unit. The officer was told the most beloved and hard-working nun was Sister St. Innocent. Upon further investigation the Austrian officer found that the sister was actually a man, Capt. Gerson of the Russian army. Gerson found the same fate as Edith Cavell: execution in front of a firing squad.[v]

Marthe Richard -

On a visit to Madrid, Mata Hari took a room at the Palace Hotel and became a neighbor of a French woman spy, Marthe Richard, who was eventually decorated for her service by the French government in 1933. Marthe Richard was very successful in penetrating German circles in Spain and became the mistress to the German Naval Attaché and head of a German spy ring. In her book My Life as a Spy she relates that she realized Mata Hari was in her hotel when a maid told her that the woman next door was an English dancer named Lady MacLeod. Richard learned that the maid herself was a German agent but never realized that Mata Hari was working for the Germans probably because Mata Hari never supplied the Germans with any information.

Marthe Richard, described as probably the greatest of the women spies in France during this time, never had any idea that Mata Hari was an agent for Germany. It wasn't until after Mata Hari was arrested by the French did Richard realize Mata Hari had a relationship with German espionage. She confronted the Naval Attaché, Herr von Krohn, and accused him of working with Mata Hari but von Krohn was able to present photograph albums of all the German agents working in Spain and subsequently convinced Richard that Mata Hari was not an agent.

As biographer Waagenaar notes, German denial as to Mata Hari's involvement as an agent must be taken at face value. Major General Gempp of the German army wrote 11 years after the war that Mata Hari accomplished nothing for the German espionage service.[vi] In fact Mata Hari's visit to Madrid allowed her to create both a military and sexual liaison with the Military attaché to the German Embassy, Arnold Kalle. She met him several times in hopes she could garner information that would help in earning the million francs Ladoux had promised her. She did insignificant information about submarine fuelling at Spanish ports and plans to infiltrate Morocco with agents, but she nevertheless sent the information to Ladoux by letter.

The Demise of Mata Hari -

Arnold Kalle was manipulating Mata Hari because he knew she was a French spy and was angry that she had taken 20,000 francs from Karl Cramer six months earlier and delivered nothing. She was playing both the French and the Germans for fools. On December 13, 1916, Kalle sent a cable to Berlin concerning "agent H-21," which identified her as an agent belonging to Central Information Bureau of Cologne, knowing that the cable would be somehow intercepted by the French.[vii] The French did indeed read the entire cable at Mata Hari's trial.

On July 24, 1917, Mata Hari faced seven judges. She wore a tri-corner hat and low-cut blue blouse. At first the trial was open to the public but it was eventually closed. Most biographers agree that her future had been decided before the trial began.

"I am not French. I am a cosmopolitan," she told the court. "I have the right to cultivate any relations that may please me. The war is not a sufficient reason to stop me from being a cosmopolitan."

An appeal from the Dutch government was denied. It appeared that the recent mutinies and French defeats would be taken out on the Dutch dancer. She would be made an example of what France would do with spies. The military jury deliberated for thirty minutes before finding her guilty and sentenced her to be executed.

She faced a firing squad on October 15 at 5 a.m., at Vincennes just outside Paris and told an attending nun not to be afraid because "I'll know how to die." In her final statement in French, she wrote, " . . . if I must fall it will be with a smile of profound contempt. -- signed M.G. Zelle MacLeod."

She showed courage to the end. She was loosely tied to a tree and refused a blindfold. At 5:47 a.m., she was shot by a twelve-man firing squad. Of course legends grew around her death: that several men fainted; only a few soldiers hit their mark, the others intentionally missed; she blew a kiss at the soldiers. No one claimed the body; it was sent to a municipal hospital for dissection and eventually cremated.

Sources:

Mahoney, M.H. Women in Espionage - A Biographical Dictionary, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, California, 1993.

McKenna, Marthe, I Was a Spy, Robert McBride and Co., 1933.

[i] Mahoney, M.H. Women in Espionage - A Biographical Dictionary, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, California, 1993, pp. 3-4.

[ii] McKenna, Marthe, I Was a Spy, Robert McBride and Co., 1933, New York, p. 5.

[iii] She married Jock McKenna and wrote spy novels over a period of twenty years as well as documenting her life as a spy in her autobiographical works of I Was a Spy and Spies I Knew. Deacon, Richard. Spyclopedia, Silver Arrow, London, 1987, p. 120. She returned to her native Belgian village, Westroosebeke, where she lived with her husband next door to her mother and then eventually moved to England where she wrote her works.

[iv] When an English chaplain visited her hours before her death he found her without anxiety, " . . . she stood, her bright, gentle cheerful self, as always, quietly smiling, calm and collected." She told the chaplain she was thankful for the ten weeks of imprisonment. "This I would say, standing as I do in view of God and Eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." The chaplain had arrived with some apprehension and left exalted from the courage Cavell had given him. The Belgian architect, Phillipe Baucq who was also found guilty of aiding Allied soldiers, was shot beside Cavell. His last words were "Vive la Belgique." Cavell's last words were, "Tell my loved ones that my soul, I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country. Ryder, Rowland. Edith Cavell, Stein and Day, New York, 1975, pp. 213-223.

[v] Tribute to Edith Cavell, http://www.fallenmartyrs.com/england.htm

[vi] Waagenaar, Sam. Mata Hari - A Biography, Appleton Century, New York, 1965, pp. 171-172.

[vii] Kalle's messages read:

Kalle's first message of December 13, 1916 reads:

H-21 informs us: Princess George of Greece, Marie Bonaparte, is using her "intimate relations" with Briand [the French prime minister] to get French support for her husband's access to the Greek throne. She says Briand's enemies would welcome further defeats in the war to overthrow him. Britain has political and military control of France. French are afraid to speak up. General offensive planned for next spring.

Kalle's second message of December 25, 1916 reads:

Give H-21 3,000 francs and say that:

1. The results obtained are not satisfactory;
2. The ink which H-21 received cannot be developed by the French if the correspondence paper is treated in conformity with instructions before and after the use of invisible ink;
3. If, in spite of that, H-21 does not want to work with invisible ink, the agent should come to Switzerland and, from there, communicate his [or her, it's the same in French] address to A.