Dreyfus
was convicted on flimsy accusations and fabricated evidence related to French
military documents being supplied to Germany.
Moran
sets out how Mata Hari was charged with espionage primarily based on intercepted
messages between Major Albert Kalle of the German Army and Secret Service and
his superiors in Germany. She has an agent number of H21 and is said to have
provided “significant” information on French military operations.
Mata
Hari had taken him to her bed in Madrid and thought he was providing her with important German
military information which she sent to her superior, Georges Ladoux, in
France.
During questioning Mata Hari states that money she received from the German government was compensation of
personal property seized by German soldiers. The French Secret Service believes it was payment
for spying on France.
The
alleged information she has provided is kept secret during the trial preventing her from effectively
defending herself against the allegations.
In
the Dreyfus case the prosecution also produced secret evidence. A dossier was
provided to the judges that was never revealed to the defence.
Both
trials are sad examples of French military justice. Dreyfus and Mata Hari were
scapegoats. Show trials were designed and run to create the illusion of
guilt to protect French Army “honour” in the Dreyfus case and deflect attention
from a faltering war effort in 1917.
It
is little surprise that each of the accused was a marginalized member of French
society. Dreyfus was a Jew at a time of significant anti-Semitism in France. Mata
Hari was a wanton woman living off the gifts of lovers.
Both
the trials of Dreyfus and Mata Hari were closed rather than open proceedings
denying scrutiny by the press and public.
In
both cases the guilty were protected by the State. In the 1890’s the Army, for
no good reason, exonerated the actual spy, Count Esterhazy. Mata Hari had no
access to military maneuvers. Her skills were in seduction and pillow talk. She
openly spoke of the numerous officers, French and German, she had bedded. Had
there been any information for her to pass on to Germany it would have come
from French officers. In the hypocrisy of the time Mata Hari, the alleged
messenger, is shot while the sources of any information in the French military
are never prosecuted.
The
effort to sacrifice Dreyfus failed but succeeded with Mata Hari.
Dreyfus
was rescued from a sentence of life in prison by the efforts of men such as
Emile Zola, author of J’Accuse, and
Georges Picquart, a French officer. Picquart, a genuine man of honour, found
and revealed crucial evidence of the cover-up. Had the Dreyfus trial occurred during a
war I believe he would have been executed before the campaign to free him could
have succeeded.
There
was neither a Zola nor a Picquart to come forward for Mata Hari. In Moran’s
book there are protests but they had no time to build as with Dreyfus.
Protesters had but a short time in Mata Hari's case. There were 17 days between the dismissal of
her appeal and her execution. Had Mata Hari’s case been in peacetime I expect she
would have been sentenced to imprisonment.
Had
there been time there would have been much to find to build a further appeal
for Mata Hari. Russell Warren Howe in a 1986 article in the Smithsonian states that
he, through personal contacts with the French Defence Ministry, gained access to much of the secret
dossier used against Mata Hari.
After
assessing the evidence he states:
After reviewing the files, this writer has come to his
own conclusions: Mata Hari made only one effort at espionage and this took
place in Madrid--for the French. She spent three afternoons with a German
military officer who fed her inaccurate information and to whom she passed
along gossip items from newspapers. She did receive money from the Germans but
there is no evidence that she gave them any information in return. None of her
actions provided evidence for eight counts of espionage. She was deliberately
framed by the Germans, who used a cipher that they knew the French had already
broken. All the German spymasters' memoirs and the official histories of German
espionage in World War I seem to be in agreement: Mata Hari never was "one
of ours.'
Howe expanded upon the article in a book, Mata Hari – The True Story.
Next year will be the 100th year
since her trial
and execution. Documents sealed for a century are due to be released. The world
can expect to see what was really gathered as evidence against Margaretha
Geertruida Zelle, best known as Mata Hari.
Had they met in real life I believe Mata Hari, drawn to officers, would have sought to seduce Dreyfus, and I believe he, a man devoted to his wife, would have refused her advances.
Had they met in real life I believe Mata Hari, drawn to officers, would have sought to seduce Dreyfus, and I believe he, a man devoted to his wife, would have refused her advances.
****
What a fascinating - and troubling - parallel you've made here, Bill. Among other things, I think it shows what happens when it's decided that someone will be a scapegoat. You make such strong points, too, about what might have happened had Mata Hari been male, or had a champion - a Zola, for instance. All of this shows, at least to me, how important it is to understand history. If we don't, it has a way of repeating itself...
ReplyDeleteMargot: Thanks for the comment. There is no justice when guilt is pre-determined. I wonder what Zola would have done had he been alive when Mata Hari was being charged and tried and convicted by the French government. I like to think he would have protested.
DeleteWho would have thought of combining these two cases? An attorney, I'm thinking.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about Mata Hari, but I do know a bit about the Dreyfus case, some of it from a fantastic movie, "The Life of Emile Zola." Paul Muni plays Zola.
The part about the injustice of Dreyfus' case plays a large part in the film. And it does portray the anti-Semitism involved in his frame-up.
There is a much-discussed book about the Dreyfus case you might want to read: An Office and a Spy by Robert Harris.
I want to read it but the description of an anti-Semitic anti-Dreyfus mob upset me, as one set of grandparents fled anti-Semitic pogroms in 1907 in Russia.
Kathy D.: Thanks for the comment. I have read An Officer and a Spy. It is an excellent book. It would be hard reading for you. I had not thought about the parallels between the cases until reading the two works of fiction.
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