Notorious Women Spies Of Great War Whose Activities Were Fantastic

Southland Times, Issue 23930, 23 September 1939, Page 12

Notorious Women Spies Of Great War Whose Activities Were Fantastic

Two names stand supreme in the history of women spies in the world war. Anne Lesser was German, Mata Hari was Dutch. Both were fascinating, to men. The written accounts of their lives are fantastic mixtures of fact, legend and fabrication. Their activities, had glamour that women spies display only between the covers of mystery thriller books, writes John Durant in The New Zealand Herald.

Mata Hari was a luxuriantly lovely person whose sinuous opulence swaying in dances made her a universal favourite in Continental theatres. She had the thick, soft body of a Rubens painting, while her dusky features and slanting eyes gave her the mystery and fascination of the Orient. Mata Hari claimed she was a Hindu girl who had been brought up as a sacred dancer in a temple of the God Siva in India, and who had been carried off to Europe by a handsome British officer fascinated by her dancing. FOOLHARDY RISK Mata Hari, as a matter of fact, never was so far east as the Mediterranean entrance to the Suez. She was just a plump Dutch girl blessed with a supreme amount of animal vigour and magnetism, who used her physical hypnotism as a magnet to attract men, money and military secrets. Both France and Britain had Mata Hari “spotted” as a spy before the war broke out, but the war was almost over before they obtained enough evidence to convict and execute her. Even then they probably never would have caught her if she had not taken a foolhardy risk.

Mata Hari finally over-reached herself by the audacious manoeuvre of applying to the French secret service for spy work. Her offer was accepted,

but her movements were watched by the French intelligence department more closely than ever. She gave the French some useful information with the knowledge and consent of her superiers in Berlin. This red herring did not fool the French foxes into believing that her purpose was other than to gain access to the French army’s most confidential files. Trapped with secret messages for Berlin, Mata Hari was court-martialled and sentenced to death.

On the greensward outside Paris several thousand spectators saw the climax of her dramatic life. They saw her wave away the white bandage with which the commanding officer would have bound her eyes. They heard the rifle bolts click, the sharp word, “fire,” the rattling reverberations of rifle shots. They saw a flash of crimson against a

white throat as a crumbling body sagged to green grass. Anne Lesser, known to the French secret service as “Mme Doctuer” was the exact opposite of Mata Hari. She was a majestic beauty with the figure of a Greek goddess and the. cold, ruthless mind of a Bengal tiger on the hunt. Born of a widely-known Berlin art dealer and an Italian mother, Mme. Docteur became a secret service agent for Germany by accident. Once into the game, its thrills and dangers held an irresistible fascination for ner.

At the age of 17, while on a business trip to St. Petersburg with her father, she became acquainted with a German officer who told her he was trying to obtain possession of the plans for a new Russian gun. The blueprints were hidden in the house of a general with whom Mme. Docteur’s father was doing business. She volunteered to help the German officer and was successful . in ferreting out the plans and copying them. So great was the thrill from this adventure, that Mme. Docteur decided to make espionage her career. Coached by the German secret service training school, her keen intellect, ability to speak half a dozen different languages and nerves of ice soon made her the outstanding woman spy of the world. HANDSOME BELGIAN KILLED The only man who “out-smarted” Mme. Docteur, she killed. He was a young officer in the Belgian secret service. Perhaps it was because he was handsome, perhaps it was because he had brains. Mme. Docteur took him into her service simply because the Belgian officer enticed her with valuable information on French army movements. . , The Belgian officer made one mistake. He betrayed one of her spies on the strength of information possessed only by him and Mme. Docteur. The hairtrigger mind of Mme. Docteur did not need any blackboard to figure out who was the traitor. She called him to her room, looked into his eyes for a moment and then, without a word spoken, shot him dead. Ruthlessly, Mme. Docteur destroyed those who stood in her way. During one trip to Paris she received papers so valuable that she decided to take them to Berlin herself. He route led through Switzerland. At the border, she was stopped by a guard. She shot him with her pistol and hurried on to Berlin. Twenty-four hours later, on her way back into France, she killed a second guard who tried to stop her. The French would have been de-

lighted to send Mme. Docteur before the firing squad, but they never could catch her with incriminating evidence. Many times she barely escaped capture with papers in her possession that would have meant the death that comes to all spies caught by a warring nation. After the war, Mme. Docteur disappeared into the haven of Switzerland’s Alps, where she recently died in the seclusion of the peaks whose ice caps are never melted by the sun.