Mata Hari and Josephine Baker: Two Women, Two Dancers, Two Espionage Legends
- Debra Palmen
- Jul 1
- 9 min read

In movies and books, espionage is most often depicted as the domain of shadowy men passing secrets under the cover of darkness. Yet two women, Mata Hari and Josephine Baker, rose to prominence during World War I and II, not only for their shadowy operations but for their larger-than-life personas, their beauty, and the international fame they garnered as entertainers. While their paths crossed the world of espionage, their methods, motivations, and impacts were strikingly different. One was depicted as a high-profile symbol of seduction and betrayal; the other, as a courageous heroine who used her fame to fight fascism.
Mata Hari, born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in the Netherlands in 1876, was not born into glamour. Her early life was marked by hardship: her once-wealthy family faced financial ruin, and after an ill-fated marriage to an uptight and pompous Dutch colonial officer stationed in Java, she returned to Europe disillusioned and alone. But reinvention came easily to her. By 1905, she had taken on the persona of Mata Hari, Eye of the Day in Malay, and debuted in Paris as a Javanese temple dancer from the East Indies. Her performances were erotic, slow-burning, and rich in orientalist fantasy, featuring silk veils and suggestive gestures that gradually revealed her near-nude figure, adorned in little more than elaborate jewellery.
The truth was far more pedestrian. Hari had never trained in sacred dance traditions. She was a self-made illusion, bursting onto the stage just in time to take advantage of Europe's growing fascination with the exotic East. Her artistry lay in how convincingly she sold the act, and she certainly knew how to shimmy and wriggle her assets. Paris was titillated and spellbound. Soon, she was not only dancing at the Musée Guimet and private salons, but entertaining lovers from among the political and military elite. Her audience quickly expanded to Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid, which at the time were among the capitals of culture.

When World War I broke out, Hari’s cosmopolitan lifestyle and neutral Dutch citizenship allowed her the rare privilege of mobility across borders. But that freedom attracted attention. In 1916, she was approached by the German Consul in Amsterdam, and recruited into German intelligence. Although there’s no evidence she ever provided anything beyond casual gossip, she was code-named Agent H-21 and paid for her information.
But Hari received no training in espionage tradecraft, and she wasn’t very good at being subtle and discreet. She also seemed to regard her situation as little more than an exciting diversion. Today, you’d say she’d watched too many Bond movies. The French were on to her almost immediately, through intercepted German telegrams. So they also recruited her, intending she would act as a double agent. They tasked her with gaining intelligence from the German military in Spain. But she extracted no significant information, and it quickly became clear that both sides considered her to be an unreliable agent. Despite being right in the middle of the espionage games of both the French and Germans, her work proved to be ineffective and symbolic.

Whether she intended to serve one side, both, or simply continue a luxurious, glamorous lifestyle is still debated. What we do know is that, with zero training provided by either side, she had no real understanding of how to navigate the world of espionage. Her so-called “network” was little more than a carousel of lovers - military officers, diplomats, aristocrats, all of whom she artlessly questioned for tidbits of information, but more often just entertained. She expressed no firm support for either side of the war and appeared to view espionage as game rather than a cause. She seemed genuinely naïve to the fact that she was dealing with hard men who would think nothing of killing her.
And her lack of analytical skills and strategic rigor did prove fatal. Today, some historians argue that the German telegrams intercepted by the French were likely planted by the Germans themselves, to see whether their telegraphic communications were compromised. They added juicy but false information about Agent H-21 passing them valuable information about French military’s plans and personnel. If the French acted on that information, the Germans would know their communications network had been breached.

Without directly naming Hari, the telegrams gave sufficient information to identify her. The Germans had no reason to protect her, especially as it had become apparent she was also working for the French (remember, she wasn’t very good at this), and wasn’t involved in major, high-stakes operations directly affecting the outcome of battles or strategic decisions. Instead, her activities centred on gathering minor or fragmented pieces of information, usually as gossip and observations from her interactions with military and diplomatic figures. Her information was low-level at best, so she was considered expendable. And the German ploy worked. The French were intercepting German telegrams, and that was revealed when those discussing Agent H-21 directly led to Hari’s arrest.
Although French intelligence confirmed she was working for them as a double-agent, the French military was desperate for a scapegoat during a time of low morale and heavy casualties. They used the intercepted telegrams as the perfect excuse for a widely publicized trial, and it was a media circus. The prosecution barely touched on her “spying” but focused on her sensuality, her many lovers, and her exotic persona. She was painted as an expert seductress who used pillow talk to obtain war secrets and whose activities had caused the death of 50,000 French soldiers.
The evidence against her was minimal, goodness knows where they got the enormous casualty figure from, and nothing happened to the men who apparently gave her all this top secret and highly damaging information. Some historians argue her prosecution was actually a means to divert attention from the French’s military incompetence at a time of national despair. And that does seem to be a reasonable supposition. Mata Hari appeared to be condemned less for espionage than for embodying the seductive, dangerous woman, the archetypal femme fatale, when France needed someone to blame for its military failures. She was executed by firing squad in 1917.

In contrast to Mata Hari’s opportunistic and chaotic involvement in espionage, Josephine Baker’s entry into the world of spying was driven by a deep sense of purpose and a well-structured, strategic approach. Born in 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri, Baker grew up in poverty and endured the considerable racism of the American South before fleeing America and catapulting to fame as a dancer and singer in Paris. The French loved her, but she also became an international sensation, known for her sultry performances and exotic charm.
Baker ditched America entirely and adopted France as her home, so when World War II broke out, she was in the middle of the European theatre of conflict. But unlike Mata Hari, who had been drawn into espionage out of financial desperation, Baker’s motivations were driven by her ideological commitment. She was fiercely devoted to France, a country that had given her so much and which she deeply loved, and she was passionate about fighting the rise of fascism.
Her involvement with the French Resistance began in 1940, shortly after the German occupation of France. She was recruited into the Deuxième Bureau, France’s military intelligence agency, who recognized her position to gather vital intelligence. She then used her fame to gain access to key figures in the German occupation and neutral diplomats in Portugal and Spain. Unlike Mata Hari, who had been largely ineffective in her role as a spy, Baker quickly understood the importance of subtlety and direct action.

She used her concert tours to countries like Spain and Portugal as cover for espionage missions. At embassy receptions and diplomatic gatherings, she mingled with Axis officials and winkled out a surprising amount of military information through apparently casual conversations. She recorded her observations using invisible ink on sheet music, which she sent back to France via trusted couriers. She was smart and far better focused than Mata Hari at extracting exactly the right bits of intelligence - concerning German troop movements, naval logistics, and political allegiances, and the information she provided was actionable by the French.
In 1941, during a critical period when the Resistance was starved for intelligence, Baker travelled from Morocco to Vichy France in search of useful information. By then, she was under suspicion by the Germans and therefore under close surveillance, so she concealed sensitive documents, including lists of Nazi collaborators and messages from Allied sympathizers, by sewing them into her bra and knickers, as well as again resorting to invisible ink on musical scores. Despite being seriously ill with peritonitis, she insisted on transporting the materials herself – by simply wearing her undies. She figured that no gentleman searching her would ever presume to look inside her underwear, especially while she was in it.

But the Spanish border guards were no gentlemen. As she crossed from Spain into France, her luggage was thoroughly searched, and it was beginning to look like she could be personally searched and even ordered to disrobe. What could she do?
She did what any of us would do – she released Chiquita, her pet cheetah, from her leash. Chiquita was actually a sweetheart, well used to travelling with Baker, and very friendly. But the guards didn’t know that. Absolute chaos ensued, with grown men shrieking, tables crashing over, and guards scrambling over each other to escape in all directions. Baker was bundled through the border crossing, taking with her the crucial documents. It was a close call, but the information she provided was pivotal in reconnecting isolated French cells with Free French forces in London.
Baker also turned her estate in the Dordogne into a safe house for Resistance members, Allied pilots, and Jewish refugees. She supplied them with food, money, and shelter, often hiding them in secret rooms and moving them through underground routes. Her chateau became both a sanctuary and a communications hub, staffed with loyal workers who were also active in the Resistance. She financed much of this effort from her own savings, and through selling personal jewellery and property, to keep the network operational.

Her contributions did not go unnoticed. After the war, in recognition of her service, General Charles de Gaulle awarded her the Croix de Guerre and the Medal of the Resistance, and she was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. But for Baker, her true reward was the liberation of France from Nazi tyranny - a cause for which she had repeatedly put her life at risk.
While both women were involved in espionage, their roles could not have been more different. Mata Hari was pretty, lively, and theatrical. In turn-of-the-century Europe, her performances in her fabricated persona of a Javanese temple dancer initially caused a sensation. She relied on her allure and her ability to infiltrate high-society circles to gather intelligence, but over time the novelty of her performances wore thin, the invitations and performances became fewer, and her lack of money made her vulnerable to manipulation. Although she wasn’t stupid, she was clearly out of her depth in the world of espionage, and received no support or training from her so-called handlers. So her activities were disorganized and opportunistic, and much of the information she provided was vague, unverified, and insignificant.
In her tragic demise, Hari was unjustly portrayed as a femme fatale who used seduction as a weapon to steal important French secrets. But that just wasn’t true. Today, we can see that the actions taken against her reflected the broader societal attitudes towards women at the time, exploited by the French military wanting to scapegoat an easy target - a foreign woman who defied conventional expectations.

Josephine Baker, on the other hand, performed as an exotic dancer two decades later, when society’s attitudes had relaxed somewhat, especially in France, so she didn’t face the same moral condemnation Mata Hari ultimately encountered.
Plus, Baker approached the business of espionage with clarity and discipline rather than as a game. Her work was rooted in a firm ideological commitment to defeat fascism and support her adopted country of France. She was organized, very careful and discreet in gathering information from her social interactions. She became an expert at smuggling documents, and her actions were supported by brave souls from the French Resistance who risked their lives to help her – just as she risked hers to help them. While both women played on the glamour and charisma that made them famous, Baker’s dedication to the cause and her meticulous planning contrast with the haphazard, superficial involvement of Mata Hari.

In the end, while both women are remembered as spies, their legacies are shaped by their vastly different approaches to espionage. However unfairly, Mata Hari became a cautionary tale of a woman caught between warring powers, a symbol of seduction and betrayal. Josephine Baker emerged as a symbol of bravery, strategic brilliance, and unwavering commitment to the fight for freedom. Both women danced on dangerous stages, but only one understood the choreography of resistance well enough to survive it, and triumph.
It's said that both women featured on the cover of The Dance magazine at some point in the 1920s and 30s, but that’s not something I’ve been able to verify. But a number of their famous contemporaries, including Helen MacFadden and Nitza Vernille, did feature on some beautiful and now rare covers. I'll write about them in another Newsletter. Meanwhile, if you’re a dancer, or you know someone who is, or you just love this art form, visit my website at www.frenchandvintage.biz/pictures-repro-magazine-covers, and you’ll find something inspiring to add to your decor that you'll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else.
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