She faced a firing squad at dawn, refused a blindfold, and blew her executioners a kiss. For over a century, Mata Hari has been the ultimate femme fatale, the seductress spy blamed for sending 50,000 soldiers to their deaths. But what if almost everything we think we know about her is a carefully constructed illusion?

This is the true tragedy of Margaretha Zelle, a Dutch woman who reinvented herself to survive, only to be weaponized as a scapegoat by a France collapsing under the weight of World War I. We deconstruct the myth and reveal a naive, easily duped woman who was railroaded by men needing someone to blame for their own failures.

• Her real origins: not a Javanese princess but a bankrupt hat-maker's daughter from the Netherlands trapped in an abusive marriage
• How the German military deliberately framed her by broadc ...