Prior to World War II, American women largely played traditional roles in society such as homemakers, secretaries, or shopgirls. When war broke out, American women quickly mobilized in many capacities that proved to be vital to the Allies’ victory. Some entered industries where their work in manufacturing supplied both American forces as well as the countries receiving goods through the Lend-Lease program. Nurses served bravely in all theaters of the war. Women showed their ability in military capacities such as the WASPs and WAVEs. Thousands of women were recruited as cryptographers - their work critical to staving off enemy plans.
But one American girl, born in Maine and raised in Iowa, headed to Europe to spread propaganda for Nazi Germany resulting in her later becoming the first woman convicted of treason against the United States.
When Mildred “Midge” Gillars came of age, she pursued an interest in drama at Ohio Wesleyan University but failed to earn her degree. After spending six months in Paris with her mother in 1929, she headed to New York City in an unsuccessful attempt to become an actress. Five years later, she headed to Dresden, Germany, where she studied music and taught English language lessons.
In 1940, strapped for money and dissatisfied that English teachers were paid less than Russian teachers, Gillars accepted a job with the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (German State Radio). By 1941, the US State Department, responding to the growing winds of war, urged American nationals to return home. However, Gillars did not heed that request, and instead, took an oath of allegiance to Hitler.
There are conflicting reports from sources about Gillar’s personal life at this time. Some say she stayed in Germany because she was engaged to a man named Paul Karlson, a naturalized German, who warned her that he would not marry her if she returned home. Other sources claim that she fell in love with Max Otto Koischwitz, the program director of the USA zone at RRG who cast her in a new show called “Home Sweet Home” that ran from late December 1942 through the end of the war.
“Home Sweet Home” was a bursting fountain of Nazi Propaganda heard anytime between 8pm and 2am all over Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the United States. The messages, delivered between the day’s most popular swing music, were intended to make American GIs more homesick, more worried that their wives and girlfriends were being unfaithful, and more scared about their own fates. Gillars once described herself on air as “the Irish type… a real Sally” which could have been the origin of her nickname “Axis Sally.” Her messages earned her another nickname from GIs – the “Bitch of Berlin.”
Axis Sally was vile.
According to “The Anatomy of a Lie: Exploring the Propaganda of Axis Sally” by Matt Stevenson, Gillars frequently spewed hate against the Jews and the United States, singling out FDR who she hated in rants. In one she said, “Damn Roosevelt! Damn Churchill. Damn all Jews who made this war possible. I love America, but I do not love Roosevelt and all his kike boyfriends.”
She also predicted doom for the GIs – her silky, sultry voice making the words all the more chilling. According to Stevenson’s article, a month before D-Day, she delivered a radio play written by Koischwitz titled “Vision of Invasion.” In it, Gillars played an American mother whose son, killed in the English Channel comes to her in a dream to describe his death aboard a burning ship. Her words were accompanied by an announcer who boomed, “The D of D-Day stands for doom…disaster…death…defeat…Dunkirk or Dieppe.”
Stephen Ambrose’s excellent book “D-Day,” contained another horrible example of her evil when the author quoted Sally as saying just before the invasion “Good Evening, 82nd Airborne Division. Tomorrow morning the blood from your guts will grease the wheels on our tanks.” According to Ambrose, many men were shaken by her words, but others reassured them that she had been saying similar things for weeks.
Her screeds were intended to undermine the morale of American GI’s serving on the frontlines, but instead, Gillars’ intended audience found her to be somewhat of a joke. U.S. Army Air Corps weatherman Corporal Edward Van Dyne wrote into the Saturday Evening Post in January 1944, saying, “Sal is a dandy…She plays nothing but swing – and good swing! She has a voice that oozes like honey out of a big wooden spoon. ‘Homesick, soldier? Throw down your gun and go back to the good old USA.’ Dr. Goebbels no doubt believed that Sally is rapidly undermining the morale of the American doughboy. I think the effect is directly opposite. We get an enormous bang out of her. We love her. Well, Sally, we’ll be in Berlin soon, with a great big hug for you, if you have any kisses left!”
It was later revealed that Gillars frequently posed as an International Red Cross worker. She visited hospitals to interview American POWs, telling them it was to let their families know they were alive and well. Instead, she altered the recordings to sow doubt for the families, saying “Well I suppose he’ll get along all right,” she would say. “The doctors don’t seem…I don’t know… only time will tell, you see.”
When the war ended, Gillars lived in hiding for a time, blending in with the throngs of displaced people in occupied Germany. Eventually she was found roaming and penniless near Frankfurt, where she had traveled to renew a pass allowing her to live in the French Zone of Berlin. She was arrested and returned to the United States to face trial for treason. She was held and tried on eight counts in Washington D.C. from January to March 1949.
The prosecutor, John Kelley, argued that Gillars had signed an oath of allegiance to Nazi Germany after taking the job at Radio Berlin. He brought witnesses to the stand, (such as Gilbert Lee Hansford of the 29th Infantry Division who had lost a leg in the Normandy invasion,) to prove she had posed illegally as a Red Cross worker. Kelley forcefully stated that Gillars repeatedly and sadistically attacked American morale via her radio show – every episode of which had been dutifully recorded and presented as evidence at the trial.
The trial was a bit of a spectacle, with the New York Times reporting that spectators were fascinated by Gillars’ cool demeanor, tight-fitting black dress, and deep tan. She frequently cried on the witness stand, throwing her lover under the bus and blaming him for forcing her to do the broadcasts.
The jury deliberated mightily, eventually acquitting her on seven of the eight counts. However, they did find her guilty of one that involved the broadcast of the infamous “Vision of Invasion” play. She was sentenced to ten to thirty years in prison plus a $10,000 fine. She was placed in the Federal Women’s Reformatory in Alderson, West Virginia, where she remained until she applied for and was granted parole on June 10, 1961.
Remarkably, she was eligible to apply for parole two years earlier at the age of 58 but declined. Sources claim she was afraid of the potential for physical harm in the States and the chance that she might be deported to Germany. Penniless, and without a job, she had nowhere to go.
During her incarceration, Gillars converted to Catholicism and after her release, the church arranged for her to teach French and German, piano, and choral music to young nuns at a small convent in Ohio. Eventually, she was granted Social Security and Medicare benefits. At age 74, she was on her own for the first time since her arrest, and filled her tiny apartment with books and art. According to her biographer Richard Lucas, she continued to tutor inner-city children as well as nearby high school students. He said, “In her final role, she was respected, needed, valued, [and] even beloved.”
Mildred died in 1988 at 87 years of age, a hospital charity case. Most of her neighbors had no idea of her evil past doings and found out only as reporters came out of the woodwork upon her death.
Lucas found Axis Sally’s story fascinating and pondered how different things might have played out for her had she been part of today’s media landscape rife with cancellation and redemption stories. He guessed that “she would go through a period of two or three years where she’d be considered persona non grata, she’d do her apology, hire a PR firm that would help her rehabilitate her career, and she’d be back.”
In a chilling final thought, Lucas added, “When I see some of these people who were [shunned] 15 years ago and are back at it…it almost feels like her ghost.”
As the 90th Infantry Division was heading north into the Battle of the Bulge, its troops were instructed to trade insignia with another division, it might have been the 28th Infantry Division, which was badly battered and was being withdrawn from the Bulge. This was so that the Germans would be caught off guard and not know they were being hit with a fresh division. No sooner had the exchange of insignia been made, then Axis Sally came on the radio and welcomed the 90th Infantry Division. It's a shame she never wrote a book; she would have been a hit at re-enactments like the Reading World War 2 Weekend.