“This is Berlin calling American mothers. And I’d like to tell you, ladies, that when Berlin calls, it’s worth listening, because there’s an American girl on the microphone with a few true words for her fellow Americans back home.“.
That compatriot who broadcast during World War II from Nazi Germany was Mildred Gillars.
Their programs were not as friendly as they sounded.
The “truths” he spoke of were part of a psychological war devised by Josef Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist.
At that time, radio was the great medium for spreading messages, and it was used by both the Axis Powers – Germany, Italy and Japan – and the Allied forces.
For the Third Reich, having a voice like Gillars’s, not only pleasant in tone but with a familiar Midwestern accent, was ideal.
So their programs, designed to demoralize both Americans at home and soldiers on the battlefields, multiplied.
“A defeat for Germany would mean a defeat for the United States.“, Gillars said.
“Damn Roosevelt and Churchill, and all the Jews who made this war possible.“was his constant diatribe, with the US president, the British prime minister and the Jewish people always pointed out as the culprits of the conflict.
He also had special programs designed to concern ““mothers, wives and girlfriends” who had loved ones participating in the battles.
With information from German intelligence, he recounted stories of soldiers who had been captured, wounded or killed, citing specific information about their grim fate.
Sylvia Edinger of Santa Monica, California, was told that her brother’s left leg was crushed. And the family of pilot George Jones, who did not survive a fatal parachute jump, was told.
He warned that all his loved ones were going to “to lose their lives. At best, to return home crippled, useless for the rest of their lives. For whom? For Franklin D. Roosevelt and Churchill and their Jewish cohorts.“.
Other programs were designed to demoralize Americans on the front lines by belittling the purpose of the war and predicting the horrible fate that awaited them, given the strength of the enemy.
Also, with a whispering voice, He tried to sow doubts about the fidelity of his wives and girlfriends in the US.. while they were on the battlefields or how they would be received when they returned mutilated.
They would end up, he predicted, defeated, alone, and rejected.
Despite delivering daily doses of messages designed to highlight the loneliness, fatigue and futility of fighting Germany, Gillars was popular with the audiences he targeted.
Because?
Notes and data
“In Europe, American troops in World War II fight two enemies: the Germans and boredom.“ noted a January 1944 article in the Saturday Evening Post magazine that helps explain the reason for Gillars’ appeal.
“Radio is one of the favourite ways to fill idle time,” he continued, revealing that “one of the soldiers’ favourites is a girl with a sweet voice who broadcasts programmes directed at them from Radio Berlin.”
“The troops call her Axis Sally,” said U.S. Army Air Corps meteorologist Corporal Edward Van Dyne, adding: “She has a voice that oozes like honey from a big wooden spoon… All she does is swing, and swing hard!”
For soldiers in North Africa and Europe, the lure was the alluring music of big bands and nostalgic songs.
“There is nothing better for a soldier’s morale than a little swing music now and then,” stated the Saturday Evening Post.
And among the popular tunes, Axis Sally inserted doubts…
“Hi guys! I was wondering if your girls in the US are hanging around with all those 4 F’s (men unfit for military service)“.
“In faraway Berlin, Minister Goebbels thinks that Sally is rapidly undermining the morale of American soldiers.but our corporal knows that the effect is exactly the opposite,” the article stated.
For the troops, Gillars’ broadcasts were a diversion, and his words a source of joke.
However, musical programs for soldiers were not the only ones that gained audiences, nor were they always so cheerful.
After D-Day in 1944, “GI’s Letter Box and Medical Reports“which revolved around prisoners of war, with their real names, individual service numbers, and the status of wounded soldiers.
Gillars and her lover, Dr. Max Otto Koischwitz, posed as workers for the International Red Cross and gave guided tours of prisoner-of-war camps, Norman Cox recounts on Radio Berlin Calling.
Handing out cigarettes and smiles, they filmed the prisoners after telling them their interviews would be broadcast back to their homes.
To reassure their families and friends, prisoners often claimed to be better off than they were, and in any case Gillars and Koischwitz edited their words to give the impression that the soldiers were agreeing with Nazi propaganda.
Relatives of captured soldiers, eager to learn anything about them, regularly listened to the programme.
But, How did an American raised in Ohio become a spokesperson for the Nazis?
Shooting Star
In the 1920s, Gillars was an aspiring actress who, after trying her luck in New York, only managed to find success as a chorus girl on Broadway.
She dyed her black hair platinum blonde and left with a boyfriend for North Africa, with plans to reach Europe.
He ended up in Germany in 1934 teaching English. Adolf Hitler had just come to power.
When war broke out in 1939, Gillard decided to stay with her fiancé, a naturalized German citizen, despite the State Department’s advice to American citizens to return home.
The following year, Gillars began working for German State Radio as a presenter.
Her fiancé died on the Eastern Front, But she soon became involved with Koischwitz, who was married, had been a German teacher in New York, and was then working at the German Foreign Ministry.
When Koischwitz was put in charge of Nazi radio broadcasts to American troops, he brought his mistress to work with him.
Gillars not only hosted radio shows but also plays that Koischwitz wrote for her.
With the microphone of the Third Reich, when radio was powerful, The frustrated actress enjoyed the success she had longed for, and enjoyed prestige, fame, a good salary and a comfortable life.
But when Berlin collapsed in April 1945, Gillars’ career came to an end.
His last broadcast was on May 6, 1945, when he left the radio station through the back door as Red Army soldiers were entering the front, according to his testimony at his postwar trial.
He adopted a false name and blended in with the masses of displaced people after the war, but that was not enough to fool the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps.
She was captured in 1946 and held in an internment camp for the next two and a half years, until she was taken to her homeland to face charges of treason.
Treacherous
At a news conference before her trial, Gillards was defiant.
“My conscience is clear and I have nothing to hide. When I came to Germany in 1934, I had never heard of Hitler. I still don’t know anything about politics. I am an artist.”
Asked about the possibility of facing the death penalty if found guilty, she replied resignedly:
“I have always loved to travel, in search of new adventures, and I believe that death can be the most exciting adventure of all.“.
The trial began in Washington in September 1948.
Gillards entered the courtroom in heels, a fur coat and heavy makeup, as if she were arriving at a Hollywood movie premiere.
He was 48 years old and, despite his efforts, journalists wrote that he was clearly under the strain of facing eight charges of treason.
He pleaded not guilty.
For seven weeks, jurors listened to her broadcasts and her testimony, including her love for Koischwitz, the man who she says persuaded her to become Axis Sally.
“I believe that people are the result of other human beings who have been in their lives.
“And I think that without Professor Koischwitz’s presence in my life, I would not be fighting for my life today.
“And I guess it’s very difficult for a person who’s never been in that position to be able to appreciate it. You couldn’t go around saying I don’t want to do this and I don’t want to do that.”
But his downfall was not his weekly programmes, but a play written by Koischwitz called “Invasion Vision”.
Gillard played an American mother whose son dies when their Allied ship sinks in the English Channel. The prosecution called it an act of treason..
She denied having betrayed her country, despite having sworn loyalty to Hitler.
Finally, in March 1949, after 29 hours of deliberation, the jury found her guilty.
The Nazi radio propagandist became the first woman in modern history to be convicted of treason.
She faced the maximum penalty of death, but was sentenced to between 10 and 30 years in prison.
Upon her release after 12 years, she spoke to reporters.
“When I made the programs, I thought I was doing the right thingWould I do it again? Certainly, with the same knowledge and the same circumstances.
“After all, I was a professional broadcaster in Germany when the US entered the war. It was my job.
“I was also very much in love with a German man and hoped to marry him. At that time, I felt that I could love America and continue to serve the Berlin Broadcasting Corporation.”
After a decade behind bars, she remained unapologetic. But was she bitter?
“I wouldn’t exactly say bitter. I’m just not the kind of person who gets bitter. If I were, my bitterness at the injustice and perjury I’ve suffered would have destroyed me already.”
Mildred Gillard He spent the last years of his life teaching I’m in an American convent and died in 1988.
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