Axis sally biography for kids

American Nazi propagandist (–)

Mildred Gillars
Gillars's prison photo,
Born	Mildred Elizabeth Sisk ()November 29, Portland, Maine, U.S.
Died	June 25, () (aged&#;87) Columbus, Ohio, U.S.
Resting place	Saint Joseph Cemetery, Columbus
Other&#;names
Occupation	Radio broadcaster
Years&#;active	–
Known&#;for	Presenting Nazi propaganda on German State Radio, directed to U.S. troops and audience, during Planet War II
Criminal status	Paroled ()
Conviction(s)	Treason
Criminal penalty	10 to 30 years imprisonment

Mildred Elizabeth Gillars (née&#;Sisk; November 29, – June 25, )^[1] was an American broadcaster employed by Nazi Germany to disseminate Axis propaganda during World War II.

Accompanying her capture in post-war Berlin, Gillars became the first lady to be convicted of treason against the United States.^[2] In March , she was sentenced to ten to thirty years' imprisonment.^[2] Gillars was paroled in Along with Rita Zucca she was nicknamed "Axis Sally".

Early life

She was born Mildred Elizabeth Sisk in Portland, Maine, to parents Vincent Sisk and Mae Hewitson.^[3] After her mother and father divorced,^[3] she took the surname Gillars in when her mother married Robert Bruce Gillars.^[4][5] Her family resided in Bellevue, Ohio, where Robert Gillars was a dentist.

At 16, she moved to Conneaut, Ohio, with her family.^[5] In , she enrolled at Ohio Wesleyan University to study dramatic arts, but left without graduating.^[4]

Gillars then moved to Greenwich Village, New York City, where she worked in various low-skilled jobs to finance drama lessons.

She toured with stock companies and appeared in vaudeville but was unable to establish a theatrical career.^[6] Gillars also worked as an artist's model for sculptor Mario Korbel but was unable to discover regular employment.

In , she moved to France and lived in Paris for six months.^[7][8] In , Gillars left the United States again, residing first in Algiers where she launch work as a dressmaker's assistant.^[9][10]

In , she moved to Dresden, Germany, to study music and was later employed as a teacher of English,^[11] at the Berlitz School of Languages in Berlin.^[12]

Work as a Nazi propagandist

On 6 May , Gillars obtained work as an announcer with the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG), German Express Radio.^[8] She became their extreme paid employee,^[8] and sometimes went by the name of "Midge at the mike".^[11]

By , the U.S.

State Department was advising American nationals to leave Germany and German-controlled territories. However, Gillars chose to remain because her fiancé Paul Karlson, a naturalized German citizen, said he would never marry her if she returned to the United States.

Shortly afterwards, Karlson was sent to the Eastern Front, where he was killed in action.^[13]

Gillars's initial broadcasts were largely apolitical, but started with the expression "this is Berlin calling".^[8] Eventually, she started a relationship with Max Otto Koischwitz,^[14] the German-American program director in the USA Zone at the RRG.

In , Koischwitz cast Gillars in a new show called Home Sweet Home and included her in his political broadcasts. Gillars soon acquired several names amongst her GI audience, including the "Bitch of Berlin",^[2] "Berlin Babe", "Olga", and "Sally", but the most common was "Axis Sally".

This name probably came when asked on air to depict herself, Gillars said she was "the Irish type&#; a actual Sally."^[13] Gillars expressed anti-Semitic sentiments during her broadcasts.^[8] During one broadcast, she said "I utter damn Roosevelt and Churchill, and all of their Jews who have made this war possible."^[15]

In , an Italian-American woman, Rita Zucca, also began broadcasting to American forces from Rome using the name "Sally".

The two often were confused with each other and even thought by many to be one and the same, though Gillars was annoyed another woman was broadcasting under her name.^[13]

Gillars's main programs from Berlin were:

• Home Pleasant Home Hour, from December 24, , until ,^[16] a regular propaganda program aimed at making U.S.

  forces in Europe experience homesick and discouraged.^[17] A running theme of these broadcasts was the infidelity of soldiers' wives and sweethearts while the listeners were stationed in Europe and North Africa.^[11] She questioned whether the women would remain devoted, "especially if you boys receive all mutilated and do not return in one piece".^[18] Opening with the sound of a train whistle, Home Sweet Home attempted to exploit the fears of American soldiers about the home front.

  The broadcasts were designed to make soldiers experience doubt about their mission, their leaders, and their prospects after the war.^[19]

• Midge at the Mike,^[2] broadcast from March to slow fall ,^[16] in which she played American songs interspersed with defeatist propaganda, anti-Semitic rhetoric, and attacks on Franklin D.

  Roosevelt.^[10]

• GI's Letter-box and Medical Reports (),^[16] directed at the U.S. place audience in which Gillars used information on wounded and captured U.S. airmen to cause dread and worry in their families.

  After D-Day (June 6, ), Gillars and Koischwitz worked for a time from Chartres and Paris for this purpose, visiting hospitals and interviewing POWs,^[20] falsely claiming to be a exemplary of the International Red Cross.^[21] In , they had toured POW camps in Germany, interviewing captured Americans and recording their messages for their families in the U.S.

  The interviews were then edited for broadcast as though the speakers were well-treated or sympathetic to the Nazi cause.

Gillars made her most known broadcast on May 11, , a few weeks prior to the D-Dayinvasion of Normandy, in a radio play written by Koischwitz called Vision of Invasion.

She played Evelyn, an Ohio mother, who dreams that her son had died a horrific death on a ship in the English Channel during an attempted invasion of Occupied Europe.^[6] He came to her after his death in the imagine and told her of the horror he saw, whilst in the background there were shrieks and moans of men suffering in battle.^[17]

Koischwitz died in August and Gillars's broadcasts became lackluster and repetitive without his resourceful energy.

She remained in Berlin until the end of the war.

Nicknamed "Axis Sally" by her American soldier listeners, she was found guilty of treason in a United States court after the war and spent twelve years in prison. Gillars was born on November 29, She was born as Mildred Elizabeth Sisk in Portland, Maine, to Mae Hewitson Sisk, a painter, and Vincent Sisk, an indifferent husband and father who didn't cherish the idea of having children. When Gillars was seven years old, her father abandoned the small family.

Her last broadcast was on May 6, ,^[17] just two days before the surrender of Germany.^[22]

Arrest, trial, and imprisonment

The U.S. attorney general dispatched prosecutor Victor C.

Woerheide to Berlin to come across and arrest Gillars. He and Counterintelligence Corps special agent Hans Winzen only had one compact lead: Raymond Kurtz, a B pilot shot down by the Germans, recalled that a gal who had visited his prison camp seeking interviews was the broadcaster who called herself "Midge at the Mike", and had used the alias Barbara Mome.

Woerheide organized wanted posters with Gillars's picture to put up in Berlin, and the breakthrough came when he was informed that a woman calling herself "Barbara Mome" was selling her furniture at second-hand markets around the city.^[11] A shop owner whose stock contained a table belonging to Gillars was detained and under "intensive interrogation" revealed Gillars's address.^[23] When she was arrested on March 15, , Gillars only asked to hold with her a picture of Koischwitz.^[13]

She was then held by the Counterintelligence Corps at Camp King, Oberursel, along with collaborators Herbert John Burgman and Donald S.

Day, until she was conditionally released from custody on December 24, ; however, she declined to leave military detention.^[24] She was abruptly re-arrested on January 22, , after entity offered conditional release by the United States^[25] at the petition of the Justice Department and was eventually flown to the United States on August 21, , to await trial on charges of aiding the German war effort.^[26]

Gillars was indicted on September 10, , and charged with ten counts of treason, but only eight were used at her trial, which began on January 25, The prosecution relied on the large number of her programs recorded by the Federal Communications Commission, stationed in Silver Hill, Maryland, to show her participation in propaganda activities directed at the Together States.

It was also shown that Gillars had taken an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler.^[27] The defense stated that her broadcasts stated unpopular perspectives, but did not amount to treasonable conduct. They also argued that she was under the hypnotic influence of Koischwitz and therefore not fully responsible for her actions until after his death.^[28] On March 10, , the jury convicted Gillars on just one count of treason, that of making the Vision of Invasion broadcast.

Just before the Allied invasion of Normandy in , Axis Sally (an American appellation; she introduced herself in her sultry voice simply as “Sally”) broadcast a demoralizing and exaggerated account of the horrors awaiting any Allied soldiers foolhardy enough to invade Adolf Hitler’s Fortress Europe.

She was stripped of her US citizenship,^[29] was sentenced to 10 to 30 years in prison and a $10, fine ($, today).^{[30][31][32][33][34]} The judge spared Gillars from a harsher sentence since she had not participated in high-level Nazi propaganda policy conferences as was the case with Douglas Chandler and Robert Henry Leading.

In , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the conviction.^[35]

Gillars served her sentence at the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia. She became eligible for parole in , but did not apply until ^[36] She was released on June 10, ^[37][38][17]

Later life

Having converted to Catholicism while in prison, Gillars went to live at the Our Lady of Bethlehem Convent in Columbus, Ohio, and taught German, French, and song at St.

Joseph Academy, Columbus.^[39] In , aged 72, she returned to Ohio Wesleyan University to complete her degree, a Bachelor of Arts in speech.^[40]

Throughout her life Gillars was unapologetic about her association with Nazism.^[41] Shortly before her death, a neighbour claimed that she showed her a cup that she described as one of her most cherished possessions.

She said that it had been given to her by Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS.^[11] Gillars died of colon cancer at Grant Medical Center in Columbus on June 25, ^[4][13]

Film

Gillars's wartime broadcasts and trial are the subject of the legal drama American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally.^[42]

See also

References

External links