Read Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany Online
Authors: Richard Lucas
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Bisac Code 1: BIO022000, #Biography, #History
Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany (16 page)
The
Medical Reports
program was effective propaganda not only due to the details being given about the captured men but also the fact that the deliverer of the news was the woman now known to GIs throughout the European Theater as “Axis Sally.” The names were given to her by the military and occasionally the reports included the names of fliers who died in hospital. The horrible human damage of the war was described to the families of the dead and injured in grim, almost sadistic detail:
And now my second death message concerns Pilot George E. Jones. I fortunately have his service number—that may help somewhat in identifying him—it is 13022168T43. Mr. Jones was brought on the 26th of November 1943. His left upper leg had been completely crushed; he had received severe injuries to the right leg and his left hand was also totally crushed. He died on the 27th of November 1943 and this report was made out by the doctors and went through on the 28th of November. Of course, you know that… ah… among fliers the pilot is the last one to bail out, and so of course naturally the machine can be in… a terrible state by the time he gets his parachute on and is ready to make what in this case was a fatal jump. I’m sorry, very sorry, that I don’t have the address of his parents and I do hope that they will get the news soon, although perhaps it is better for them if the news is somewhat delayed.
204
Her detailed descriptions of the wounds suffered by the captured men were tinged with cynicism and bitterness toward the men who brought America into the war. Staff Sergeant Manuel Rosen of Santa Monica, California was the subject of a message to his next-of-kin—his sister Sylvia Edinger:
Miss Edinger, your brother got his left leg crushed below the knee and the right leg broken below the knee. Well, that’s pretty bad if he got both of his legs so badly wounded. Of course, the left one sounds bad where the doctors say that it was crushed below the knee. Let’s hope he won’t have to lose it, but I suppose it’s quite probable.
205
Her voice became strident and emphatic as she related the carnage she had witnessed in German hospitals and prison camps:
How many very mutilated boys have I seen and they’ve said to me… “I don’t care how I get back… just so I get back.” You see that’s the way they think now. What do you suppose they’ll think in later years when there are no jobs for cripples? That’s the question.
The reports also reflected her own bitterness toward America for the destruction that the United States had wrought in Germany:
Here is word, now, for Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania… Johnsonburg… the report is about Lieutenant William H. Kupole or Lupole, L-U-P-O-L-E, I believe it is, born on the 14th of February, 1922 in Johnsburg, Pennsylvania. Well, that was a nice little Valentine for his mother at that time. And how little did she ever dream that she’d be asked to sacrifice him for Roosevelt and his Jewish cohorts. Well, he’s going to remember the American government for the rest of his life, for his right leg had to be amputated below the knee, and the anklebone in his left leg was broken. The left leg has been placed in a walking cast, and the patient is doing exercises with an artificial limb fitted to the right leg.… Now his mother lives at 235 West Center Street, in Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania…
Well, Mrs. Lupole, you’ve seen nothing of this war. You only read Jewish propaganda in your newspaper. But if you’ve been listening to this broadcast then you know that for many weeks I went from war hospital to war hospital, from one prisoner-of-war camp to another prisoner-of-war camp in France and I saw your boys; saw the pitiful state of untold thousands of them.… Ah yes… only that is to say thousands I talk of. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them, scattered all over Europe, scattered all over the world, asked to sacrifice their youth, asked to sacrifice their future, because when they get back they will be in no state to take up a job of any consequence.
The voice of Max Otto Koischwitz, the naturalized American citizen who turned his back on his adopted country dominates her message. His ideas, poured into the ear of his lover, were dutifully repeated in unaccented English for American consumption. Lambasting the country that denied the genius of National Socialism and cast aside one of its leading scholars, she further condemns the American people:
And you people are so short-sighted. You know so little about politics, about history, about what is going on in Europe, about the great role which Germany is playing in the future of the Western Continent. Well, if you folks want to fight, to aid and abet the decline of the West, well you are certainly taking the right action. Germany has vision. Germany has culture. Germany has supplied all of Europe, to say nothing of America and other Western countries with culture. I ask you Americans. What have you done for posterity? Can you answer me? Here are the three things for which you people are known all over the world—money, jazz and Hollywood. Compare your contributions with the contributions of Germany to the world throughout the ages… and so you want to sacrifice your sons to try to destroy this great country, Germany? Folks, it is a responsibility that you should have never taken on your shoulders. It’s the blackest page in the world’s history. America should hang her head in shame.
Think it over America. Will you?
206
Who was to blame for the carnage? Even the parents of the dead and wounded soldiers bear responsibility:
Well, after all, you American parents wanted it, didn’t you? And so day after day your boys have to pile through showers of flak… thousands and thousands of feet up in the air… sometimes the ship explodes, they’re burned alive in the airplane or they bail out and only break their legs, and arms, and so on. Well, you seem to think you’ve got a grudge against Germany? You prefer perhaps the Jews? You’d like to crony around with them. You prefer Communism. You prefer Bolshevism. Well… that’s no America for me, I must say, and I’d rather die for Germany than live for one hundred years on milk and honey in the Jewish America of today.
207
At her very core, Mildred Gillars was a survivor. The notion that she would “die for Germany” rather than live in America rings false, as if it were scripted by Koischwitz—a man who had left the “milk and honey” of America for the vision and culture of the Fatherland.
The Mystery of Axis Sally
Across Sicily, Italy and France, the GIs knew the unmistakable voice of “Axis Sally.” The sobriquet came into wide use after the November 8, 1942 landing of Allied troops in North Africa. Aided by intelligence provided by the German military and its allies, Sally seemed to intuitively know the movements of US ships, transports, men and material even before they reached their destination. William Scofield, an American soldier in Italy at the time, recalled the frustration of the military men when encountering that “all-knowing” voice:
When we had been sailing several North Atlantic convoys our orders for this convoy were to go into the Mediterranean. And I recall that as we went through Gibraltar, through the strait, there were three or four Spanish fishing boats, so of course they immediately put ashore so they could relay their news to Berlin as to what was going on, which the Spaniards did all the time. And aboard our ship, we were saying “Well, wonder how long before we’re going to hear about this from ‘Axis Sally’.” And within an hour and a half or so, we’re listening to the short wave and on she came describing in detail what our convoy was like. We had just passed through Gibraltar, the types of ships, the number of ships and so forth and what the deck cargos were, so in that sense they [the broadcasts] had a very irritating role….
208
Other ex-GIs recalled similar instances. Sam Resnick, an American soldier in the 100th Infantry Division, had been dispatched to France under a shroud of secrecy. The men traveled without their insignias and identification papers in unmarked transports. No stone was left unturned to ensure that their arrival in Marseilles went undiscovered by the enemy. As the men listened to the swing music broadcast by Berlin Radio in a small French village, a voice suddenly came over the air. It was the familiar voice of Axis Sally: “The men of the 100th Infantry Division are welcome to France and I hope you have a good night’s sleep on the outskirts of the village of [
she identifies the village
] because you will need all of your strength tomorrow.”
209
As the troops advanced across Western Europe, the voice of the woman on the radio reminded the American officers that the Germans knew their positions. Whether the information was garnered from German sympathizers in Marseilles or from espionage within American ranks may never be known, but the announcements gave Axis Sally an insidious aspect to her carefully crafted mystique. Resnick remembered, “We fooled everyone, including ourselves, but not the lady on the radio, Axis Sally.”
210
As Mildred once told a surprised prisoner of war, “You see… I know everything.”
Axis Sally had become more than a radio personality. She had become a figure of almost mythic proportions and endless fascination to the servicemen. Who was this woman who claimed American origin but mouthed the Nazi line? Every soldier and sailor heard her but never saw her. She provided entertainment and music and mystery. In one broadcast on December 9, 1943, Koischwitz answered a letter from a listener about the woman who called herself Midge but they called “Sally”:
| | O.K.: | | Midge does look as gorgeous as she sounds… her hair is the blackest black imaginable… her skin is rather white; it’s the Irish type… 211 |
He then asked her to describe herself:
| | M IDGE : | | Well, ah…. I think I’m just an armful. |
| | O.K.: | | Oh, well, ah…. I prefer some figure, you know… to be a little more precise. |
| | M IDGE : | | Would you? Oh, you deal in figures… well, I hope you like my figure? 212 |
This exchange is a glimpse into the intimacy between the two as well as an example of Mildred’s dogged insistence on maintaining her mystique. She later acknowledged that she knew that she was referred to by the servicemen as Sally or Axis Sally, and determinedly sought to maintain the opacity of her image. The 43-year-old announcer was no longer the youthful showgirl who once trod the boards of Broadway’s vaudeville stages, but wanted to keep the image of a young coquette.
Avoiding direct answers about her age and physical appearance, the true nature of Axis Sally would always be left to the imagination. It also made it more difficult for American authorities to identify the woman at the microphone.
A January 1944 article in the
Saturday Evening Post
brought the name Axis Sally to the attention of millions of American civilians. An article entitled “No Other Gal Like Axis Sal,” written by an Air Force weather observer named Corporal Edward Van Dyne, described the effect that her voice had on himself and his fellow servicemen. After describing the fare offered by the BBC and the Voice of America as dry and uninteresting, he relates his happy experience listening to Axis Sally to the folks at home.
Axis Sally is a different proposition. Sally is a dandy—the sweetheart of the AEF. She plays nothing but swing, and good swing!… She has a voice that oozes like honey out of a big wooden spoon. She dwells on the home, sweetheart and mother themes: “Homesick soldier? Throw down your gun and go back to the good old U.S.A.,” she says by implication.
“Why is America still in the wrong camp?” Sally wistfully and repeatedly inquires. She sounds genuinely concerned, hurt, deeply perplexed. Sally is at a loss to understand our attitude in this war and our failure to appreciate Hitler and his good works.
Sally’s goo is spiced neatly with little dabs of menace, though. One of her favorite routines is to paint a warm, glowing picture of a little nest in the United States that might be yours; of the waiting wife, the little ones, the log fire.
“You’ll get back to all that when the war’s over,” she says dreamily, then hisses “if you’re still alive.”
Doctor Goebbels no doubt believes 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.
213
Although no one knew the identity of the “voice,” Mildred had finally achieved the notoriety that always eluded her in America. The myth of Axis Sally found its way from the battlefields of Sicily and North Africa to one of the most widely read American publications and her persona became bigger than that of a mere announcer. The fantasy translated to a tiny illustrative drawing next to Corporal Van Dyne’s words—a young pretty blonde with a girl-next-door demeanor addressing the microphone and reading from a piece of paper—a script adorned with a swastika.