Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany (24 page)

An emotional Edna Mae Herrick after the conviction of her half-sister, Mildred Gillars.
Courtesy of the Washingtoniana Division, DC Public Library

Axis Sally speaks to reporters at Bolling Field shortly after her arrival and arrest in Washington DC, August 1948.
National Archives

The jury in the Axis Sally trial leaves the US District Court for lunch. They are (from left): Mrs. Ethel J. Porter, Mrs. Betsy Shenk Rose, Matron Margaret Ferris, Mrs. Carmella George Alley, Stanley R. Kane, Harriet E. Greene, Clifton E. Greaves, Henry G. Davis, Jr., George D. Clark, Mrs. Mildred G. Ashton, Ford H. Flemming, Sr., Marshall Elmer Harris, Norman H. Hedsman, Steward L. Morris and Mrs. Letitia J. Burnani.
Courtesy of the Washingtoniana Division, DC Public Library

Mildred photographed at Alderson Prison, West Virginia, 1950.
National Archives, College Park, MD

Meanwhile, back in America, news of her arrest brought enquiries into the background of the mysterious Maine-born, Ohio-bred prisoner. The Associated Press contacted Alan Conger, Registrar of Ohio Wesleyan University, for an assessment of her academic record. He told the AP that Mildred had been a problem student who was a “completely undisciplined individual, and noticeably eccentric.”
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This view may have been influenced by patriotism and politics. Mildred’s college transcript may be a mixed bag academically, but certainly not one that could be characterized so harshly.

Amnesty

Nearly nine months after her arrest, the CIC announced that Midge and her former colleagues Donald Day and Herbert Burgman would be released for the Christmas holidays. On December 23, 1946, the prisoners were released on the condition that they report back to the Allied Military Government in Frankfurt am Main every two weeks.
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The Justice Department refused to state publicly whether they still sought to prosecute her. Douglas Chandler (a.k.a. “Paul Revere”) and Robert H. Best were slated to be tried first—testing the application of the treason charge to electronic acts such as radio broadcasting. The conviction of two of the most vocal and enthusiastic pro-Nazi broadcasters on the German Radio would establish an important legal precedent that would set the stage for later prosecutions. Without explanation to the press or public, the CIC and the Justice Department approved the release. Alone and with nowhere to go, Mildred was not pleased with the surprising news:

She remained in the internment camp for three additional days until December 26. Donald Day made arrangements to go to his home in Bavaria where he shared a small single room with his wife in Bad Tölz. Apologizing to Mildred for not inviting her to Bavaria, he explained that “we just could not have room for you and so God bless you.”
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The old man bid his friend farewell and left the camp.

No one she knew seemed to be left in the area. She remembered:

As she greeted reporters at the entrance to the Camp Wannsee compound, Mildred bared her soul and told them of her fear and uncertainty. Wearing a borrowed suit and carrying one mark, 85 pfennig, the highest-paid woman on Nazi radio told the assembled press and photographers of her doubt that she was still an American citizen and questioned whether she was qualified to receive food rations provided to German nationals by the Allied military government. “I have no place to live, but I had some friends in Germany once. Surely some one will extend a helping hand. I planned to go on the German stage when the war was over. Two plays had already been written for me,” she told reporters. She explained her unglamorous appearance: “[My hair] turned gray in just a few weeks… those horrible weeks after the fall of Berlin.”
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While the description of her plight was meant to evoke sympathy, one of the answers she gave to newsmen would later haunt her. Asked to give her reasons for joining Reichsradio, she spoke neither of the poverty she faced nor the man she loved. Instead, she claimed that her service to the Nazis gave her “the outlet for the dramatic expression I had always sought.”
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Portraying her former employment as a fulfillment of her artistic aspirations could not possibly help any future defense, and the press seized upon her words—putting her statement in the lead paragraph of a
New York Times
article. Mildred walked out into that wet December morning, unknowingly placing her future in even greater jeopardy.

After spending two days at a Frankfurt am Main inn, the destitute woman traveled 48 miles to the small village of Dietz where she found accommodations and was able to get some food rations from past acquaintances. Mildred remained in the picturesque village for 23 days until she was scheduled to report back to the US military authorities. In America, however, the announcement of the Christmas amnesty resulted in an unsubstantiated rumor that she had left Germany and had arrived in Miami, Florida. It made national headlines when the Allied Military Government denied the rumor on January 17 and insisted to the press that “she reported on schedule to our Frankfurt office this afternoon and we can produce her on an hour’s notice if necessary.”
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The false report aroused such outrage that the Attorney General himself acknowledged the rumor and said that if Gillars had indeed fled to Miami she would be arrested immediately for treason. Telegrams poured into the White House for the attention of President Truman, protesting the Christmas release. Charles Robinson, Secretary of the International Hodcarriers, Building and Construction Union, wrote that his members felt that the “traitors, Axis Sally, Mildred Gillars, Herbert Burgman and Donald Day… should have been executed or given a life sentence at hard labor.”
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A veteran of the 45th Infantry Division wrote to the President that he was “amazed and enraged” that Axis Sally could be released, and other writers were equally opposed to Mildred Gillars re-entering the United States.
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The release of Axis Sally had struck a nerve, and the outpouring of emotion was felt all the way from the White House to the Justice and War Departments. In response to the rumor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was notified to keep an eye out for any attempt by Rita Luisa Zucca or Mildred Gillars to enter the United States. A declassified FBI memorandum dated January 13, 1947 warned that “a boat is due from Italy at 8:00 A.M on 1/14/47 and one from Germany on the morning of 1/15/47, and though they [the INS] had no information indicating the individual in question would be on either of these vessels, they wanted to be prepared.”
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Immigration officials had already received word from the highest levels of government that the two women were to be barred at entry. Even though the FBI memo states that “Zucca formally renounced her citizenship in June 1941, and apparently the Department was not interested in any treason case against her,” the file on Mildred was classified as “pending.”
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Neither woman was welcome in America, but even at that early date only Mildred Gillars rather than the woman who had expropriated her name and style (and who was more likely to have transmitted information of a military nature to Allied troops over the airwaves at Monte Cassino and Anzio) would be prosecuted.

While the Immigration Service was looking for her at American ports, Mildred was on her way back to Frankfurt am Main. Returning to the CIC office on January 23, 1947 to check in and to obtain a pass to go back to Dietz and the French Occupied Zone, she was abruptly held for questioning without explanation. Unaware of the controversy building in the United States surrounding her Christmas amnesty, she was not told that she was under arrest:

Newsmen asked US military authorities to explain their sudden change of course. Ignoring the political pressure emanating from the US Justice Department, the major American press outlets honed in on statements Mildred had made over the past month in what were described as unsolicited interviews. Upon her release, she told the newsmen that the political views she espoused on the air regarding the Communist threat were not only accurate but prophetic:

Publicly casting herself as a Cassandra warning against the Soviet scourge was not the role that the Attorney General and the Justice Department had in mind when they agreed to release her for Christmas. The change in public opinion vis-à-vis their former Allies was fertile ground for the Nazi propaganda line of 1944–45. As early as September 1945,
The New York Times
published a front-page article entitled:

Pro-German Attitude Grows as US Troops Fraternize—Survey Show Many GIs Have Less Regard for Allies than for Former Enemies—One Major Doubts Dachau Crimes

The
Times
reporter blamed the pro-German attitude on fraternization between the US occupation forces and the alluring “Gretchens”:

Some GIs might have been receptive to Mildred’s claim of political foresight, but the Justice Department viewed her outspokenness as an affront—a direct and public challenge to the Government. Attorney General Clark could not possibly set her free to spew the Nazi propaganda line on the streets of Germany or possibly dare to re-enter the United States.

Rita Zucca had been more fortunate. She was released early from an Italian jail in August 1946 after serving only nine months of her four and a half year sentence. Claiming that the amnesties just issued by the new Italian government covered her crimes and made her eligible for release, the jurists took mercy on the collaborationist young mother.

The similarities between the two women’s stories are striking. Like Gillars, Zucca had “renounced” her citizenship in 1940 to become an Italian subject, just as Mildred signed a loyalty oath to Germany in December 1941 after Pearl Harbor—an oath that she assumed was a sufficient renunciation of her citizenship. Like Gillars, Zucca claimed that her motive in collaborating with the Nazis was not political. She was neither pro-Nazi nor pro-Fascist. Instead, Zucca claimed that a desperate financial situation drove her to the microphone.

What Zucca did not do was doggedly insist that the content of her broadcasts was correct when she denounced the martyred Roosevelt, or implied that the men who fought and died in the armed forces had sacrificed their lives for a Communist victory, or that men of industry and finance had driven America into the war for Jewish monetary gain. Zucca was allowed to fade into obscurity on time-served and avoid prosecution in the United States. The Berlin Axis Sally had to be punished to the fullest extent of the law.