Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2010 by CASEMATE
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Copyright 2010 © Richard Lucas
ISBN 978-1-935149-43-9
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Contents
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE
1. AN UNWELCOME CHILD
2. IN FRONT OF THE FOOTLIGHTS
3. EXPATRIATE
4. WOLVES AT THE DOOR
5. SMILING THROUGH
6. DID YOU RAISE YOUR SONS TO BE MURDERERS?
7. SURVIVORS OF THE INVASION FRONT
8. ALONE
9. THE STAGE IS SET
10. DESTINY
11. CONVICTED
12. PENITENT
EPILOGUE
APPENDICES
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For Jordan and Taylor
Preface
While browsing through a website devoted to rare and historic audio clips in 2003, I first heard the voice of Axis Sally. This woman (Mildred Gillars) was the notorious Nazi propagandist whose theme song Lili Marlene became an international favorite during and after the war. Despite her undeniable skills as a broadcaster, the recording also featured a vile anti-Semitism rant. Insinuating that Franklin Roosevelt was a homosexual surrounded by Jewish “boyfriends,” her words were jarring and repulsive. Yet I wondered how Mildred Gillars, who described herself as a “100% American girl,” became a willing mouthpiece for a genocidal regime. How did this woman with middle-class Ohio roots end up on the wrong side of history, convicted of aiding the Nazi regime and betraying her country? I looked for a biography that answered the question, but none existed. Books on the subject of treason mentioned her in passing and tended to focus on her illicit relationship with a former Hunter College professor who served as her “Svengali.” Her New York Times obituary in November 1988 focused on the “frisson” her somewhat scandalous testimony caused at her 1949 trial.
As I listened to the Axis Sally audio clips that first day, I noticed that one of the recordings featured another woman with an American accent. Her on-air sidekick addressed her as “Sally” but the voice was clearly not that of Mildred Gillars. Aware of the circumstances that led to the conviction of Iva Toguri d’Aquino as the one and only Tokyo Rose (in fact, there had been several other women employed by Japanese radio who broadcast under the moniker “Orphan Ann”), I wondered how many other Axis Sallies there might have been, and whether any of those women were punished as Gillars and d’Aquino were.
A visit to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland to look at the Department of Justice’s “Notorious Offenders” case files on Axis Sally, as well as a telephone conversation with John Carver Edwards (the author of the excellent 1991 book Berlin Calling, about Americans who broadcast for the Third Reich) convinced me to write a factual, documented biography of Axis Sally. Over the next seven years of research and writing, I discovered a deeply flawed but fascinating woman whose thirst for fame led her to the heart of Hitler’s Germany; whose hope for love and marriage convinced her to remain; and whose inner strength compelled her to survive in the death-strewn shelters and cellars of defeated Berlin.
In my younger years, I was a devoted listener to shortwave radio. The radio waves were a battleground of the Cold War in those days. Radio Moscow, Radio Peking, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe were propaganda powerhouses that fought for the hearts and minds of countless millions for whom radio was their only link to the developed world. In the darkest and farthest reaches of the earth, the signal from the shortwave transmitters represented nations and peoples and political ideologies. It was Joseph Goebbels who envisioned the power of the medium long before the advent of the Second World War. By 1940, Berlin’s foreign radio service sang the praises of Adolf Hitler and the new Germany twenty-four hours a day in twelve languages. An unemployed American named Mildred Gillars stepped into that burgeoning radio empire and became, along with William Joyce (“Lord Haw Haw”), one of the regime’s most effective propagandists.
Today, radio is arguably one of the most pervasive means of political persuasion. One wonders how a woman with the innate talents of Mildred Gillars would have fared in her native land in a more forgiving time.
Richard Lucas
September 2010
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the many people whose dedicated assistance made this book a reality. First and foremost is Rita Rosenkranz of Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency, whose faith in this project has been nothing short of heroic. Martin Noble of AESOP, Oxford, UK provide proofreading, editing and became a friend over the course of five years. Kay Schlichting and Emily Haddaway of the Ohio Wesleyan University Historical Archives were extremely helpful in the process of researching Mildred Gillars’ college years. Gail Connors of the Conneaut Public Library in Conneaut, Ohio provided a wonderful selection of contemporaneous newspaper accounts and items from high school yearbooks of long ago. Faye Haskins and Jason R. Moore of the Washingtoniania Collection of the District of Columbia Public Library located photographs from the defunct Washington Evening Star collection. These and so many other photographs would be lost to history without their dedicated care and maintenance. Mr. John Taylor and the staff at Archives II in College Park, Maryland deserve much thanks; as well as the very helpful staff of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.
Paul Beekman Taylor and Walter Driscoll were extremely gracious as I traced the connection between Mildred Gillars, Bernard Metz and the Gurdjieff movement. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the journalists who tracked the story of Axis Sally. First, the late Ambassador John Bartlow Martin, whose papers possessed the only (albeit abridged) copy of the original trial transcript. Helene Anne Spicer generously shared her memories of interviewing Axis Sally. I am most grateful to Iris Wiley, Jim Dury and James Sauer who took the time to speak to me and remember Mildred Gillars’ final years.
Most importantly, I thank my wife Sachi for her love and understanding throughout this experience; our two sons, Jordan and Taylor, who no longer have to ask “When will your book be finished?” Jordan, especially, deserves thanks for patiently spending many hours in libraries and archives near and far. Thank you to my parents, Richard and Gail Lucas, for their love and support.
Also, I would like to express my appreciation to:
Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Archives II, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park Maryland; Beinecke Library at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Michigan; Bishop Watterson High School Alumni Office, Columbus Ohio; Bishop Watterson High Scho
ol, Columbus Ohio; Camden Historical Society, Camden New Jersey; Christine Witzmann, translator; Conneaut Public Library, Conneaut Ohio; District of Columbia Public Library, Washingtoniana Division, Washington DC; Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri; Hunter College Archives, New York, New York; John Carver Edwards; Molly E Tully; Jennifer Stepp of Stars and Stripes; Dr. Joachim Kundler; Library of Congress Manuscript Collection, Washington DC; Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin Texas; Maine State Archives, Portland Maine; National Archives, Washington DC; Newspaper Archives; New York Public Library, New York, New York; Ohio Historical Society, Columbus Ohio; Paul Robeson Library, Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey; Spike Lee; The late Stephen Bach for his encouragement; University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware; Guy Aceto, Weider History Group; Bill Horne, Karen Jensen and Caitlin Newman of World War II magazine.
Prologue
January 1949: The US District Court in Washington, DC is teeming with reporters, photographers and curious onlookers. At the center of the mass of popping flashbulbs and shouting newsmen is a silverhaired former showgirl named Mildred Gillars, better known to thousands of GIs as “Axis Sally.” Facing a possible death sentence for treason, the only crime specified in the United States Constitution, she is on trial for broadcasting radio propaganda aimed at demoralizing American troops in their struggle against Nazi Germany.
The world had changed since Axis Sally made her last broadcast in a besieged Berlin radio studio. Deteriorating relations between the victorious Allies preoccupied the postwar world. Communism and subversion from within was the latest threat to the American way of life. The trial of Axis Sally was front-page news, but it was a front page shared with headlines of the entry of Mao Tse Tung’s forces into Peking and the continuing Cold War crisis over Berlin. Internal scandals had rocked the nation, including former Communist Party member Whittaker Chambers’ revelation that Soviet agents, including senior State Department official Alger Hiss, had infiltrated the United States government and sabotaged foreign policy. President Harry S. Truman barely survived Governor Thomas Dewey’s bid to unseat him and end sixteen straight years of Democratic rule. Faced with an uphill electoral battle, the Truman Administration needed to show that the President knew how to deal with America’s enemies.
Two months before the November 1948 election, two infamous figures of World War II returned to the United States to face trial. One was the Japanese-American Iva Toguri d’Aquino, one of several women who worked for Tokyo radio during the war and called herself “Orphan Ann.” The soldiers and sailors in the Pacific theatre called her “Tokyo Rose.” The other woman was a lesser-known but equally reviled American radio broadcaster who worked for Berlin’s Reichsradio. Since March 1946 she had languished in an Allied internment camp without charges or the aid of counsel. On the radio, she went by the name Midge, but to the soldier in the field she was “Axis Sally.” Her signature theme song, “Lili Marlene,” was a worldwide hit, and she captured the imagination of the foot soldier with her seductive, lilting voice. Accompanied by a live orchestra playing the GIs’ favorite jazz and swing music, Axis Sally had an audience of literally millions, despite the vile anti-Semitic propaganda she often offered on the side.
What drove the woman who proudly called herself “a 100% American girl” to collaborate with a genocidal regime? What forces made her cut the final tie to her native land and betray an entire nation? Mildred Gillars’ story is one of poverty and hunger—a woman who, like the Führer she served, wished to accomplish great artistic feats but instead thrust herself into infamy. An ambitious female coping with the realities of her time, she was an attractive young woman who said “no” to marriage and instead relied on the good graces of a series of questionable men to achieve her dreams of independence and notoriety.
How that reliance played a central role in her descent into the ranks of traitor will become evident as this book examines the circumstances that led her to represent the Third Reich on radio. For the first time, the facts of Axis Sally’s life will supplant the speculation and false claims that have worked their way into her life story over the decades. The myth of Axis Sally—the all-knowing, hate-filled disseminator of military and logistical information—needs to be reconsidered in light of declassified documents from the files of the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Office of Alien Property and the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps, as well as wartime records of the German Foreign Office.
Like Iva Toguri d’Aquino, who bore the punishment for several Tokyo Roses, there was more than one Axis Sally. Infantrymen in the deserts of North Africa and later in northern Europe heard one woman speak from Berlin, while another “Sally”—a native New Yorker—welcomed American troops to Italy from a studio in Rome. The book examines the deeds of Berlin’s Axis Sally and the uneven justice meted out in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Not intended to be an apologia for a convicted traitor, this book aims to portray a life lived on the “wrong side of history” with compassion and insight.
CHAPTER 1
An Unwelcome Child
On a cold morning in October 1928 a slim, attractive woman walked into the Camden, New Jersey offices of the The Evening Courier newspaper. Teary-eyed, she approached the front desk and asked to place an advertisement for that day’s edition. She identified herself as Mrs. Barbara Elliott and told the clerk that she was searching for her missing husband Charles, whom she had married only six weeks before. Her husband had left their New York apartment and never returned. A few days after his departure, Barbara discovered that she was expecting a child. A friend told her that he had spotted Charles in Camden, and the distraught mother-to-be had come to New Jersey in search of the man who had abandoned her.
The desk clerk knew a good human interest story when he heard one and called upstairs for a reporter to take down the woman’s story. The Evening Courier regularly printed melodramatic stories about lucky Ziegfeld Follies dancers marrying wealthy heirs, lonely and lovesick women driven to suicide, and couples finding love against all odds. Because Camden is only a few miles across the river from Philadelphia, some of the stories printed in the local paper found their way to the wire services and the big New York newspapers. In a weary voice, Barbara Elliott told the newsman her sad story in detail.
It all began when a girlfriend invited her on a double date where she was introduced to a “dark, slender, ascetic-looking” man of thirty—a linguist and world traveler who regaled her with tales of his visits to Morocco, Singapore and Baghdad. Barbara was enthralled with the handsome, urbane stranger named Charles Elliott. The two couples danced the night away at a roadhouse in Greenwich, Connecticut. There, Barbara and Charles held hands under the table and were swept away with happiness.
Within twenty-four hours, the two lovers agreed to an “ultramodern” marriage, with the understanding that if either party grew tired of the other—the marriage would end. Barbara explained their pact:
“It’s the bonds that kill love. People must be free, untrammeled. Love must not be forced or shackled…. It was a mad thing to do, but to us it seemed so right. We were so much in love. And we agreed never to hold each other back. I would continue my work as interior decorator; he, his as a tour director and linguist. ‘When love dies we will part,’ we told each other. And so by leaving love free we hoped to keep it always.”1
Two weeks later, it all fell apart. Charles promised to meet his wife for dinner but never returned. Heartache turned to panic when Barbara found out that she was pregnant: “I was frantic when I discovered a few days later that I would become a mother. Then a friend said he had seen Charles in Camden, at least he thought it was he and I came down here to search for him.”2 That evening, pressed in between articles about the political battle between Herbert Hoover and Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York for the White House, The Evening Courier told the shocking tale and launched a citywide search for the missing husband:
MISSING MATE SOUGHT BY COMPANIONATE BRIDE
CHILD NOW COMING WITH FATHER GONE
Not for Self, But for Baby She Says, She Hunts “Pal” Husband3
Anyone knowing the whereabouts of Charles Elliott, last heard of in Camden, will please inform him that he is about to become a father. His wife, Barbara, who is now registered at the Hotel Walt Whitman, pleads with him to forget the circumstances surrounding their marriage and the immediate separation, and believes that for the sake of all concerned reconciliation should be effected.4
The next morning Barbara telephoned the Courier reporter to thank him for his sympathy and kindness. In a voice choked with emotion and portent, she told him that the money for her hotel bill had been left on the nightstand. “They will understand,” she said and abruptly hung up.5 Barbara then called the Hotel Walt Whitman and told the front desk clerk to go upstairs to her room, where he would find something. He did—a suicide note written on hotel stationery:
To Whom It May Concern,
It is not humanly possible to continue any longer this bitter agony of bringing into this poor, deluded world another unwelcome child. The few who may give my sorry act any thought at all will probably think only in a conventional way, saying “What a weak thing she must have been.” Who will ever have the perception to realize that I am taking this step because I have an intelligence and soul that are sensitized to the nth degree?
It is the greatest maternal tenderness I can bestow upon my dear child that I end my life with his that he may not be numbered among the hosts of unwelcome children.
Barbara Elliott6
Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany Page 1