Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany

by Richard Lucas

  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:

  MIDGE: 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.

  MIDGE: 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.

  Fame and success always leads to imitators—especially in a medium like radio where faces are unseen and scenarios are created in the mind. Axis Sally had her imitators as well. Mildred became incensed when she discovered in late 1943 that another female broadcaster for the German government had been calling herself Sally and Axis Sally. Broadcasting from Rome, the soft voice of a young woman teamed up with an older man, repeating the successful formula that O.K. and Midge had pioneered in Berlin. Closer to the bloodshed on the Italian and North African front, Sally and George attacked the broken promises of Franklin D. Roosevelt, read the names of captured Allied soldiers and answered the letters of listeners.

  Soon thereafter, American fighting troops were greeted ashore with propaganda leaflets beckoning the men to listen in to the show known as Jerry’s Front. Without question, these leaflets identified the Rome broadcaster as the one and only Axis Sally. In January 1944, “Sally’s Complementary Return Ticket” used the mysterious Axis Sally to beckon GIs to surrender as the surest way to return home:

  SALLY, the RADIO GIRL from station “Jerry’s Front” invites you to a FREE RETURN TRIP TO AMERICA via Germany. Sally says, “YOU CAN LIVE IN PEACE and COMFORT at one of the camps operated under the auspices of the International Red Cross.” She thinks you ought to take a long, woolen blanket, some underwear and an extra pair of pants. DON’T HESITATE to make good use of this offer while there is a chance. “SUMMER IN GERMANY IS THE PERFECTION OF THE BEAUTIFUL.” (Mark Twain)214

  Two months later, military propagandists issued another leaflet complete with a broadcasting schedule:

  What about Sally? GIs Radio Dial: You won’t see her but every evening you can hear her most fascinating voice. If you’d like to get a sweet kiss from Sally – tune into Jerry’s Front.215

  When Koischwitz informed Mildred of the Rome Axis Sally’s expropriation of her persona, she was angry and fearful that she would be held accountable for the words of another:

  I felt that I could be responsible for anything that I said and I didn’t want any confusion after the end of the war as to what I said.… It caused a great deal of trouble. And I said, either this girl in Rome would stop calling herself Axis Sally or I would leave the microphone, because I was not giving out military information or trying to muddle up the GIs by telling them where their position would be tomorrow.216

  One could imagine her outrage at the existence of a “lesser” talent reaping the benefits of her hard-won and carefully cultivated fame, but what is most telling about the above statement is her recognition that she would have to answer for her deeds at some time in the future. It had been clear that the faux Italian “Sally” had been transmitting detailed military information on Allied military movements that had been gleaned from interrogations or intelligence. Mildred wanted no part of the responsibility for what could be construed as military and logistical aid to the enemy. The war’s momentum was changing and she began to fear what the future could hold.

  CHAPTER 7

  Survivors of the Invasion Front

  SUMMER 1944

  “Hello, Michael. I am the Berlin Bitch. Why don’t you sit down.”

  Axis Sally gave Corporal Michael Evanick a cigarette and offered him a drink. She summoned Werner Plack and asked for some cognac. Plack brought in a bottle and left them alone. She settled herself on a cot across from the chair where he sat. There were no glasses on hand, so she suggested that they drink out of the bottle, American-style. Sally drank first to assure the young corporal that the liquor was not poisoned.

  Two days earlier, a Gestapo officer at the German headquarters in Chartres, France had questioned Michael Evanick. Captured on D-Day, Evanick had been transported to a series of prisons and stockades prior to arriving at Chartres. The agent asked
him whether he had ever listened to German propaganda:

  The Gestapo man questioned me regarding the German political system, their military and propaganda set-up and asked if I had ever listened to German propaganda. I answered I had listened to “Sally” as did many other soldiers. He asked me if I wanted to meet her and I said, yes.217

  Evanick looked at the attractive brunette sitting opposite him. As she spoke, she crossed her legs, exposing her lack of underwear. He thought her immodest. On learning that Evanick lived on East 13th Street in New York City, she mentioned that she had worked in Greenwich Village. She brought up the name of a nightclub and told him to say “hello” to its owner when he returned to the States.

  She asked about the living conditions at the camp. The corporal complained about the lack of water and food. Sally assured him that conditions would improve when the prisoners were moved to a permanent camp, where there would be “clean sheets, good food, good treatment, showers and Red Cross packages every week.”218 She then asked if he would like to record a message for his family back in New York. Evanick consented, and the Professor and two technicians walked in to set up the microphone and equipment. The three men then left and Evanick and Sally were again alone.

  “Michael, aren’t you feeling happy that you are a prisoner of war and don’t have to fight any more?” the interview began.

  Evanick bristled. “No ma’am, I do not because I feel a hundred percent better when I am in the front lines. At least I am not hungry and starving for being hungry, and I got whatever I needed.”219

  Enraged, Sally knocked the microphone to the ground and the recording stopped. Attempting to regain her composure, she had another glass of cognac and lit a cigarette. Within a matter of minutes, she was speaking to Evanick again as though nothing had happened.

  “What do you do in the camp on a day like this?” she asked him.

  “We sit in the sun,” Evanick replied.

  Satisfied that she would finally get some useful material, Sally switched the microphone back on and continued the questioning:

  “SALLY”: What do you do in camp on days like this?

  EVANICK: We are just sitting in the sun, burning ourselves to death, because we are hungry, and are watching the American planes come over and bomb every five minutes.220

  Reddened with anger, she threw the microphone on the floor, cursed the young man, and told him to get out. Evanick’s refusal to go along with the line of questioning combined with the knowledge that the Allied forces were advancing daily, had obviously pushed Mildred Gillars to the breaking point. The resistance of a single soldier was now visibly rattling a woman who had been relatively cool during the catcalls and insults lobbed at her in Stalag IIB a few months before.

  Her level of involvement in the German war effort was deepening as well. She was no longer just a radio announcer. Her collaboration with the German military was evident to prisoners who might one day testify against her. In this instance, what Evanick called a Gestapo agent supplied her with an interviewee as the result of a post-capture interrogation. To the agent, Evanick should have been an easy interview—a regular listener, perhaps even a “fan.” Instead, he turned out to be one of the most damaging witnesses to Mildred Gillars’ wartime activities.

  Chartres

  Many Allied soldiers taken prisoner during the Normandy invasion were transported eastward to a Catholic monastery located high on a hill above the Church of Notre Dame near St Lô. The POWs dubbed the monastery prison “Starvation Hill,” due to the lack of water and food provided by their captors. The monastery functioned as a temporary stockade until the captured could be moved to a permanent camp. As the Allied advance progressed during June and July towards St Lô, prisoners were marched or transported the 160 miles from “Starvation Hill” to the prison camp at Chartres, located 55 miles from the centre of Paris. The camp was originally built by the French to hold Moroccan and other African prisoners.

  The prison at Chartres consisted of four warehouses with tarpapered roofs and a few smaller buildings. Barbed wire and wheat fields surrounded the entire complex. Each of the buildings held approximately 800–900 prisoners. The conditions were so cramped that each man had only about five square feet of straw on which to sleep. A wooden barricade and an eight-foot stone wall subdivided the warehouses. Water and food were extremely sparse and medical attention was non-existent.

  A day’s meal consisted of one cup of coffee at 8 a.m., followed by a bowl of soup and possibly a small piece of bread at 3 p.m. Guards beat the prisoners for the slightest infraction. The German military headquarters where Michael Evanick was interrogated and interviewed was located two miles up the road from the camp.

  On July 5, 1944, Mildred Gillars arrived at the Chartres prison camp to conduct live interviews for her new radio series, Survivors of the Invasion Front. Until the June invasion, recorded interviews with Allied prisoners were reserved for the Christmas and Easter holidays. Survivors of the Invasion Front would present a weekly program of interviews with US soldiers relieved to be out of the battle.

  Sergeant Clarence Gale and Corporal Donald Rutter were two of the paratroopers selected by the Germans to be interviewed. Gale, Rutter and their comrades were lined up in their warehouse prison and then marched to a smaller building at the rear of the camp. They walked behind the building and saw Axis Sally playing with a pair of dice.

  She was wearing a dark floral print dress and no stockings. With a cheery “Hello boys!” she began speaking to each of the men about their hometown. She seemed to have been in every one of their hometowns at one time or another. Gale noticed that one of the men accompanying her (Koischwitz) ordered around the other two radio technicians but that the American woman did not take orders from him. She seemed to be “just as big a ‘big shot’ as he.”221

  The friendly, solicitous woman held a microphone and the prisoners could see that its cord ran into the small building housing the recording equipment. Two technicians assisted her, as she offered to send recorded messages home to their families. Gale and Rutter did not recognize her as the woman from Berlin Radio, but they did wonder why the Germans would care to let them send messages home when “they got damn little to eat and nearly no water.”222

  Without giving her name, she passed out Chesterfield cigarettes to the men and stated that she was affiliated with a unit of the Red Cross. Promising the prisoners Red Cross packages in return for their participation, she asked questions such as “What are you fighting for?,” “How would you like to be home?” and “Do you think America will win the war?” Making no secret of her political inclinations, this “Red Cross representative” told the Americans that they were “fools” for fighting against the Nazis, instead of joining forces with the Germans against the Bolsheviks. She argued that they were fighting “England’s war,” that the June invasion was being repelled, and that the Allies were being driven into the sea. Corporal Rutter recalled that she also remarked that the Germans were bombing New York and Washington.223 The reality on the front was that American forces were encountering fierce resistance from the Wehrmacht during that first week in July, and the attempt to advance towards St Lô was slowing considerably.

  When the interviews were finished, Gale, Rutter and the other prisoners smoked the cigarettes she gave them and listened to the playback. Gale noticed that she “made over the boys” until she got what she wanted. When she was finished with the recordings “her attitude changed, just as though one would turn off the radio. She paid no more attention to them and they were returned to their barracks.”224 The promised Red Cross packages never arrived.

  Midge and the Professor had found an effective cover for obtaining interviews with prisoners wary of being seen collaborating with enemy propagandists. In hospitals and makeshift stockades across northern and central France she declared herself a representative of the International Red Cross seeking to improve the conditions of American prisoners behind enemy lines. The Chartres camp was fertile ground fo
r the couple, as they would return there at least two more times to collect interviews in July and August 1944.

  One particular broadcast from the Chartres camp was illustrative of this ruse. On August 1 1944, she returned to the camp to collect further interviews. One of those she met was Carl Zimmerman, an infantryman wounded and captured at St. Pierre on July 18. After a few days at “Starvation Hill,” Zimmerman was moved east until he ended up at Chartres at the end of July. On August 1 he and nine other prisoners were led behind the small building at the rear of the camp where they encountered a woman with jet-black hair that Zimmerman thought looked like it had been colored with axle grease. She was heavily rouged and looked much younger from a distance than up close. Her neckline was low cut and he felt she dressed “for sex appeal.”225 The woman gave commands in French and the men who accompanied her stated that she was from the French Red Cross. In the actual broadcast, she can be heard speaking to the technicians in a loud voice: “l’attention, l’attention, s’il vous plaît!”226 She identified herself as Midge227 and offered to record messages to be broadcast home so that the families might know that they were still alive.

  Zimmerman was the second to be interviewed and was the most talkative of the prisoners.

  GILLARS: What’s the town, please?

  ZIMMERMAN: Providence, Rhode Island.