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.”289 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.290 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:
It wasn’t until I got upstairs that I wept and said that I had no place to go, and when I got outside of the barbed wire, I could look to the left or right, it was immaterial, I didn’t know which way to go.291
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.”292 The old man bid his friend farewell and left the camp.
No one she knew seemed to be left in the area. She remembered:
I had no one in the American Zone that I knew or where, at least, I was sure that they would have an extra bed… that was the trouble in Germany. Sometimes four or five people are living in one room, and the friends that I had in the American Zone were all people who had originally lived in Berlin and had lost their homes there, and were to all intents and purposes refugees in the American Zone.293
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.”294
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.”295 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.”296
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.”297 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.298
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.”299
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.”300 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:
I wasn’t arrested. I was locked up… I was confined again in back of barbed wired all over again.… I kept on going to them and saying, “Why are you doing this? Can I have a lawyer? I am told I am not under arrest, and I have done nothing these 26 days in Dietz but rest and get over the shock of the nine months I have just passed through, and for four and a half months I ha
d nothing but the clothes I had on my back”… and the Army could not find any pajamas or any stockings, or anything else for me.301
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:
I tried to warn America against Communism and Judaism, to show how they were threatening and undermining America… All the things I warned against have become actualities. Oh, if only those poor GIs who sacrificed their lives and futures had realized what was going on.302
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”:
An alarming and unhealthy symptom of these close relations is the readiness of the average officer and soldier to spout the enemy propaganda line. It is amazing how much of it comes back to one in accents of Brooklyn, Texas or the Middle West. It is surprising to hear from General George S. Patton that 98 percent of the Nazis—a figure he later corrected to a “majority”—had been forced into the party against their will. It is equally surprising from a Major in Munich that he does not believe in those Dachau atrocity tales, although Dachau is only a few miles away and evidence of the atrocities is still available for those who care to investigate.… All the old tales the Germans have been telling about the Russians can be heard repeated by many of our soldiers and officers, many of whom have never been in contact with the Red Army and therefore know nothing but what Germans have been pouring into their ears.303
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.
CHAPTER 9
The Stage Is Set
“This is quite a bombardment…. but I’m used to them, you know. I mean bombs during the war!”
—Mildred Gillars, August 20, 1948304
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 1948
A swarm of news correspondents and photographers surrounded Axis Sally as she approached the C-54 transport that would take her to Washington, DC. Drinking in the attention that had eluded her for so long, she was finally, unquestionably, a celebrity. After almost seventeen months of uninterrupted imprisonment without trial or counsel, Mildred lingered in front of the news media—posing for photos and supplying reporters with snappy quotes. When one reporter inquired about her wartime activities, she gave the cryptic answer, “When in Germany, do as the Germans do!”
She wore a “flowing black fur cloak and black slacks,” supplied secondhand by the Army. Like an actress taking her final curtain call, Sally carried a bouquet of red roses—flowers reportedly sent from a mysterious friend residing in the French sector of Berlin. Enjoying her fame, the silver-haired, 47-year-old lady of the stage ignored her guard’s pleas to board the plane.
“Goodbye, Frankfurt!” Axis Sally shouted with a flourish of her arm. She bade farewell to the press and climbed the stairs into the waiting plane.305 Having survived rejection, failure, poverty and the hell of Germany’s collapse, Mildred had achieved the notoriety she had always sought. With the prisoner finally secured on the airplane, Warrant Officer Catherine Samaha and Lt. Franklin Davies signaled to the pilot, and the C-54 took off in a gray drizzle. Although she did not know it, Mildred was saying goodbye to her beloved Germany forever. She came to Berlin fourteen years before as a failed actress with almost nothing to her name. She left Germany with nothing but a name synonymous with treachery.
The repatriation of Axis Sally had been meticulously planned for weeks. The Justice Department wanted to avoid the confusion of December 1946, when the first accused “radio traitors” Douglas Chandler (a.k.a. “Paul Revere”) and Robert H. Best, had been flown back to America to stand trial. Federal law demands that an American citizen accused of committing a crime overseas must be tried in the Federal District where he first entered American territory.306
Oscar R. Ewing, Special Assistant to Attorney General Tom Clark, specifically requested that the plane fly directly up the Potomac River to land in Washington, DC. The Chandler and Best investigations were based in the District of Columbia and the Grand Jury had already heard witnesses. Ewing wanted to try the men there. Despite repeated requests to stick to the flight plan, the pilot put the plane down at Westover Field near Boston, Massachusetts. The flier claimed that he had to travel farther north because he could not get the aircraft’s wheels retracted. Ewing later discovered that the pilot had a girlfriend in Boston and decided to pay her a visit. While the plane was being examined for “mechanical trouble,” Chandler and Best spent almost three hours in the airport lounge. The pilot and his girl had a costly reunion at government expense.307
The mistake resulted in a legal and logistical nightmare for the Justice Department. Ewing recalled the snafu: “We had to re-indict him up there in Boston because of what this darn pilot had done… it cost the United States Government at least a hundred thousand dollars because of the expense of bringing the witnesses back again from Germany.”308 German witnesses, who had already testified in Washington, had to be recalled before a newly empanelled Grand Jury in Boston federal court. The pilot’s rendezvous also forced J. Edgar Hoover to move the entire FBI investigation to its Boston field office.
The FBI was determined that Axis Sally’s transfer would present no such problems. The moment the plane carrying Mildred Gillars was airborne, a telephone call was placed to Washington, where prosecutors immediately sought a warrant for her arrest. The course of the plane was predetermined with refueling stops in the Azores and Bermuda. The flight then traveled northwest over international waters until it traversed the Potomac River. Then, Mildred was to be taken into custody by military po
lice, turned over to the FBI and arraigned by a United States Commissioner at Bolling Field in Washington.
The Justice Department prosecutor assigned to Mildred’s case, John M. Kelley, Jr. warned the FBI to “avoid any possible criticism growing out of alleged mistreatment of Miss Gillars, and to ensure that she was given breakfast and, if needed, supplied medical treatment prior to her arraignment.309 American public opinion had to be taken into consideration. Axis Sally would now be in the public eye, not hidden away in a military internment camp abroad. The government could not risk being accused of mistreating a defenseless woman, no matter how notorious her reputation.
Hitler’s Girlfriend
On perhaps the most unusual assignment of her military career, Warrant Officer Catherine Samaha settled into her seat next to Axis Sally. The Woman’s Army Corps (WAC) guard, wearing the drab brownish-green of Army issue, jumped when her prisoner pulled a jagged glass mirror and a comb from her handbag. Stunned that a potentially desperate traitor was allowed to board a military plane without a search for contraband, Samaha decided to let her prisoner go ahead and check her makeup.
Visibly exhilarated from the press attention, Mildred engaged the WAC in a long conversation. Catherine Samaha was, like Mildred Gillars, an Ohio native—a fact not lost on the Army commanders who assigned her to the task. In Washington, FBI agents were waiting to debrief the guard upon landing. The details of their conversation were well documented in a memorandum to FBI Director Hoover that was then forwarded on to prosecutors working the case. In her “just between us girls” style, Mildred opened up to the younger woman and provided damaging details about her life in Germany. Her words and actions on the flight to the United States shed light not only on her fragile state of mind that August day but also how American officials deceived a disoriented and isolated prisoner.
Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany Page 16