Axis Sally’s Nazi Radio

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Axis Sally’s Nazi Radio"

Podcast: HISTORY This Week
Date: March 9, 2026
Host: Sally Helm
Featured Guests:

• Richard Lucas (author, Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany)
• Michael Flam (Professor of History, Ohio Wesleyan University)

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Episode Overview

This episode traces the extraordinary story of Mildred Gillers, better known as "Axis Sally"—an American actress who became Nazi Germany’s most infamous English-language radio propagandist during World War II. Through her broadcasts intended to demoralize US soldiers and civilians, Gillers played a pivotal role in the Nazis’ information war. The episode explores her personal history, motivations, transformation from struggling actor to wartime traitor, and her subsequent trial for treason.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Life: A Drive for Attention

• Troubled Childhood: Gillers grew up in a dysfunctional family, escaping an abusive, alcoholic father with her mother.
  • “I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to describe Mildred as a troubled soul.”—Michael Flam [07:54]
• Desperate for Fame: Even as a student at Ohio Wesleyan, she sought attention and cultivated a dramatic, fashionable persona to stand out.
  • Wore the first combination of "knickers and galoshes," an unusual look for the time. [09:06]
• Notable Quote:
  • “She was desperate to be famous, desperate to be noticed.”—Richard Lucas [07:04]

2. Pursuing the Limelight—and Crossing a Line

• Early Publicity Stunt: Arrested in 1928 for faking a suicide attempt as a film promotion, Gillers narrowly avoided jail time.
  • “This is the kind of thing she would get into because she was desperate to be famous, desperate to be noticed.”—Richard Lucas [07:04]

3. Life in Berlin: Allure and Opportunity

• Move to Germany: After failed relationships and careers, Gillers moved to Berlin with her mother in 1934 and was captivated by the city’s energy and opportunities, despite the rise of Nazism.
  • “Mildred became so entranced with the German situation. There was a feeling of positivity. And there were jobs.”—Richard Lucas [11:43]
• Immersed in Nazi Society: Witnessed growing antisemitism and Nazi propaganda firsthand, yet stayed. [14:37]

4. Becoming "Axis Sally"

• Early Broadcasting: Began as an entertainer at Reichsradio, playing music and doing radio dramas, not initially as a political propagandist. [18:49]
• Transformation Under Pressure: After Pearl Harbor, she was forced to sign a loyalty oath to the Nazi regime, losing her US passport and becoming legally—and morally—trapped.
  • “She dashed off a note, she said, saying, I will be loyal to the Reich.”—Richard Lucas [21:06]
• Relationship with Producer: Lover Max Otto Koischwitz, a staunch Nazi, became a key influence, pushing her toward overt propaganda. [21:58][22:37]

5. Nazi Radio Propaganda: Targeting US Morale

• Broadcast Content:
  • Shows like "Home Sweet Home" targeted homesick GIs, conjuring nostalgic images of home to erode their morale.
    • “Just imagine sitting out on the old baskart in the sweet old rocking chair, listening to the birds at twilight.”—Michael Flam [24:58]
  • Spread antisemitic and anti-American conspiracy theories, positioning Jews and the British as the enemy and the cause of the war. [25:18][26:03]
  • Targeted female listeners in America, using emotional appeals and graphic descriptions to stoke anxiety about their loved ones overseas. [26:20]
• Notable Quote:
  • “She would tell us where we were going to go, where we were going to bomb. She knew.”—Veteran John A. Sarovich [28:29]
• Personal Rewards: Gillers’ work earned her celebrity, high salary, special rations, access to American magazines (for broadcast content), and even German military intelligence to personalize her taunts.

6. Soldier Reactions & Notorious PsyOps

• Dreaded Voice: American soldiers loathed "Axis Sally," citing how her broadcasts exploited personal details and created paranoia.
  • “She would say, lieutenant Tom Jones, do you know that your best friend back home is fooling around with your wife? And that kind of stuff she would throw at the guys and it would tear them up.”—Michael Flam [28:58]

7. D-Day and Final Efforts

• Radio Drama for D-Day: Gillers starred in "Vision of Impatience," written by Koischwitz, to demoralize troops ahead of the D-Day invasion by depicting their certain deaths. [29:33]
• POW Camp Deceptions: She visited POW camps posing as a Red Cross volunteer, trying to get American prisoners to make anti-US statements; soldiers remained mostly unmoved and sometimes mocked her in return. [31:04][31:18]

8. Capture and Trial for Treason

• End of the War: After Berlin fell, Gillers evaded capture for a while but was eventually discovered, returned to the US, and charged with treason. [32:05]
• Trial Details:
  • No Jewish jurors—deemed unable to be impartial. [33:20]
  • Defense: claimed she acted under duress and was an artist, not a propagandist.
    • “She had no choice but to obey. If she'd refused to do those broadcasts, the Nazis would have thrown her in prison or worse.” [33:52]
  • Prosecution played her broadcasts; evidence from POWs and a fellow actor ultimately secured a single treason conviction—for her scripted role in the D-Day radio drama.
    • “She is eventually convicted on her sole charge of treason for a radio drama in which she performed words that were written for her, a scripted drama.”—Ben Dickstein [35:34]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the ambiguous history:
  • “We can know what happened, but we can't really know why it happened or why she made the choices that she did.”—Michael Flam [07:38]
• On Gillers' psychological state:
  • “She was a performer, not a propagandist.”—Defense at trial [34:05]
• On the deep moral ambiguity:
  • “She expresses no remorse, no regret for her actions, says that she would do again precisely what she had done.”—Ben Dickstein [36:31]
• Epilogue Insight:
  • Gillers prized a teacup from a night she met SS leader Himmler, a detail that changed her biographer’s view of her culpability. [37:48]

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

• Early Life & First Arrest: [05:33]–[07:04]
• College Persona & Early Adventures: [08:08]–[10:35]
• Berlin & Nazi Rise: [11:22]–[14:52]
• Recruitment to Reichsradio: [17:41]–[18:33]
• Loyalty Oath After Pearl Harbor: [20:29]–[21:12]
• Radio Propaganda Content/Strategy: [24:42]–[27:55]
• D-Day Propaganda & POW Missions: [29:33]–[31:18]
• Capture & Trial: [32:05]–[35:49]
• Post-Prison Life & Reflections: [36:12]–[38:31]

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Conclusion

Through interviews with historians and primary source accounts, this episode paints a nuanced, unsettling portrait of Axis Sally, examining how personal ambition, psychological need, and historical circumstance fused into one of WWII’s most infamous propaganda campaigns. The story challenges assumptions about culpability, agency, and the moral cost of fame—asking listeners to grapple with the limits of history's explanations.

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For Further Exploration:

• Richard Lucas, Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany
• Veterans History Project, Library of Congress

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Summary by HISTORY This Week, produced in collaboration with The HISTORY® Channel and Back Pocket Studios.

Transcript

[Sally Helm]

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[Ben Dickstein]

the History Channel original podcast history this

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

week March 10, 1949 Sally I'm Sally Helm. The jury did not reach a verdict last night, and Mildred Gillers is hoping that's a good thing for her. She arrives at the courthouse in Washington, D.C. on a bus packed together with other prisoners. She's the last to step off. Throughout the trial, she's gone to some lengths to maintain her glamorous look. Her white hair is done up kind of in the style of the movie star. Rita Hayworth, A New Yorker magazine writer covering the trial said that to his eye, her whole outfit, black heels, blue scarf, fake tan suggests that she is torn by an inner conflict. But on this windy March morning, Gillers seems in good spirits. She greets her half sister, who's been by her side throughout the trial. Good morning, dear. She says she sounds hopeful. Maybe the jury has managed to find some sympathy in their hearts for her. This former actress who is now on trial for treason. To a lot of people watching this trial, Mildred Gillers is better known as Axis Sally. The the name comes from what she decided to do while living in Berlin during World War II. She got a job with Reichsradio, an influential arm of the Nazi government. And she broadcast propaganda, anti Semitic, anti American messages aimed at soldiers overseas. An attempt to weaken their morale and help the Germans win the ever important information war. But throughout this trial, Gillers has been insisting that she's innocent. She swears she loves her country, that she was forced to do what she did or die. Today, the story of Axis Sally. How did a struggling actress from Maine become a potent weapon of the Nazis? And is there a way to understand the choices that she made? That trial in 1949 is not the first time that Mildred Gillers has seen the inside of a courtroom. She'd had a run in with the law 20 years earlier in 1928 for a very different, though not totally unrelated crime. Richard Lucas is the author of the first complete biography of Gillers. He told us what happened in 1928 was essentially a publicity stunt gone wrong. Gillers was in her late 20s trying to make it as an actress in New York City.

[Richard Lucas]

She had fallen on hard times. She didn't have any work, so she answered an ad for a film called Unwelcome Children.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

The Filmmakers promised Gillers $75 to go out into the world and play the role of pregnant woman abandoned by her lover. And she wrote, really sells it. In mock despair, she goes to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, which connects Pennsylvania and

[Richard Lucas]

New Jersey, and starts throwing her leg over the bridge. And the cops have to come and drag her over. She's crying, she's wailing. She says, I can't go on.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Gillers, of course, was never really going to jump. She's just trying to drum up attention for the movie. But the police and the public don't know that.

[Richard Lucas]

And for days, the Camden, New Jersey newspapers, Philadelphia papers, all the way up to New York had taken hold of the story in tabloid fashion.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

There are headlines like Deserted Bride Leaves Suicide Note Letter Discloses Tragedy of Love. But parts of the story aren't adding up.

[Richard Lucas]

The press found eventually that she was an actress and the whole thing was a hoax.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

She's sentenced to three months in the county jail in New Jersey, but a judge ends up taking pity on her. He suspends her sentence, blaming the film producers instead.

[Richard Lucas]

So at the end of the day, she barely had enough money for car fare back to New York. But this is the kind of thing she would get into because she was desperate to be famous, desperate to be noticed.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

That seems to have been Gillers core motivation in get famous and Get Noticed. Though history professor Michael Flam reminds us it is hard to totally understand what was driving Mildred Gillers. Probably impossible.

[Ben Dickstein]

I often tell students that Mildred's story illustrates the limits of history. You know, we can know what happened, but we can't really know why it happened or why she made the choices that she did.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Flam told us her childhood might provide some clues.

[Ben Dickstein]

I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to describe Mildred as a troubled soul. She comes from a dysfunctional family. She was, according to most accounts, a sort of shy and withdrawn child.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

She and her mother flee her abusive alcoholic father when she's just six years old. Her stepfather was also an addict and he was controlling, maybe even abusive. Gillers escapes by going to college, where she cultivates a certain image. She wants to come off as impressive, worldly. A classmate later recalled. She was always posing or acting, always using words of which she had only the vaguest idea of the meaning. But if they were unusual or highbrow, they were for her. And Gillers loves being on stage.

[Ben Dickstein]

And in fact, all of the campus reviews of her acting focused on her dramatic tendencies, which suggests, at least to me, that she had a penchant for overacting.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Gillers attended Ohio Wesleyan, the university where Michael Flam now teaches. He has used the school's archives to research the woman he calls its most notorious alum.

[Ben Dickstein]

She had a remarkable fashion sense. She was apparently the first female undergraduate to wear knickers and galoshes as a combination, a sort of a bold fashion statement.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

I think of knickers as being like underwear. Like, what is the look?

[Ben Dickstein]

I thought Knickers were more like golf pants. But now you're really out of my range of expertise here.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

I looked it up, and, yeah, they're like bloomers. Baggy pants that gather at the knee or the calf. So that with waterproof rubber galoshes. Definitely a look.

[Ben Dickstein]

Mildred was very popular with the young men. But not particularly popular with her female counterparts. She attracted the attention of the campus bohemian. Who was supposedly the first male undergraduate to grow a beard. And the two of them apparently cut class and hung out, you know, at the soda fountain. Where they recited poetry and stared into each other's eyes.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Befitting the campus bohemian.

[Ben Dickstein]

Exactly.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

In college, things go well for Gillers. She's a member of the Theatrical Honors Society. She's studying German. And by her senior year. She and the campus bohemian are engaged to be married. And then she makes a dramatic decision.

[Ben Dickstein]

She decides to blow up her life and leave Ohio Wesleyan. Without her degree, without her fiance. In the spring of 1922. And this is only the first moment where we really don't know why.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Some suspect she's in a romantic relationship with her theater professor. The two of them both move to Cleveland. And Gillers tries to make it as an actress. She has modest success. But it is the eve of the Great Depression. Tough time to land a big break.

[Richard Lucas]

When she didn't work, she didn't eat.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Richard Lucas again. By the early 1930s, Gillers seems unmoored.

[Richard Lucas]

She is a failed actress. She's failed in her personal life. She was involved with a British diplomat.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

She follows him to Algeria in North Africa.

[Richard Lucas]

But they grow apart, and there she is in Algeria. She has no place to go. No career and no marriage.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Lucky for Gellers, her mother wants to visit Europe. So the two of them set off on a trip all around the continent. And on September 4, 1934, they arrive in Berlin. The United States at the time is still in the throes of the Depression. But the German economy is coming back.

[Richard Lucas]

Mildred became so entranced with the German situation. There was a feeling of positivity. And there were jobs.

[Sally Helm]

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[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

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[Ben Dickstein]

She can't help but notice that anti Semitism has increased dramatically. There are signs in shop windows, there are posters on the streets blaming German Jews for all sorts of things.

[Michael Flam]

In Germany, the brown shirts of Hitler's unarmed Nazi army command world attention by boycotting Germany's half million Jews, imprisoning thousands and impoverishing tens of thousands, and by reverting to medieval standards burning books that conflict with Nazi ideals.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

We don't have a record of Gillers politics before she travels to Europe. We do know that in 1934, Gillers mother heads back to the United States and her daughter stays in Berlin.

[Ben Dickstein]

She's a young, single American woman. She is fluent in German. She knows the language. There's opportunity. Within a year of arriving in Germany, Mildred has a good job. She's doing translations for ufo, which is the German Hollywood, the German film industry.

[Richard Lucas]

So she was right on the edge of becoming a success. And then the war broke out.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

In September 1939, Germany invades Poland. Suddenly, Europe is at war. A ground war, an air war, and increasingly an information war, particularly in Germany.

[Michael Flam]

In regimenting German thought, all radio programs emanate from the department of Propaganda. Every newspaper prints only what the state wants its print people to read. And any letter in the German mails is subject to censorship.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

The Nazis are attempting to dominate public opinion, trying to spread their genocidal ideology. And radio is a big part of that.

[Ben Dickstein]

I mean, the Nazis quickly consolidate and take control of the airwaves. They insist that everyone in Germany have a radio and that it be tuned to official stations.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, is particularly obsessed with radio. He even commissions a new cheap, mass produced radio set. He wants one broadcasting in every German home and beyond. He tells the public, we want a radio that reaches across our borders to give the world a picture of our character, our life and our work.

[Michael Flam]

First step to conquest. And the Nazi scheme is to demoralize the enemy by propaganda.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

The German broadcasting service, Reichsradio, starts targeting listeners abroad, taking the information war to countries that they see as potential threats. In 1940, they decide we need to focus on North America. The United States has not yet entered the war and Germany doesn't want it to. So they start a propaganda offensive aimed at American radio listeners. But Richard Lucas says they soon realize they're going to have a problem pulling this off because most of their English speaking broadcasters have thick German accents.

[Richard Lucas]

They needed someone with an American accent who could have that colloquialism that they needed.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

That's when Mildred Gillers gets a call. Come audition for Reichs Radio.

[Richard Lucas]

Reich Radio at that point was located in huge massive building near the Brandenburg Gate. It was incredibly dense and just all stone.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

We don't know what Gillers is thinking when she walks into that imposing building in May of 1940. But whatever she does at the mic that day is enough to impress the station manager.

[Richard Lucas]

Because she was an actress, she sounded like what you would hear in a American film. And they hired her right away.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

At this point, her job is basically just to read station IDs and introduce music, normal DJ stuff.

[Richard Lucas]

She was spinning records, she was playing American jazz, which was outlawed In Germany.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Pretty soon she starts acting in radio dramas.

[Ben Dickstein]

I do want to note that Mildred begins her career with Reichsradio as simply an entertainer. So she doesn't begin as a propagandist or political commentator.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Still, Michael Flam told us she is an employee of the Nazi government, which is about to become a big problem. It's the spring of 1941. Gillers needs to visit the US embassy in Berlin to renew her passport.

[Ben Dickstein]

The US government is already skeptical of Reichsradio because it's been making broadcasts that are anti allies. And they're very aware that Reichsradio has been spreading the message of Hitler and the Nazis. And the U.S. embassy wants Mildred to resign her position with Reichsradio and return to the United States.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

But Gillers loves her life in Berlin.

[Ben Dickstein]

She has a last attempt achieved her dream. She is popular. She is a celebrity. She is earning a good salary. She doesn't see a great future for herself back in the United States.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

So she refuses to quit her job at Reichs Radio.

[Ben Dickstein]

The US Government takes her passport away. But, and I think this is important for her later legal troubles. The US Government never formally or officially revokes her citizenship. And Mildred never renounces her U.S. citizenship either.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Gillers leaves the embassy without a U.S. passport in a kind of legal gray area. A few months later, that gets more complicated.

[Michael Flam]

Sunday morning, December 7, 1941.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Gillers is in the Reichs radio studio when she hears about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

[Richard Lucas]

It left her in a crisis.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Richard Lucas told us Gillers can't control herself when she hears the news.

[Richard Lucas]

She had a huge outburst and they told her not to come back to work.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

According to Gillers later testimony, this is the moment she's forced down a path not entirely of her own making. The radio station manager calls her into his office and says, you need to sign a loyalty oath to the Nazi regime. And she does.

[Richard Lucas]

She dashed off a note, she said, saying, I will be loyal to the Reich.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

She leaves the note with the station manager on December 9, two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Two days later, Hitler declares war on the US. In some respects, Gillers is now a woman without a country.

[Ben Dickstein]

She's sort of caught in this murky twilight zone. She's not a German citizen. She's still a US Citizen. She does not have a passport. She's really quite trapped.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

But life for Gillers is not so bad. She's gaining recognition in the kind of job she's always wanted. And she is in love with her producer, a Man named Max Otto Koic.

[Ben Dickstein]

Max Otto Ko is a fascinating figure. Figure. He's a German scholar and academic who comes to the United States. By the end of the 1930s. However, he's developed a reputation as a rather outspoken anti Semite and pro Nazi figure. And so he's sort of pressured to leave the United States.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

In 1939, back in Berlin, he becomes a producer at REICHSRADIO. And in 1942, he's promoted to manage political broadcasts aimed at the United States. Listeners in the US can tune in to Reich's radio broadcasts using shortwave radio receivers. And Cuisiewicz wants Gillers voice to be the one they hear.

[Ben Dickstein]

He professionally takes Mildred under his wing, and he becomes the producer of her shows.

[Michael Flam]

Hello, listeners, America. We hope you've been enjoying this musical cocktail coming to you from Berlin in the German Overseas service.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

That is really her broadcasting popular music back to the States. Cwitz is married with a fourth child on the way. But by Christmas of 1942, he and Gillers have embarked on an affair. And it is around this time that Cwitz urges Gillers to branch out from playing music and begin hosting political shows that push the Nazi message overseas.

[Michael Flam]

This is Berlin calling. And I'd just like to say that when Berlin calls, it pays to listen.

[Ben Dickstein]

To what extent is Mildred a free agent? To what extent is she a puppet whose strings are being pulled by Cwitz, the puppet master? We really, really don't know.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

But this is the moment when listeners make meet the woman they will call Axis Sally, a radio host whose new assignment is to undermine American morale at every turn.

[Ben Dickstein]

Predator Badlands, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Here you're not the predator. You're the prey.

[Michael Flam]

Prey. Prey. Pray, pray, pray, pray, pray.

[Ben Dickstein]

Critics are saying it's epic, stunning and breathtaking.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Many have come here. None have survived.

[Ben Dickstein]

Predator Badlands now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney. Rated PG 13.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

In 1942, Mildred Gillers begins her career as Axis Sally, a Nazi propagandist. Richard Lucas told us some of her broadcasts are aimed at homesick American soldiers.

[Richard Lucas]

She did a show called Home Sweet Home, which was basically vignettes about being at home with your wife, with your girlfriend back at the farm, your mother cooking in the stove.

[Michael Flam]

Just imagine sitting out on the old baskart in the sweet old rocking chair, listening to the birds at twilight.

[Richard Lucas]

Basically designed to induce desire to come home for the servicemen.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Michael Flam said she also spins conspiracy theories.

[Ben Dickstein]

Most of her commentary centers around the idea that the British and the Jews have tricked the United States into fighting against their true allies, the Germans. On behalf of some either British conspiracy or it's a Jewish communist conspiracy.

[Michael Flam]

As one American to another, do you love the British? Well, of course the answer is no. Do the British love us? Well, I should say not.

[Ben Dickstein]

So the show sort of sprinkles some music. Some sort of personal appeals to these young men not to give up their lives. In some of the broadcasts, she casually uses anti Semitic slurs. At other points she asks why young American soldiers should give up their blood for the King.

[Michael Flam]

After all, let the British get out of their own masculine and let God save the King. It seems worthy of it.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Some of her content is aimed specifically at women on the American home front. She'd taunt them, conjuring images of the men they missed fighting overseas.

[Michael Flam]

Good evening, women of America. Well, you know, as time goes on, I think of you more and more. I can't somehow seem to get you out of your. Out of my head. You women in America waiting for the one you love.

[Richard Lucas]

She would do medical reports of captured servicemen who had been wounded. And she would get very graphic about the nature of their wounds, how they looked. And then she would say, women of America, you don't want your sons coming

[Michael Flam]

home crippled, useless for the rest of their lives. For whom? For Franklin D. Roosevelt and Churchill and a Jewish cohort.

[Richard Lucas]

She hated Roosevelt. Part of the propaganda line of Germany was that Roosevelt was indeed a Jew. That he was in league with the international Jewish conspiracy. And that this was a war between Germany and worldwide Jewry.

[Michael Flam]

Sacrifice by Franklin D. Roosevelt PERISHEL and the FRINGES

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

these propaganda broadcasts are good for Gillers career

[Ben Dickstein]

very quickly. Mildred is Reichsradio's highest paid performer. So for the first time in her life, she achieves, you know, not just popularity, but also economic security. She can finally support herself and live the lifestyle that she had always dreamed of having.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Gillers is certainly living a glamorous life. She's invited to exclusive cocktail parties, put up in a fancy apartment, granted extra food rations. And she gets other special privileges. She can read American magazines, which are otherwise banned. To get information for her broadcasts. And she's even given access to German intelligence. So that she can taunt the soldiers in real time with real information about what they're facing in battle. As soldiers later told interviewers with the Veterans History Project.

[Michael Flam]

She would tell us where we were going to go, where we were going to bomb. She knew.

[Sally Helm]

And where she got her information, I

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

don't know, but she got it.

[Michael Flam]

Then she Sort of signed off saying,

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

well, we know where you're coming and

[Michael Flam]

we'll be there to greet you. We'll see you tomorrow. What was so bad about this was she was right so much of the time.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Some soldiers come to loathe this Axis Sally.

[Ben Dickstein]

They call her the Berlin.

[Michael Flam]

Some of this stuff was really tough to listen to. She would say, lieutenant Tom Jones, do you know that your best friend back home is fooling around with your wife? And that kind of stuff she would throw at the guys and it would tear them up.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Gillers keeps at it until the very end. In 1944, the war is undeniably headed towards an Allied victory. On the eve of the D Day invasion in Normandy, France, Reichsradio airs a radio drama with Gillers in the leading role.

[Michael Flam]

We now present a special feature program, Vision of Impatience, produced by by the radio players of the German shockwave station in Berlin.

[Richard Lucas]

It was written by her lover, Max Otto Koitz, and she acted as the mother of a boy who is on a ship going from Britain to the D Day invasion. And the intent was to convince men that they were going to their deaths. She played a mother back in the United States. She dreams of the boy drowning after a German ship sinks his boat. So most of it is her being hysterical at the death of her son.

[Michael Flam]

If something happens to Alexandra.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Around the time of that radio drama, Gillers and Coyschwitz make what will be one of their last propaganda efforts. They start visiting American prisoner of war camps in Germany to record interviews with injured troops.

[Ben Dickstein]

What Cischwitz and Gillers were hoping was that they might be able to entice some soldiers to make anti US statements to criticize the war.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

That effort mostly fails. Gillers is pretending to sympathize with the gis, but a lot of them see right through her. One even passes her a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes that is filled with horse manure.

[Ben Dickstein]

During those visits to the POW camps, Mildred often poses as a Red Cross volunteer.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

So she lies.

[Ben Dickstein]

Yes, and that's going to be important later.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Very soon after that visit, Gillers suffers a personal tragedy. Coischewitz suddenly dies. She's beside herself. And also anyone in Germany who's paying attention can see that the Allies are closing in. In May of 1945, Berlin falls. Russian troops enter Reichs Radio. But Gillers manages to escape out the station's back door. She dodges the city's occupying troops for some time, but in 1946, American officials track her down.

[Ben Dickstein]

She was hiding under an assumed name. She has very few possessions, although she does have this photograph of Cuschwitz, her great love.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Gillers is brought back to the States and locked up in a U.S. army prison. In 1949, she stands trial for treason. By the time Gillers appears in the courtroom, public understanding of Nazi atrocities is widespread. Americans have learned about the German concentration camps. And the millions of Jewish people who died in them.

[Ben Dickstein]

And so suddenly, what Mildred was saying during World War II, which may not have been that different from what people were hearing from friends or family or neighbors or at the country club. Now it's really beyond the pale. Mildred will always maintain that she had no idea about the fate of the Jews. She had no. No understanding of the Holocaust. But certainly she had to know how difficult life was becoming in Nazi Germany for German Jews.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Right. You're saying she can't be living in Berlin for the years that she is. And not see that playing out very publicly.

[Ben Dickstein]

Not as a prominent member of Reich's radio. And not as someone who is fluent in the German language.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

There are no Jewish jurors at Gillers trial. The judge says he doesn't think they'd be able to be fair. And he dismisses them. Gillers defense lawyers argue that she hadn't acted against her country. She just talked. But the government says words have consequences.

[Ben Dickstein]

Mildred's broadcasts did at least potentially affect public opinion in the United States, affect home front morale. And possibly even affect the morale of US soldiers in the field.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Gillers attorney says she had no choice but to obey. If she'd refused to do those broadcasts, the Nazis would have thrown her in prison or worse. And anyway, Gillers insists she's an artist

[Ben Dickstein]

and a performer, not a propagandist.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

But the government prosecutor uses Gillers own words against her. He has a phonograph brought into the courtroom and 40 sets of headphones. Jurors listen to recordings of Gillers on the radio. Urging American GIs to give up the fight. Slinging anti Semitic slurs, denouncing President Roosevelt. Those recordings are very damaging to Gillers case. But they are not enough to prove treason.

[Ben Dickstein]

You must have two direct eyewitnesses. It's in the Constitution. You can look it up. Court of law.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Wow. Eyewitnesses. That's tough when you have a lot of ear witnesses, but you're alone in the studio.

[Ben Dickstein]

That's exactly right. You have ear witnesses, but no eyewitnesses.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

But some, some people did see her. Those prisoners of war. Several of them testify about how Gillers posed as a Red Cross volunteer. They even described that cigarette pack with the horse Manure. And the prosecution tracks down one person who was in the studio with Gillers, a fellow actor in that radio drama where Gillers played a grieving mom. The jurors listen to that recording and hear evidence that the point of this broadcast was to try and thwart the American D Day invasion. In the end, that is enough.

[Ben Dickstein]

And so here is the irony. She is eventually convicted on her sole charge of treason for a radio drama in which she performed words that were written for her, a scripted drama.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

On that one charge, Gillers is found guilty. On the others, which cover the many hours she spent speaking freely in favor of the Nazis, not reading a script. On those charges, she is acquitted. Gillers is sentenced to 10 to 30 years in a federal prison. Not the worst one.

[Ben Dickstein]

Sometimes described as Club Fed, in fact resembles a liberal arts college, although it has barbed wire around it on the outside.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

She takes classes, converts to Catholicism, and after 12 years, she's released on parole. She becomes a teacher at a convent in Ohio.

[Ben Dickstein]

The condition of her parole is that she maintain a low profile. She gives a few interviews, but she's very careful to comply with the terms. I will say that in her few public statements, she expresses no remorse, no regret for her actions, says that she would do again precisely what she had done. But she does, at whatever personal cost, avoid her natural inclination to seek the limelight, and instead, she complies with the government's requirements.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Gillers will die alone in 1988, Biographer Richard Lucas told us, you can't tell the story of Mildred Gillers without at least acknowledging the pressures that she faced. She was alone. She didn't have a lot of money. She fell in love with Max Koischewitz. And she was corrupted by fame, by getting what she'd longed for since childhood, the attention of an audience. But Lucas also told us that after he'd published that biography, he met a woman on his book tour who said she had spent a lot of time with Gillers in her final years. And she told a story about the way that Gillers had revealed herself in

[Richard Lucas]

an unguarded moment when she had visitors, she would bring out a teacup that she would serve her guests with. And it was important to her because it was from a night that she had met Himmler, the head of ess. That story completely turned around my perspective of her. I think I would have written the epilogue a little bit differently about culpability and about what she knew and when she knew it.

[Narrator (likely Sally Helm or main host)]

Thanks for listening to History this week for more moments throughout history that are also worth watching. Check your local TV listings to find out what's on the History Channel today. If you want to get in touch, please shoot us an email at our email address, historythisweekistory.com or you can leave us a voicemail 212-351-0410 Special thanks to our guests Richard Lucas, author of Axis the American Voice of Nazi Germany, and Michael Flam, professor of History at Ohio Wesleyan University. Thanks also to the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress, which supplied the interviews you heard from American troops recalling Axis. Sally those veterans were John A. Sarovich, Eli Drapkin and Shields Wilson. And thank you to Sydney Minix and to all the UN other listeners who voted in our pitchathon. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was story edited by Jim o' Grady and sound designed by Brian Flood. History this week is also produced by Corinne Wallace and me, Sally Helm. Our associate producer is Emma Fredericks, who initially pitched this story. Our senior producer is Ben Dickstein, our supervising producer is McCamey Lynn and our Executive producer is Jesse Katz. Don't forget to subscribe. Subscribe, rate and review History this week, wherever you get your podcasts and we will see you next week.