Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany

by Richard Lucas

It was Halloween day in a camp near Frankfurt-on-the-Oder when Midge, the Professor and two accompanying technicians had their first meeting with a group of American prisoners of war. The group had lunch with an imprisoned American corporal and some of his comrades. Mildred remembered the meal as “quite gay and friendly” as the men expressed surprise at the sound of a woman speaking English. Despite some early reluctance, a few prisoners eventually agreed to record messages. Unfortunately, the Foreign Office official who approved the trips listened to the recordings and complained about the lack of political and military content. The criticism led to the introduction of commentary at the beginning and end of each broadcast, where Midge would customize the broadcast to suit the current propaganda line.

  Mildred’s radio series Christmas Bells of 1943 debuted on the first Sunday of December and continued through the holiday season. German Radio’s Yuletide gift to GI wives and mothers was monitored by shortwave listeners in the United States and Canada. The listeners sent letters to the families relaying their words. A number of these messages reached the prisoners’ families thanks to the efforts of these dedicated hobbyists. The Foreign Office and the Reichsradio’s management viewed the Christmas offering as a propaganda success and immediately granted permission to the couple to gather interviews for a program to be called Easter Bells of 1944.

  Holland provided a welcome refuge from the dangers of Berlin and became the couple’s favorite destination for work and play. Their first visit took place on November 29—just in time to celebrate Midge’s 43rd birthday. After a short visit to a camp in Braunschweig in January, they returned to Hilversum on February 19—this time to celebrate O.K.’s birthday. Seven months after the death of her mother, Koischwitz’s eldest daughter Stella joined the couple for a ten-day trip. The grueling treks to the prison camps and hospitals left little time to sleep, and there were signs that the strain of the past months had an effect on the Professor’s health. Koischwitz had been diagnosed with incipient tuberculosis in 1929 and the privations of war did not help his already fragile constitution. Mildred regularly petitioned Adelbert Houben, the second in command of the Overseas Service, for an advance on travel expenses. She explained later that the money was spent obtaining food for the Professor from the black market:

  Professor Koischwitz was not a very strong person and needed very nourishing food, of which he didn’t have too much in Germany, and to buy the type of food which he needed and which would give him strength was very, very expensive. I didn’t want him to feel what a burden it was on me. I have always spent money for other things and not for food, but I cooperated with him, and our eating in Holland was a very expensive affair.197

  Houben was annoyed by her constant requests for additional funds and even asked Mildred’s friend and colleague Hans von Richter for an explanation of where the money was going. At the time, Midge was earning a combined sum that rivaled only the salary of Dr. Anton Winkelnkemper, the head of the entire Overseas Service who reported directly to Goebbels. In the Netherlands, she was able to obtain enough food to sustain her beloved Professor, but by the time she returned to Germany she was “broke as usual.”198

  Three weeks before Easter, the two broadcasters traveled to Pomerania to visit an Arbeitskommando (work detail) where twenty Americans were working on a large German estate. The visitors from Reichsradio dined with the wife of the estate owner and then went out to the barracks to visit the prisoners’ quarters, which Mildred cagily described as “bohemian.” Although this visit to the farm was reportedly a pleasant experience, it was a trip to the main camp in March 1944 that brought Mildred Gillars face to face with the anger and resentment of the men she entertained.

  Stalag IIB

  On an autobahn one and a half miles west of the city of Hammerstein sat one of the most brutal prisoner of war camps in Germany: Stalag IIB. Renowned for its cruelty, the camp was reeling from the execution of eight American prisoners in late 1943 for an “attempted escape.” American witnesses at the scene described the incident as cold-blooded murder rather than an escape attempt. Two of the dead soldiers were thrown into the latrine where they remained decomposing in the sun for days as a warning to the other prisoners.199

  Food rations were minimal, with each prisoner receiving 300 grams of bread and 500 grams of potatoes per day. Twice a week, they were given 300 grams of meat, 20 grams of margarine and a minimal amount of cheese once a week. The food was distributed once at midday with only ersatz coffee for breakfast. Only Red Cross food parcels—one per prisoner per week—kept the men from utter starvation. At war’s end, the US War Department cited the camp’s treatment of American prisoners as “worse… than at any other camp established for American POWs before the Battle of the Bulge. Harshness at the Stalag deteriorated into outright brutality and murder on some of the Kommandos. Beatings of Americans on Kommandos by their German overseers were too numerous to list but records indicate that 10 Americans in work detachments were shot to death.”200

  Master Sergeant Robert Ehalt was Adjutant to the Camp Officer at Stalag IIB in March 1944. Ehalt, taken prisoner at Anzio three months earlier, walked into the camp office to find Medical Officer Robert Capparell joined by a “Teutonic-looking” man and a woman. The man and woman were seeking recorded interviews with the prisoners for a special Easter broadcast. The man was introduced to the Americans as the editor of “O.K.” magazine. (“O.K.” or Overseas Kid magazine was a four to six page broadsheet edited by Koischwitz aimed at Allied prisoners of war and distributed throughout the German camps beginning in March 1943.)

  Mildred did not identify herself, and the American soldiers were immediately suspicious. She made no secret that she wanted the prisoners to say that the Germans were treating them well and giving them adequate food. After chatting with the officers for several minutes, she told them that she was born in Maine and had lived in Greenwich Village before the war. When Ehalt and Capparell asked her directly if she was Sally from the Sally and Phil show on the German radio, she quickly changed the subject. (That show, aka Jerry’s Calling, featured the woman who would become known as the Rome Axis Sally—Rita Luisa Zucca.)

  Convinced that the woman before them was none other than Axis Sally, Ehalt refused to permit the men to cooperate without first obtaining permission from the senior American officer in the region. They made a call to Colonel Drake, who was interned at Offlag 64 in Poland. A medical officer was called in to help verify that the voice on the line was indeed that of the colonel. While the Professor and the medical officer were speaking to Colonel Drake, Ehalt and Capparell engaged in small talk with the evasive woman. Annoyed that she kept referring to “we Americans” and “us Americans,” Capparell asked Mildred why she was freely walking around if she was such a good American. She only replied that she was an “idealist.”201 She noted that the conditions at the camp were not good and told them that she would do what she could to improve them.

  Koischwitz returned after a few minutes and told Ehalt that Colonel Drake said that he would leave it up to the US camp leadership to decide whether or not to participate in the recordings. Ehalt made the final decision and flatly refused. Koischwitz exploded in anger, grabbed his bag of equipment and announced that they were leaving. As they walked through a barracks holding over 250 American prisoners, the men howled, catcalled and shouted obscenities at Mildred and Koischwitz. In the midst of this torrent of abuse, one soldier handed her a gift—a carton of Chesterfield cigarettes. Thanking the soldier, she opened the box only to find it filled with horse manure. Revolted, she threw the “gift” to the ground and turned to the screaming prisoners saying “What a bunch of ungrateful people these American people are!”202

  Despite the fracas at Stalag IIB, their travels eventually yielded enough interviews to provide several programs for the Easter Bells show. On Easter Sunday, Mildred spent the entire day in the small makeshift studio in the post office basement assembling 28 programs of interviews with captured servicemen for future use. She describ
ed the day in an idyllic light:

  I started very early in the morning. Professor Koischwitz was in my room in Köenigs Wusterhausen. He had his watercolors with him and a little character doll, which I had brought from Holland; and while I was broadcasting he sat in my room and painted watercolors. And I rushed home at noon and got lunch, looked at the painting he had been doing and went back to the studio and broadcast some more. [I] came back and got dinner for us, and then went back to the studio, so that he was alone the whole of Easter Sunday with his painting.203

  The widowed Professor painted in the peace of Mildred’s room as Germany placed its hopes in an Atlantic Wall of steel and iron to halt an Allied invasion of France. It was April 19, 1944, and D-Day was less than eight weeks away.

  Medical Reports

  In late 1943, the German High Command requested that the Overseas Service broadcast medical reports of captured and injured Allied fliers shot down over Germany and German-occupied territory. In the hope of Allied reciprocation and propaganda gains, the name, service number and type of injury of the wounded were broadcast, as well as a description of their condition. The shows would highlight the humanitarian efforts of those German doctors and nurses who saved the lives of the captured airmen. Although the announcement of the names of three captured prisoners of war was standard boilerplate at the end of each English newscast since the beginning of hostilities, it was the first time that the wounded were used as a propaganda tool. Like a carrot dangled at the beginning of each broadcast, the news announcer held out the possibility of hearing the name of a loved one in return for not turning the dial each evening.

  The Medical Reports program was effective propaganda not only due to the details being given about the captured men but also the fact that the deliverer of the news was the woman now known to GIs throughout the European Theater as “Axis Sally.” The names were given to her by the military and occasionally the reports included the names of fliers who died in hospital. The horrible human damage of the war was described to the families of the dead and injured in grim, almost sadistic detail:

  And now my second death message concerns Pilot George E. Jones. I fortunately have his service number—that may help somewhat in identifying him—it is 13022168T43. Mr. Jones was brought on the 26th of November 1943. His left upper leg had been completely crushed; he had received severe injuries to the right leg and his left hand was also totally crushed. He died on the 27th of November 1943 and this report was made out by the doctors and went through on the 28th of November. Of course, you know that… ah… among fliers the pilot is the last one to bail out, and so of course naturally the machine can be in… a terrible state by the time he gets his parachute on and is ready to make what in this case was a fatal jump. I’m sorry, very sorry, that I don’t have the address of his parents and I do hope that they will get the news soon, although perhaps it is better for them if the news is somewhat delayed.204

  Her detailed descriptions of the wounds suffered by the captured men were tinged with cynicism and bitterness toward the men who brought America into the war. Staff Sergeant Manuel Rosen of Santa Monica, California was the subject of a message to his next-of-kin—his sister Sylvia Edinger:

  Miss Edinger, your brother got his left leg crushed below the knee and the right leg broken below the knee. Well, that’s pretty bad if he got both of his legs so badly wounded. Of course, the left one sounds bad where the doctors say that it was crushed below the knee. Let’s hope he won’t have to lose it, but I suppose it’s quite probable.205

  Her voice became strident and emphatic as she related the carnage she had witnessed in German hospitals and prison camps:

  How many very mutilated boys have I seen and they’ve said to me… “I don’t care how I get back… just so I get back.” You see that’s the way they think now. What do you suppose they’ll think in later years when there are no jobs for cripples? That’s the question.

  The reports also reflected her own bitterness toward America for the destruction that the United States had wrought in Germany:

  Here is word, now, for Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania… Johnsonburg… the report is about Lieutenant William H. Kupole or Lupole, L-U-P-O-L-E, I believe it is, born on the 14th of February, 1922 in Johnsburg, Pennsylvania. Well, that was a nice little Valentine for his mother at that time. And how little did she ever dream that she’d be asked to sacrifice him for Roosevelt and his Jewish cohorts. Well, he’s going to remember the American government for the rest of his life, for his right leg had to be amputated below the knee, and the anklebone in his left leg was broken. The left leg has been placed in a walking cast, and the patient is doing exercises with an artificial limb fitted to the right leg.… Now his mother lives at 235 West Center Street, in Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania…

  Well, Mrs. Lupole, you’ve seen nothing of this war. You only read Jewish propaganda in your newspaper. But if you’ve been listening to this broadcast then you know that for many weeks I went from war hospital to war hospital, from one prisoner-of-war camp to another prisoner-of-war camp in France and I saw your boys; saw the pitiful state of untold thousands of them.… Ah yes… only that is to say thousands I talk of. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them, scattered all over Europe, scattered all over the world, asked to sacrifice their youth, asked to sacrifice their future, because when they get back they will be in no state to take up a job of any consequence.

  The voice of Max Otto Koischwitz, the naturalized American citizen who turned his back on his adopted country dominates her message. His ideas, poured into the ear of his lover, were dutifully repeated in unaccented English for American consumption. Lambasting the country that denied the genius of National Socialism and cast aside one of its leading scholars, she further condemns the American people:

  And you people are so short-sighted. You know so little about politics, about history, about what is going on in Europe, about the great role which Germany is playing in the future of the Western Continent. Well, if you folks want to fight, to aid and abet the decline of the West, well you are certainly taking the right action. Germany has vision. Germany has culture. Germany has supplied all of Europe, to say nothing of America and other Western countries with culture. I ask you Americans. What have you done for posterity? Can you answer me? Here are the three things for which you people are known all over the world—money, jazz and Hollywood. Compare your contributions with the contributions of Germany to the world throughout the ages… and so you want to sacrifice your sons to try to destroy this great country, Germany? Folks, it is a responsibility that you should have never taken on your shoulders. It’s the blackest page in the world’s history. America should hang her head in shame.

  Think it over America. Will you?206

  Who was to blame for the carnage? Even the parents of the dead and wounded soldiers bear responsibility:

  Well, after all, you American parents wanted it, didn’t you? And so day after day your boys have to pile through showers of flak… thousands and thousands of feet up in the air… sometimes the ship explodes, they’re burned alive in the airplane or they bail out and only break their legs, and arms, and so on. Well, you seem to think you’ve got a grudge against Germany? You prefer perhaps the Jews? You’d like to crony around with them. You prefer Communism. You prefer Bolshevism. Well… that’s no America for me, I must say, and I’d rather die for Germany than live for one hundred years on milk and honey in the Jewish America of today.207

  At her very core, Mildred Gillars was a survivor. The notion that she would “die for Germany” rather than live in America rings false, as if it were scripted by Koischwitz—a man who had left the “milk and honey” of America for the vision and culture of the Fatherland.

  The Mystery of Axis Sally

  Across Sicily, Italy and France, the GIs knew the unmistakable voice of “Axis Sally.” The sobriquet came into wide use after the November 8, 1942 landing of Allied troops in North Africa. Aided by intelligence provided by the German military
and its allies, Sally seemed to intuitively know the movements of US ships, transports, men and material even before they reached their destination. William Scofield, an American soldier in Italy at the time, recalled the frustration of the military men when encountering that “all-knowing” voice:

  When we had been sailing several North Atlantic convoys our orders for this convoy were to go into the Mediterranean. And I recall that as we went through Gibraltar, through the strait, there were three or four Spanish fishing boats, so of course they immediately put ashore so they could relay their news to Berlin as to what was going on, which the Spaniards did all the time. And aboard our ship, we were saying “Well, wonder how long before we’re going to hear about this from ‘Axis Sally’.” And within an hour and a half or so, we’re listening to the short wave and on she came describing in detail what our convoy was like. We had just passed through Gibraltar, the types of ships, the number of ships and so forth and what the deck cargos were, so in that sense they [the broadcasts] had a very irritating role….208

  Other ex-GIs recalled similar instances. Sam Resnick, an American soldier in the 100th Infantry Division, had been dispatched to France under a shroud of secrecy. The men traveled without their insignias and identification papers in unmarked transports. No stone was left unturned to ensure that their arrival in Marseilles went undiscovered by the enemy. As the men listened to the swing music broadcast by Berlin Radio in a small French village, a voice suddenly came over the air. It was the familiar voice of Axis Sally: “The men of the 100th Infantry Division are welcome to France and I hope you have a good night’s sleep on the outskirts of the village of [she identifies the village] because you will need all of your strength tomorrow.”209