Mildred Gillars

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"Axis Sally" (November 29, 1900 – June 25, 1988) was a female radio personality during World War II. Born Mildred Elizabeth Sisk in Portland, Maine, she took the name Mildred Gillars as a small child after her mother remarried and moved to New York City where young Mildred dreamed of becoming an actress, but she met with little success.

Gillars studied drama at Ohio Wesleyan University, but dropped out before graduating. She found employment in Europe, working as an English instructor at the Berlitz School of Languages in Berlin, Germany, in 1935. Later, she accepted a job as an announcer and actress with Radio Berlin, where she remained until Nazi Germany fell in 1945.

With her sultry voice, Gillars was a well-known propagandist to Allied troops, who gave her the nickname "Axis Sally." In her broadcasts, Gillars introduced herself as "Midge at the mike". Her most infamous broadcast was made on May 11, 1944, prior to the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France. Gillars portrayed an American mother who dreamed that her son had been killed in the English Channel. An announcer's voice made the message clear: "The D of D-Day stands for doom… disaster… death… defeat… Dunkerque or Dieppe."

Gillars' last broadcast was on May 6, 1945, just two days before the German surrender. After the war, Gillars was captured and eventually flown back to the United States in 1948. She was charged with 10 counts of treason, although she was actually only tried for eight.

Prosecutors alleged that Gillars had signed an oath of allegiance to Nazi Germany and that she had posed as a worker for the International Red Cross in order to record messages from American soldiers that could be converted into propaganda.

Gillars' defense attorneys argued that her broadcasts stated an unpopular opinion but did not rise to the level of treason, and that she was under the sway of her former romantic interest, Max Otto Koischwitz, a German national whom she had met at Hunter College in New York City.

The sensational, six-week trial ended on March 8, 1949. After long deliberations, the jury convicted Gillars on only one count of treason.

Gillars was sentenced to 10 to 30 years. She became eligible for parole in 1959, but did not pursue it until two years later when she applied for parole and received it. Gillars taught music to kindergarteners at a Catholic school (Our Lady of Bethlehem) in Columbus, Ohio, and returned to Ohio Wesleyan to earn a degree in 1973.

Whereas the best-known foreign broadcaster for Germany, William Joyce or "Lord Haw-Haw," was hanged by the British for treason after the war, Mildred Gillars died of natural causes at the age of 87.