mildred elizabeth gillars

Mildred elizabeth gillars

Her lawyer, James J. Laughlin, tells mildred elizabeth gillars judge that he wants to call President Harry S. When Adolf Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, and began the war, Gillars, an Ohio native, had been living in Germany for five years, and she chose to remain even after the last Americans departed the Nazi-run country. Inthe German state radio network hired Gillars, who started as a disc jockey and became a master propagandist for the Nazis while her lover, mildred elizabeth gillars, Max Otto Koischwitzprotected her.

It was and Axis Sally was, once again, on the air. Shortwave radio enthusiast Richard Lucas, doing promotional work for his new book on the infamous American broadcaster employed by the Nazis, did a double take when he saw her name surface, via Google Alert, on a neo-Nazi website. So it started to worry me quite a bit. Years earlier, Lucas had come across an online trove of the real broadcasts hosted by Axis Sally, whose messages were scripted by her married German lover to sow discord in the American armed forces and the homefront during the war. A freelance writer, Lucas used the recordings as an opportunity to dive into the true story of the woman behind the name, one Mildred Gillars. He combed through declassified federal documents and newspaper archives to write the first full-length biography on Axis Sally and her Reich Radio broadcasts—programs that ultimately made Gillars one of the few people ever convicted for treason in the United States. People are not black and white; there are all kinds of tradeoffs that lead them to become who they are.

Mildred elizabeth gillars

Mildred 'Axis Sally' Gillars taunted U. Her program was filled with hateful rhetoric directed against U. President Franklin D. Her radio broadcasts were heard not only by U. Girls, watch out! Hundreds of thousands of American servicemen in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and northwestern Europe listened to her broadcasts from to at the height of World War II. They instantly recognized both her distinctive voice and appealing format that encompassed Big Band-era tunes played by a live orchestra. Gillars began working at the German State Radio in as an announcer. He threatened to leave her if she returned to the States, so she stayed in Germany despite advice the following year from the U. State Department that American nationals return home. Her broadcasts initially were apolitical. Kiesinger became the chancellor of West Germany in

Woerheide organized wanted posters with Mildred elizabeth gillars picture to put up in Berlin, and the breakthrough came when he was informed that a woman calling herself "Barbara Mome" was selling her furniture at second-hand markets around the city.

Nicknamed "Axis Sally" by her American soldier listeners, she was found guilty of treason in a United States court after the war and spent twelve years in prison. Gillars was born on November 29, She was born as Mildred Elizabeth Sisk in Portland, Maine, to Mae Hewitson Sisk, a painter, and Vincent Sisk, an indifferent husband and father who didn't cherish the idea of having children. When Gillars was seven years old, her father abandoned the small family. When she was eleven, her name was changed to Mildred Gillars, after her mother officially divorced Vincent Sisk and married Dr. Robert Bruce Gillars, a dentist. The family eventually moved to Ohio.

Nicknamed "Axis Sally" by her American soldier listeners, she was found guilty of treason in a United States court after the war and spent twelve years in prison. Gillars was born on November 29, She was born as Mildred Elizabeth Sisk in Portland, Maine, to Mae Hewitson Sisk, a painter, and Vincent Sisk, an indifferent husband and father who didn't cherish the idea of having children. When Gillars was seven years old, her father abandoned the small family. When she was eleven, her name was changed to Mildred Gillars, after her mother officially divorced Vincent Sisk and married Dr. Robert Bruce Gillars, a dentist. The family eventually moved to Ohio.

Mildred elizabeth gillars

American-born radio personality who was convicted of wartime treason for broadcasting Nazi propaganda from Germany during World War II. Born Mildred E. Born in and raised in Portland, Maine, Mildred Gillars tried her hand at acting after college in both New York and Europe, with little success. In Germany at the onset of World War II , she worked as an English teacher before taking the radio position that made her an overnight success and would lead to her imprisonment for treason. Throw down those little old guns and toddle off home. There's no getting the Germans down. Her notoriety found its way back to the U.

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After her mother returned home to America in , Gillars never saw her again. She also gave piano lessons on Saturdays to inner-city children. In , Gillars left the United States again, residing first in Algiers where she found work as a dressmaker's assistant. In , she moved to France and lived in Paris for six months. All About History. Giller, Marc D. He and Counterintelligence Corps special agent Hans Winzen only had one solid lead: Raymond Kurtz, a B pilot shot down by the Germans, recalled that a woman who had visited his prison camp seeking interviews was the broadcaster who called herself "Midge at the Mike", and had used the alias Barbara Mome. Upon her release on July 10, , the former notorious Axis Sally began yet another remarkable stage of her most unusual journey through life. But Gillars had other ambitions; she dreamed of becoming a famous star of the stage. This name probably came when asked on air to describe herself, Gillars said she was "the Irish type… a real Sally.

Mildred 'Axis Sally' Gillars taunted U. Her program was filled with hateful rhetoric directed against U. President Franklin D.

She then began serving others by participating in religious services in jail. Most of the people who knew how to do radio, the dramatists, they left Germany by and went into exile. Gill, Neena —. Back to the issue this appears in. She was previously the assistant web editor, humanities, for Smithsonian magazine. Still, Gillars demonstrated a resourceful deviousness that greatly offended the stateside audience and the U. She converted from her native Episcopalian faith to Catholicism, receiving the sacraments of both baptism and confirmation in That woman right there! Gillars was born on November 29, For example, the Truman-era Marshall Plan was enacted to thwart the takeover of all of Europe by Stalin.

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