Subscribers can listen to the audio of today’s post here.
Iva “Tokyo Rose” Toguri, an American citizen and Japanese radio broadcaster during World War II, was wrongfully imprisoned. But “Axis Sally”? She went full fucking Nazi and deserved the prison time.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: March 10, 1949--
Mildred Gillars was born in Maine in 1900; her life was marked by frequent failure. She studied drama at Wesleyan University in Ohio but dropped out to move to New York, then had little success in theatre. She tried Paris and Algiers, but success remained elusive. In 1933 she moved to Germany to study music but ended up being an English teacher at the Berlitz School in Berlin. She would only find the fame she sought by becoming a mouthpiece for the fucking Nazis.
At the outbreak of the war the U.S. was telling its citizens to leave all German territories. Her fiancé was a German citizen and he said if you go back to ‘murica we’re done. So she stayed and he was sent to the Eastern front and he died boo fucking hoo.
Gillars was working as an announcer for German State Radio, and at first her broadcasts weren’t political, but that changed in 1942 when the program director, who Mildred was fucking, launched a new show called Home Sweet Homewith Mildred as co-star to broadcast Nazi propaganda. Her GI audience gave her several names, including the “Bitch of Berlin,” but Axis Sally was what really stuck. And Gillars relished in the name, because when her Italian American counterpart started broadcasting from Rome using her Sally name, Mildred was pissed.
Gillars did her best to manipulate American soldiers with her broadcasts, endeavoring to make them homesick. One of the things she regularly said was how much cock the soldiers’ sweethearts and wives were getting back home. You’re here fighting and they’re back home fucking, she often told listeners. And even if you do make it home, she’s not gonna want you anymore, especially “if you boys get all mutilated and do not return in one piece.”
Her broadcasts spread fear and defeatism, seeking to sow doubt among American soldiers in their leaders and their missions. She was antisemitic as fuck. She also toured POW camps, pretending to be a member of the International Red Cross, to interview prisoners. She then warped those interviews to her own purposes, editing and broadcasting them to make it seem like they were well-treated and sympathetic to the goddamn Nazis. Her most infamous broadcast came a few weeks before D-Day. She starred in a radio play designed to spread fear, pretending to be a mom who had nightmares that her son died invading France. She kept broadcasting until two days prior to Germany’s surrender.
After the war she was arrested and tried in the U.S. for eight counts of treason. During the trial it was revealed she’d made an oath of allegiance to motherfucking Hitler himself. She was found guilty on March 10, 1949, of only one count and sentenced to 10 to 30 years. She served 12 years then upon her release went to live in a convent.
Support keeping this daily column free and get access to subscriber only content:
Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.