Frederick Rasmussen: Let's Not Forget Axis Sally
The death this week of Toguri D'Aquino, who was better known as Tokyo Rose, was the last of the infamous World War II enemy radio propagandists. She was 90.
Axis Sally, her sultry-voiced European counterpart who broadcast for Radio Berlin during the war years, was actually Maine-born Mildred Elizabeth Sisk.
Born in Portland and raised in New York City and Ohio, she later took the name of Mildred Gillars after her mother remarried.
Gillars had planned to be an actress and studied drama at Ohio Wesleyan University. After dropping out of college in the late 1920s, she traveled to Europe and then returned to New York, where she worked as a bit player in musical comedies, stock companies and vaudeville.
In the early 1930s, while studying at Hunter College, Gillars fell in love with Max Otto Koischwitz, her professor, who had been born in Germany and was a naturalized American citizen. He later renounced his citizenship and returned to Germany.
In 1935, Gillars took a job in Berlin teaching English at the Berlitz School and then accepted a position as a radio announcer and actress for Radio Berlin, where Koischwitz was an official with the Nazi Radio Service.
"This was a job more to her liking, and she stayed with it until the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945," wrote Dale P. Harper in 1995 in World War II magazine.
"Gillars' propaganda program was known as Home Sweet Home and usually aired sometime between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. daily. Although she referred to herself as 'Midge at the Mike,' GIs dubbed her Axis Sally," he wrote.
Beginning on Dec. 11, 1941, and continuing through the end of the Third Reich in early May 1945, powerful radio transmitters made it possible for listeners in Europe, North Africa and the U.S. to hear Gillars' particularly cruel broadcasts, in which she urged American servicemen to surrender and issued anti-Semitic diatribes against Franklin D. Roosevelt.
American flight crews on early-morning bombing runs deep into the heart of Germany would tune into Radio Berlin -- until observing radio silence once over occupied territory -- to listen to Axis Sally's broadcasts, which she mixed with recordings of melancholy love songs and American big-band music.
"Good morning, Yankees. This is Axis Sally with the tunes you like to hear, and I welcome you from Radio Berlin. I note that the 461st is en route this morning to Linz, where you will receive a warm welcome," Gillars said in one broadcast....
Read entire article at Baltimore Sun
Axis Sally, her sultry-voiced European counterpart who broadcast for Radio Berlin during the war years, was actually Maine-born Mildred Elizabeth Sisk.
Born in Portland and raised in New York City and Ohio, she later took the name of Mildred Gillars after her mother remarried.
Gillars had planned to be an actress and studied drama at Ohio Wesleyan University. After dropping out of college in the late 1920s, she traveled to Europe and then returned to New York, where she worked as a bit player in musical comedies, stock companies and vaudeville.
In the early 1930s, while studying at Hunter College, Gillars fell in love with Max Otto Koischwitz, her professor, who had been born in Germany and was a naturalized American citizen. He later renounced his citizenship and returned to Germany.
In 1935, Gillars took a job in Berlin teaching English at the Berlitz School and then accepted a position as a radio announcer and actress for Radio Berlin, where Koischwitz was an official with the Nazi Radio Service.
"This was a job more to her liking, and she stayed with it until the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945," wrote Dale P. Harper in 1995 in World War II magazine.
"Gillars' propaganda program was known as Home Sweet Home and usually aired sometime between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. daily. Although she referred to herself as 'Midge at the Mike,' GIs dubbed her Axis Sally," he wrote.
Beginning on Dec. 11, 1941, and continuing through the end of the Third Reich in early May 1945, powerful radio transmitters made it possible for listeners in Europe, North Africa and the U.S. to hear Gillars' particularly cruel broadcasts, in which she urged American servicemen to surrender and issued anti-Semitic diatribes against Franklin D. Roosevelt.
American flight crews on early-morning bombing runs deep into the heart of Germany would tune into Radio Berlin -- until observing radio silence once over occupied territory -- to listen to Axis Sally's broadcasts, which she mixed with recordings of melancholy love songs and American big-band music.
"Good morning, Yankees. This is Axis Sally with the tunes you like to hear, and I welcome you from Radio Berlin. I note that the 461st is en route this morning to Linz, where you will receive a warm welcome," Gillars said in one broadcast....