A story of redemption:
A story of redemption how a woman dishonored her country by her choices, felt its wrath, and suffered in silent penance until her death Havertown PA, November 23, 2010 Axis Sally The American Voice of Nazi Germany (Casemate Publishers
her country by her choices, felt its wrath, and suffered in silent penance until
her death
Havertown PA, November 23, 2010 – Axis Sally: The
American Voice of Nazi Germany (Casemate Publishers ISBN:
978-1-935149-43-9) by Richard Lucas is the true story of Mildred Gillars, the
Maine-born, Ohio-bred woman who went to Hitler’s Germany in 1934 to study music
and fell in love with a German citizen. At the outbreak of war in 1939, while
the last Americans returned home, Gillars elected to stay in Germany hoping for
marriage. Although her fiancée died during the war, a charming former Hunter
College Professor stepped into the breach. However, Max Otto Koischwicz already
had a wife and much bigger plans for Gillars. He enlisted her in the German
overseas radio in Berlin where, under his leadership, her position as a simple
announcer escalated into master propagandist—becoming the messenger of Nazi
propaganda and doom to the American GI.
Gillars, a failed Broadway actress, learned fast and
used her sexy, soothing voice to taunt troops about the supposed infidelities of
their wives and girlfriends back home, as well as describing the horrible deaths
they were about to meet on the battlefield. Backed by German military
intelligence, “Axis Sally” was able to convey personal greetings to individual
US units that naturally caused anxiety among the troops who felt the Germans
knew exactly who and where they were.
At
the end of the war Gillars was captured by the Americans after a failed attempt
to pose as a refugee. She was returned to the U.S. to stand trial for the crime
of treason. Her 1949 trial captured the attention of a nation whose memory of
the horrors of war was still fresh. After a three-month trial, she was found
guilty and sentenced to 10–30 years. Paroled in 1961 after serving just 12
years, she quietly spent the remainder of her life as a music instructor in a
Catholic Girl’s school in Columbus, Ohio until her death in
1988.
Richard Lucas leaves no stone unturned in telling this
rich and compelling story of Axis Sally—a woman who attempted to
rebuild her life in the country she betrayed, after she had become one of the
most notorious Americans of the 20th century!
