Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany (19 page)

Although some of her colleagues did transfer to the Black Forest operation, it was clear that Mildred was no longer willing to bend to a regime whose time was short. Her resistance would increase in January 1945 when she would be forced to associate for the first time with a man she deemed to be a traitor.

Lieutenant Monti Reports for Duty

On October 2, 1944, an American flier based in Karachi went AWOL (absent without leave). Lt. Martin James Monti, a St. Louis native and ardent isolationist, had enlisted as an air cadet in 1943 at a time he was certain to be drafted. A difficult and undisciplined soldier, Monti was posted to India while many of his friends in training were sent to the Italian front. After being denied a transfer request to Italy, he snuck aboard a military transport bound for Cairo, and made his way by land to Tripoli. He then boarded a ship to Naples where, once again, he requested a transfer and was denied. Unwilling to return to India, Monti commandeered a P-38 reconnaissance aircraft and flew it into enemy airspace. Landing the plane near Milan, Monti surrendered. His German interrogators were eventually convinced that his flight was a voluntary defection and began to look for a use for the young airman. A military propaganda unit steered Monti to the Overseas Service in the hope that he might have some value in its radio efforts. Although one manager of Reichsradio’s North American section, Heinrich Schafhausen, found Monti “immature and lacking in general education,” he was hired as a commentator for the USA Zone.
²⁴⁶

By January 1945 Monti had become the latest addition to the staff of American announcers at Reichsradio. Mildred viewed the lieutenant with intense suspicion:

Emboldened by Germany’s worsening position, Mildred gave Houben an ultimatum: “Either Monti is removed or I go.”
²⁴⁸
Houben could not possibly overturn a decision made by the highest levels of the propaganda apparatus—especially at the behest of a recalcitrant employee. Mildred stormed out of the office and announced, “I have made my last broadcast.”
²⁴⁹

Within days, she was called to Berlin to answer to Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, the Foreign Office’s liaison with the Propaganda Ministry for Overseas Broadcasting. Kiesinger (who went on to become the Chancellor of West Germany in 1966) tried to assuage her concerns about Monti, but to no avail. After the meeting at the Foreign Office she visited the Propaganda Ministry to collect her weekly food ration coupons. Horst Cleinow, the manager of the Overseas Service, ordered her food rations withheld until she returned to work.
²⁵⁰
A few days later, a letter arrived summoning her to an interview with the Gestapo. Mildred immediately telephoned Dr. Anton Winkelnkemper, the head of the broadcasting service and Cleinow’s superior, to plead her case:

Mildred narrowly escaped the consequences of her intransigence when the young American lieutenant turned out to be a total failure on the air. Due to a breathtaking lack of skill as a radio commentator and analyst, Monti was on the radio only a few times in early 1945. He proved to be a dull speaker with a limited intellect and an underwhelming command of the English language. Not long after his failure as a radio propagandist, he moved on to become one of the few Americans to join the
Waffen SS
. After the German surrender, US forces arrested Monti still dressed in his SS uniform. (In 1948 he was convicted of treason and sentenced to 25 years in prison, though was paroled in 1960.)

Meantime, Mildred feared that Monti could be a spy sent by the Allies posing as a defector, and if so he would be a witness to her actions. If he was a genuine defector, she could not afford to be associated with him. Her refusal to work with him could protect her from the testimony of a potential eyewitness, as well as support her contention that her wartime deeds were not motivated by treasonous intent. She could use the incident to point out a distinction that she had made long ago in her own mind:
Monti is a vile traitor but I am different—I am an entertainer.
Later, she would explain her visceral distaste for Monti by claiming “I don’t like unclean people.”
²⁵²

By February 1945, the German offensive in the Ardennes, known as the Battle of the Bulge, had been rolled back to its starting point, after it had only temporarily succeeded in delaying the Allies’ relentless advance toward the Rhine. Hans Fritzsche, the head of the Propaganda Ministry’s broadcasting division, authorized a travel pass for Mildred in preparation for the coming evacuation from Berlin. Once more, she visited Hans and Georgia von Richter’s home at Castle Schackendorf.

The terrible pounding of day and night air attacks convinced the couple that the time had come to flee to the west. Suffering from nervous exhaustion, the von Richters were leaving for a posh sanatorium in the southwest spa town of Bad Mergentheim. The meeting was bittersweet for Mildred, who had dined with Koischwitz at the von Richters’ home in happier days. As Hans von Richter said farewell, he took Midge’s hand and tried to relieve her fears:

Leaving Mildred with the assurance of their undying loyalty and friendship, the couple drove off to escape the coming storm.

By April 16, the long-awaited Soviet advance into the capital had begun. Hitler issued a final decree to the men on the frontlines:

That night, Mildred left her apartment at 7 Bonnerstrasse for the last time. Her furniture and remaining possessions were left behind. With the Soviets only kilometers away from the outskirts of the city, the radio studio was her only refuge. As a military target, the radio facilities were protected against Russian shelling and air attack. In late April, musician Walter Leschetitzky was patrolling the
Köenigs Wusterhausen
studios. In the midst of the final battle, the
SS
and
Volkssturm
were conscripting every man and boy regardless of age or condition. Those who refused to join in the defense of the city were hanged for “desertion,” “treason” or “defeatism.” Leschetitzky was one of those conscripted and assigned to the Combat Transmitter group (SS) to defend the radio station. Despite the massive artillery barrage, Reichsradio was still holding on.

Two years earlier, Leschetitzky had been a musician with the Lutz-Templin Orchestra, a fifteen-piece band that provided much of the accompaniment for Midge’s
Home Sweet Home
program. During his days as a musician for the show, he never spoke to the shapely brunette in the announcer’s booth. He would see her face one more time as the Reich fell. As Leschetitzky made his way through the upper floor of the building, he discovered an extremely distressed woman hiding in the nearly empty broadcasting house. He related his story to military interrogators after the war:

Suddenly, a tank alarm sounded and Leschetitzky left the woman to return to his post. A few days after this encounter, a terrified Mildred Gillars ended her broadcasting career—leaving through the studio’s back exit as the Red Army stormed through the front door.
²⁵⁵

In Berlin, Soviet troops had also closed in on the bunker in which the Nazi high command huddled. Hitler, along with Eva Braun, committed suicide on April 30, and the next day Goebbels did likewise, after first killing his six children and his wife.

Radio Fugitives

The unconditional surrender of all German forces on May 8 turned the American and British radio commentators for Reichsradio into fugitives. Robert H. Best, Douglas Chandler, Frederick Kaltenbach, William Joyce (“Lord Haw Haw”), Margaret Joyce (“Lady Haw Haw”), Ezra Pound, John Amery and others went into hiding at various points across the decimated Reich. One by one, they would be tracked down to answer for their crimes. Unlike their American counterparts, the British government was not averse to administering the hangman’s noose to their radio propagandists.

William Joyce was arrested on May 28, 1945 when he made the mistake of speaking in English to two British officers looking for firewood in a forest near Flensburg on the Danish border. The two Tommies were shocked to hear the unmistakable voice of “Lord Haw Haw” from the bedraggled refugee, and immediately asked if he was William Joyce. When he reached into his pocket to retrieve the false identity papers supplied to him by the Nazis, one of the soldiers opened fire and wounded Joyce in the hand. During a three-day trial at the Old Bailey, it was discovered that the accused had actually been born in New York City (making him legally an American citizen). Nevertheless, William Joyce was found guilty of treason and sent to the gallows on January 3, 1946.

Another Briton, John Amery, fared no better. The troubled son of an English statesman who had fought alongside Franco in the Spanish Civil War, Amery turned on King and Country to broadcast for the Nazis. He was notable for his recruitment of British prisoners of war for his brainchild—“The Legion of St George.” Later known as the British Free Corps, or
Freikorps
, the “Legion of St George” was a National Socialist paramilitary force assembled to join forces with the Germans against the Bolshevik enemy to save Western civilization. Amery, accompanied by a lovely young Frenchwoman, traveled to prisoner-of-war camps across the Reich to convince the unstable of mind and conviction to join his motley band. After the war, Amery stood in the dock for only eight minutes when he shocked the court and the nation by pleading guilty to treason. British law did not allow an alternative sentence for the crime. A guilty plea was tantamount to suicide. Three weeks later, Amery was executed.

Although the American radio traitors were sought out and arrested as swiftly as their British counterparts, the question of what to do with them was a troublesome one for the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) and the US Justice Department. As early as 1943, there had been an active debate in the Attorney General’s office over whether a conviction could be won on the merits of “mere words” broadcast over the radio. In past cases, the expression of unpopular political opinion during wartime had been insufficient to reach the level of treason. Justice Department attorney Oscar R. Ewing convinced a doubtful Attorney General Frances Biddle that technological advances such as radio meant that words and ideas damaging to the war effort could be spread far and wide—and thus provide the “aid and comfort” required by the Constitution to prove treason. Ewing recalled his discussions with the Attorney General: