Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany (35 page)

She expressed her belief that there were lines that she simply would not cross, and it was particularly frightening to be in a position where she could not control the statements or actions of the woman in Rome. Mildred told of how she burst into the office of Adelbert Houben to demand that the woman stop using the name Sally.

Laughlin sought to expose the name and story of the “Rome Axis Sally,” even bringing up the name Rita Zucca in open court, but Judge Curran stepped in again to limit the scope of his questions. Again, Laughlin’s attempt to expose the arbitrary nature of the government’s treason prosecutions went nowhere. The court forbade him to address the issue of those American citizens (Zucca, Georgia von Richter, Constance Drexel, Jane Anderson,
et al
.) who broadcast for the Nazis but did not face trial in an American court.

In three and a half days of testimony, John Kelley rattled Mildred into several critical and damaging admissions. She acknowledged that the State Department asked all Americans on non-official business to leave Germany after the invasion of Belgium and Holland. She pleaded untruthfully for a thirty-day extension on her passport in order to raise funds for her passage to the United States. She also acknowledged that she had made no effort to ask the US Embassy for passage home after the Gestapo threatened her, just as she had made no effort to run into the arms of American forces liberating Paris in 1944. Asked why, she simply responded, “I didn’t want to be separated from Professor Koischwitz by any troops, because I wanted to be with Professor Koischwitz.”

Legally, the most devastating discovery of the Government’s case occurred when John Kelley introduced into evidence an expired passport found in the possession of Mildred’s block leader in Berlin. Although Mildred testified that she had no passport or papers identifying her as an American citizen after the vice consul “snatched” it, the revelation of the passport’s existence tore what was left of the defense’s case apart. At the end, her tired attempts to limit her answers to saccharine, flag-waving recitals of love for America met with solemn derision by prosecutor Kelley:

Exhausted and weeping, Axis Sally asked the judge for a recess. When the trial resumed, the intensity of the questioning did not let up. With eyes full of tears, she met the questioning with defiance. When the questions concerned the eldest daughter of Professor Koischwitz, the prosecutor hit the rawest of nerves. Stella Koischwitz was a teenager when Berlin fell to the Red Army, and Kelley claimed that the young girl cast her father’s mistress out of her apartment.

Mildred replied, “Stella was not there. Professor Koischwitz’s mother was there and she was frantic because Stella had disappeared. The streets of Berlin were strewn with naked corpses and dead horses—”

“Forget about the naked corpses,” Kelley interrupted, “and answer my question.”

Mildred straightened in her seat. “It was my own decision to leave.”

“When did you last see Stella?” Kelley shot back.

Again, she became evasive “If you have the testimony of Stella, I’d prefer that you and her—”

Furious, Kelley shouted at the defendant. “Will you please answer my question?”

White as a sheet, she asked the Judge, “And what happens if I refuse?”

After the lawyers approached the bench, the prosecutor withdrew the question, moving on to even more sensitive subjects—the most embarrassing aspect of her love for her “man of destiny.”

Her evasions ran so deep that she even attempted to deny that it was her voice on the recordings. Kelley read aloud from the transcript of the May 1943
Home Sweet Home
program that made such an impression at the start of the trial. “I love America but I do not love Roosevelt and all his kike boyfriends who have thrown us into this awful turmoil.”

“Did you say it?” Kelley pressed her again.

Flustered, she wavered, and once more, Judge Curran stepped in. “You heard the Government Exhibit #1 when it was played back? Is that your voice or not?”

Unbelievably, Mildred attempted to claim that she could not be sure. “But Your Honor, you can’t always know. I have had so much experience with broadcasting, and the voice of a girl whom I know very, very well, I have listened to her voice five times now, and I swear to you that I do not recognize her voice. If I hadn’t known that she had been in the studio…”

Even John Kelley seemed taken aback by this stunning denial of reality. “Just a minute, Miss Gillars. My question to you is: is that your voice that was played back to you?”

“Well, it seemed to be my voice,” she reluctantly admitted.
⁴³⁹

What logic there was to her defense had been pummeled away by Kelley’s deft cross-examination. Despite the obvious worldview behind her radio statements, she insisted that she never adhered to Nazi ideology and could not answer whether she had ever opposed Nazism or any of its measures, stating, “I don’t know how to answer that question, because to act in opposition would have meant death.”
⁴⁴⁰

Then Kelley turned to the question of anti-Semitism. Reading from transcripts of her most virulent broadcasts, Mildred took the mantle of avid anti-Communist at the dawn of the Red Scare. “I have made many statements about Communism and fighting on the German side against Communism, and that is what I meant at all times.”

Kelley did not retreat an inch. “You didn’t use the word ‘Communism’ very much, did you?”

“I used the word ‘Bolshevism’ more than Communism,” she shot back.

The prosecutor’s eyes met hers. “Your specialty was the word ‘Jew,’ wasn’t it?”

Quietly Mildred admitted, “I used it quite often.”
⁴⁴¹

He challenged her assertion that she temporarily quit her job in January 1945 because of the presence of the convicted traitor, Lt. Martin James Monti.

“Just why wouldn’t you have been glad to assist or help a spy—an American spy—in working for his country in Germany?”

She searched within herself for an answer.

“I don’t like unclean people.”
⁴⁴²

When Mildred’s testimony came to a close, John Kelley called Johannes Schmidt-Hansen as a rebuttal witness. Flown to the United States at government expense, Schmidt-Hansen was allegedly the man at Reichsradio who had demanded an oath of allegiance from Mildred in 1941. Laughlin requested that the former radio manager be brought in as a defense witness, but a lengthy interrogation by the FBI on his arrival from Germany changed that. Schmidt-Hansen took the stand and testified that he had no memory of requesting a written loyalty oath from his unruly American employee.

“Do you have any recollection of ever asking Miss Gillars to supply you with a statement or oath of allegiance to Germany?” the prosecutor asked.

Nervous and stammering, Schmidt-Hansen replied, “I do not recollect having asked—”

Kelley interrupted the witness and demanded a straight yes or no answer.

“No,” the thin, shaking German replied.

Laughlin sensed that the witness had been intimidated. Under cross-examination, Schmidt-Hansen’s certainty withered as he admitted that the incident might have indeed happened. It had been ten years since the event, he explained, and “it is impossible for any human to recall exactly such details. I do not deny that it might have been a matter of routine…a form letter for security reasons.”
⁴⁴³
Schmidt-Hansen also claimed that he could not remember if he discussed the oath with Mildred’s colleague, Erwin Christiani.

The defense recalled Erwin Christiani to the stand to rebut Schmidt-Hansen’s testimony. A few days earlier, he had told the court of Mildred’s fateful decision to remain in Germany: “She told me there was nothing to expect for her in America but she loves America and wanted to go home. But on the other hand, she loved her work in Germany and wanted to continue because so many people thought she was so good.”

Christiani told her it was “impossible for German forces to enter the US, and Mr. Roosevelt had said that American soldiers would not fight in Europe, so I was sure there would be no war. I told her I thought she would have a better future in Germany.”
⁴⁴⁴

Her loyal friend confirmed without question that Schmidt-Hansen had demanded the oath and was certain that he had spoken to the manager about it in December 1941.

Laughlin asked the radio engineer one final question: “Could she have stopped broadcasting for German Radio if she wanted to?”

Solemnly, Christiani shook his head. “No, she couldn’t.”
⁴⁴⁵

Several months after the end of the war, a German journalist and former RRG staff member named Hans König told American authorities that the imprisonment of Overseas Service employees for political crimes was not uncommon. “I have reason to believe that there was a high rate of convictions for political offenses with concentration camp sentences, as well as membership of resistance groups, among the foreign broadcasting staff. The wider horizons of the mainly non-Party staff members, subject as they were to draconian thought control and eavesdropping, bred a spirit of opposition among people of their intellectual training, especially when their professions and their life abroad had largely inclined them to liberal attitudes.”
⁴⁴⁶
US officials knew that the danger of arrest and deportation was a real one faced by all Overseas Service employees—German and non-German alike. No witnesses were made available to testify to the fate of those unfortunate Reichsradio employees. When testimony about the danger of refusing to broadcast was given by the defendant’s friends and colleagues, Judge Curran instructed the jury to disregard it.

James Laughlin made a valiant effort. In the face of Mildred’s frustrating reluctance to follow his direction and the judge’s active refusal to allow testimony favorable to his client, he pursued several arguments aimed at sowing seeds of doubt about her guilt. It became a defense built on shifting sands—torn between the stubborn pride of his client, the massive power and resources of the Federal government, and the rigidities of law and precedent. Disadvantaged by a lack of available witnesses, a Justice Department eager to provide incentives to German witnesses for their continued cooperation, and a lack of financial resources, Laughlin attempted to beat back a tidal wave of emotion-laden evidence with contradictory but fervent arguments.

His first core argument was that Mildred Gillars was always an American citizen during the time of her alleged treason. As a citizen of the United States, her constitutional rights were flagrantly violated by her arrest and three-year internment. At the same time, Laughlin argued that the oath of allegiance that his client allegedly signed after the Pearl Harbor attack was a legal renunciation of her citizenship in accordance with the 1940 Nationality Act. If the jury believed that Axis Sally was still an American citizen at the time of the broadcasts, then the Federal government did not treat her as one and violated her constitutional rights—rights including
habeas corpus
, unlawful search and seizure, self-incrimination and due process. If the jury believed that she had renounced her citizenship after December 7, 1941, then her arrest and incarceration were illegitimate—opening the door for an acquittal.