Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany (41 page)
Read Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany Online
Authors: Richard Lucas
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Bisac Code 1: BIO022000, #Biography, #History
The Mildred Gillars of 1949 would never have been described as having an “excellent attitude toward authority.”
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She seemed to find in the Catholic Church the same approbation and sense of purpose that she received as
“Midge at the Mike”
decades before. Gradually, her list of friends increased to include a handful of former schoolmates who remembered her from Ohio Wesleyan. One former classmate, however, was hesitant to reacquaint herself with Axis Sally. Dorothy Long explained her reluctance in 1966:
So far as I know, Mildred is still teaching in the Columbus convent. I have never seen her, I feel that I was never close enough to be a welcome visitor; that she would feel my visit was motivated only by curiosity, and the poor soul has had enough of that sort of thing. I do feel she has been the victim of her own desire for limelight and that possibly she wasn’t really intelligent enough to realize what a terrible thing she was doing as Axis Sally—or that the Nazis had flattered her enough that she thoroughly enjoyed her position.… Some people that I know have gone to see her, and say she is quite content…
In the early 1960s, Mildred brought students from Columbus to Ohio Wesleyan for classical music concerts. In later years, she performed in a local dramatic group that specialized in readings of Shakespeare. In the way that Charles Newcomb opened her eyes to the dramatic arts and Otto Koischwitz introduced her to German literature and philosophy, Mildred took on the role of mentor—advocating the importance of arts and letters in the lives of the young girls in her care. In her latest and final role, she was respected, needed, valued—even beloved.
In January 1967, a young UPI reporter named Helene Anne Spicer was given an assignment: to find and interview Axis Sally. In a phone interview in 2009, Spicer remarked that it was a common “joke” in the Columbus press corps to assign a cub reporter to track down the reclusive legend of World War II. A Roman Catholic with contacts in the Columbus diocese, Spicer located Axis Sally at the convent school and, to the surprise of her editors, was granted an interview. Knowing only Axis Sally’s reputation as a reviled traitor, Spicer found “a sweet, little old lady… nothing like what I expected.” The dignified and convincing woman before her seemed worlds away from the vicious propagandist of legend.
In a sparse living room with only two chairs and a fireplace, Spicer asked Axis Sally’s opinion on America’s latest foreign war: Vietnam. At a time when the conflict was tearing at the fabric of the nation’s body politic, any comment would have scuttled the intensely private life she had built since leaving prison and almost certainly jeopardize her parole.
Before Alderson, Mildred would not have hesitated to voice her opinion. Now, older and wiser as one who had felt the full brunt of the government’s ire, she replied, “Who am I to talk about wars? No one would be interested in what I have to say.”
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She limited her comments to another declaration of her innocence: “There is no doubt in my mind that I received an unfair trial,” she said. Her voice trailed off as if she finally recognized the futility of her protests. “It all happened so long ago…” she mused.
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Nevertheless, the 66-year-old seemed content with her obscurity:
Miss Gillars appeared at peace with the world. The tiny lines around her eyes were scars of laughter. She was dressed simply—a black skirt with a three-buttoned over jacket and white blouse. She wore just a touch of makeup and her grey, upswept hair was kept in place with a comb. She asked that no picture be taken of her.
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The school’s principal, Sister Mary Assumpta, told Spicer of the positive influence her infamous employee had on her students, remarking “She is definitely a good influence on the girls. She has developed their taste for art and literature.”
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In her first seven years at the convent, her salary had increased from $30 to $100 per month. Her duties expanded as well. By the late 1960s, Mildred was teaching English, German and French, piano, drama and choral music. On Saturdays, she taught piano at the Cathedral to inner city children. But the convent and the Order were facing challenging times. In 1961, the convent had an average of 30 high school-age girls in attendance, but the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and the loosening morality of American life took its toll on the Order of the Poor Child Jesus. By 1968, the number of high school girls interested in religious life attending the school fell to 11.
That year, Mildred suffered a detached retina and her doctor recommended immediate surgery. As local surgeons could only promise a 66% chance of success, she requested to see a California doctor who reattached retinas through a new method—laser technology. The doctor, profiled in
National Geographic
magazine, claimed a 90% success rate with the technique.
Her finances, precarious as always, got a much needed boost when her probation officer secured her Maine birth certificate and encouraged her to apply for Social Security and Medicare. A visit to the benefits office revealed that she had $450 in retroactive benefits coming—money that would be essential for her trip to the West Coast. In June 1968, she traveled to Palo Alto, California where she underwent successful laser surgery. She recovered in San Francisco, staying with a longtime friend, Sister Mary Clarice. Through that summer, she earned extra money babysitting or tutoring students recommended by the local nuns.
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In the autumn she returned to Columbus for the new school year but first stopped in Beckley, West Virginia to see her prison chaplain, Father Thomas Kerrigan.
Redemption
Sunday, June 10 1973 was commencement day at Ohio Wesleyan University. The audience was startled to see a 72-year-old woman with a deeply lined face and serene smile dressed in cap and gown. When her name was announced, she grinned broadly as she walked up to receive her degree at long last. It was an education that had an interregnum of fifty years, broken when a headstrong girl dashed off to Cleveland to begin what she hoped would be a stellar career as a stage actress.
That Sunday, most did not recognize the name of the scorned traitor of yesteryear. After the discord of the Vietnam and Watergate eras, it might not have mattered. University President Tom Wenzlau shook her hand and smiled. The University did not formally announce her graduation, but the wire services and the evening newscasts covered it uncritically. There was no public outcry. Walter Winchell had died the year before—a shell of the Red-baiting, flag-waving columnist who had flagellated Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose and countless others on a weekly basis. Drew Pearson, the columnist who supplied prosecutor Lamar Caudle with former POWs to testify against Axis Sally, passed away in 1969. After the graduation ceremony, one editorial writer wrote charitably of Axis Sally’s “redemption”: “Hers is a story of penance, reparation, and now, deserved joy and forgiveness from others.”
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Mildred attended classes at several local institutions in order to complete her degree. One of her teachers at Otterbein College was Senior Lecturer Robert Boyer, who gradually became aware of his senior student’s checkered past:
It was a rather slow process. At first, there were just some hints that she had been in Berlin when Americans were not in Berlin for the most part. That she had served some time in what she called the “ladies finishing school,” which I found later, was Alderson prison for women in West Virginia. Then finally, she told me one day she was being given a degree from Ohio Wesleyan—it was then that she got a little bit of publicity. I actually saw her on the Walter Cronkite evening news and was quite surprised, although, as I say, there had been hints.
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For the most part, the old woman was unapologetic about her past actions in Germany. In time, Mildred explained to Boyer the factors that led to her decision to remain in Germany:
[Mildred] lived apparently rather an impoverished life. I think it is important to know that at the middle of the war perhaps 1942, 1943, she was making the equivalent of $1,000 a month from foreign broadcasting for her work. She lived in a very elegant apartment and had many, what we would consider luxuries. And so to get out from under what she had started. She was being threatened by the Gestapo, so I never got the idea that she was ideologically a Nazi—a hardened Nazi, if you will.
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At the age of 74, she moved out of the convent to an apartment house on Broadmeadows Boulevard near Ohio State University. Mildred tutored language students from nearby Bishop Watterson High School.
Jim Dury was teaching German, American History and French in the 1980s when it came to his attention that a local woman was offering her services as a language tutor. At first, he did not know the true identity of the “nice old lady” providing a service to his students, but eventually a colleague pulled him aside:
A fellow teacher with whom I worked with as coach of the school’s inter-scholastic quiz team told me that she had run across Miss Gillars name in a question: “By what better name do we know Mildred Gillars? Axis Sally—needless to say, we were astounded.
The tutoring was a major help to my students—bringing them from D’s to A’s. She was also a very cultured and intellectual woman. She exposed my students to German music and culture. I remember one student being amazed that she did crosswords in German.
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After a number of chats about her tutoring, Dury discreetly asked about her years in Germany and posed what likely was the most uncomfortable question of all:
Once I uncovered her past, I did on one occasion that I remember ask her how she happened to be in Germany during the war and she responded vaguely about a man she was involved with at the time—I believe a German officer.
I also once obliquely asked how the Germans could not have known what was happening to their Jewish (and other) neighbors and fellow citizens. I remember only a short, and somewhat rueful, “we didn’t know” answer.
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With no car or telephone at first, she surrounded herself with books and keepsakes, and regularly tended to a small flower garden. Colleen Wiley and her daughter Iris lived in the same apartment building and eventually became friends with Mildred in the 1980s. Neither mother nor daughter knew of their elderly neighbor’s notorious reputation until after her death. Iris recalled that Miss Gillars was generous with her time, helping the high school students raise money for school activities through paper drives. Once, Mildred brought the Wiley family a gift—a homemade chocolate cake made with sauerkraut. She told them that the ground sauerkraut kept the cake moist—a baking tip she likely picked up in Germany.
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Her apartment was “book lined… crowded with knickknacks and old drawings,” one visitor noted, reminding Iris of “a little European flat” full of books and art.
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Unlike Iva Toguri D’Aquino (Tokyo Rose), who publicly and successfully obtained a Presidential pardon in 1977, Axis Sally never sought one. As she always believed in her innocence, she saw no reason to request clemency or express remorse. Closed to questions, each inquiry was met with the same refrain: “No questions at all.”
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Her refusal to talk was legend in the local media. One of her parole officers said in 1977, “[It] has been a running battle for 15 years. She’s never given an interview that I know of. Even to give her side.”
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One Ohio columnist, Mike Harden, said that although Axis Sally refused his repeated interview requests, she did make a book recommendation in 1983: “She suggested that I read a certain book about a woman who shoots a journalist who keeps hounding her.”
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In 1979, Axis Sally was released from parole—bringing more than thirty years of internment, incarceration and probation to an end. Her friend Robert Boyer recalled that day:
She received a letter from the State Department stating that her parole was over and that they no longer had any interest in her and so forth. She was rather amused—one of the lines in the letter stated that given the fact that they believed she probably would not repeat her offense, they were releasing her from parole and also from the fine. She was rather amused by that.
She asked a strange question at that point. She said, “Do you think I am a citizen again?” And I said I don’t know whether you ever really lost your citizenship. I said why don’t you call the State Department or someone who would know that kind of law? She never did as far as I know.
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In 1988, Mildred Gillars was diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer. Admitted to Grant Medical Center for inpatient treatment, she eventually demanded to return to her apartment. Her neighbor Colleen Wiley checked on her regularly but she was so troubled by Mildred’s weak and frail state that she phoned the doctor. The physician admitted that Mildred was much too ill to be left alone.
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Shortly after, she took a turn for the worse and returned to the hospital.