PersonalityAmerican-born Axis Sally made propaganda broadcasts for Radio Berlin in Hitler's Germany.

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By Dale P. Harper

She was named Mildred Elizabeth Sisk when she was born in Portland, Maine, on November 29, 1900. Her parents, Vincent Sisk and Mae Hewitson Sisk, were divorced in 1907, and a few years later Mildred's mother married a dentist, Dr. Robert Bruce Gillars. From that time on the child was known as Mildred Gillars.

The family moved around a great deal during her early years, but Mildred Gillars eventually graduated from high school in Conneaut, Ohio, in 1917. Then it was on to Ohio Wesleyan University in the small town of Delaware, where, hoping to pursue a stage career, she majored in dramatic arts. Gillars did well in speech, languages and dramatics but did not graduate because of her failure to meet all university requirements and standards.

According to her half sister, Gillars worked at a variety of jobs after leaving college–clerk, salesgirl, cashier and waitress–all to further her ambition to become an actress. In 1929 she went to Europe with her mother and spent six months studying in France before returning to the United States.

Eventually Gillars went to New York, where she worked in stock companies, musical comedies and vaudeville, but never made enough impact to gain any real recognition. In 1933 she returned to Europe and worked in France as a governess and salesgirl. She moved to Germany in 1935 and became an English instructor at the Berlitz School of Languages in Berlin. English teachers were paid less than Russian instructors–a possible reason for her decision to accept employment by Radio Berlin as an announcer and actress. This was a job much more to her liking, and she stayed with it until the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945. 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. Her broadcasts were heard all over Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa and the United States from December 11, 1941, through May 6, 1945. Although most of her programs were broadcast from Berlin, some were aired from Chartres and Paris in France and from Hilversum in the Netherlands.

Once the war was over, her broadcasts would come back to haunt her. At a listening post operated by the Federal Communications Commission in Silver Hill, Md., all her programs had been monitored and recorded and would provide the prosecution with damaging evidence at her trial. The prosecution charged that her broadcasts were sugarcoated propaganda pills aimed at convincing U.S. soldiers that they were fighting on the wrong side.

Most GIs agreed that Gillars had a sultry, sexy voice that came over the radio loud and clear. Like her counterpart in the Pacific, Tokyo Rose, she liked to tease and taunt the soldiers about their wives and sweethearts back in the States. "Hi fellows," she would say. "I'm afraid you're yearning plenty for someone else. But I just wonder if she isn't running around with the 4-Fs way back home."

She would get the names, serial numbers and hometowns of captured and wounded GIs and voice concern about what would happen to them, in broadcasts that could be heard in the United States. "Well I suppose he'll get along all right," she would say. "The doctors don't seem…I don't know… only time will tell, you see." At sign-off time she would tease her listeners some more, telling them, "I've got a heavy date waiting for me."

Perhaps Sally's most famous broadcast, and the one that would eventually get her convicted of treason, was a play titled Vision of Invasion that went out over the airwaves on May 11, 1944. It was beamed to American troops in England awaiting the D-Day invasion of Normandy, as well as to the home folks in America. Gillars played the role of an American mother who dreamed that her soldier son, a member of the invasion forces, died aboard a burning ship in the attempt to cross the English Channel. The play had a realistic quality to it, sound effects simulating the moans and cries of the wounded as they were raked with gunfire from the beaches. Over the battle action sound effects, an announcer's voice intoned, "The D of D-Day stands for doom…disaster…death…defeat…Dunkerque or Dieppe." Adelbert Houben, a high official of the German Broadcasting Service, would testify at Axis Sally's trial that her broadcast was intended to prevent the invasion by frightening the Americans with grisly forecasts of staggering casualties.

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