mildred elizabeth gillars

Mildred elizabeth gillars

Mildred 'Axis Sally' Gillars taunted U. Her program was filled with hateful rhetoric directed against U. President Franklin D. Her radio broadcasts were heard not only by U, mildred elizabeth gillars.

Nicknamed "Axis Sally" by her American soldier listeners, she was found guilty of treason in a United States court after the war and spent twelve years in prison. Gillars was born on November 29, She was born as Mildred Elizabeth Sisk in Portland, Maine, to Mae Hewitson Sisk, a painter, and Vincent Sisk, an indifferent husband and father who didn't cherish the idea of having children. When Gillars was seven years old, her father abandoned the small family. When she was eleven, her name was changed to Mildred Gillars, after her mother officially divorced Vincent Sisk and married Dr. Robert Bruce Gillars, a dentist. The family eventually moved to Ohio.

Mildred elizabeth gillars

Following her capture in post-war Berlin , Gillars became the first woman to be convicted of treason against the United States. Along with Rita Zucca she was nicknamed " Axis Sally ". At 16, she moved to Conneaut, Ohio with her family. Gillars then moved to Greenwich Village , New York City, where she worked in various low-skilled jobs to finance drama lessons. She toured with stock companies and appeared in vaudeville but she was unable to establish a theatrical career. In , she moved to France and lived in Paris for six months. In , Gillars left the United States again, residing first in Algiers where she found work as a dressmaker's assistant. By , the U. State Department was advising American nationals to leave Germany and German-controlled territories. Shortly afterwards, Karlson was sent to the Eastern Front , where he was killed in action. Gillars' initial broadcasts were largely apolitical. In , Koischwitz cast Gillars in a new show called Home Sweet Home and included her in his political broadcasts. This name probably came when asked on air to describe herself, Gillars said she was "the Irish type… a real Sally. During one broadcast, she said "I say damn Roosevelt and Churchill, and all of their Jews who have made this war possible.

June 5, Koischwitz died in August and Gillars' broadcasts became lackluster and repetitive without his creative energy. Your Profile.

It was and Axis Sally was, once again, on the air. Shortwave radio enthusiast Richard Lucas, doing promotional work for his new book on the infamous American broadcaster employed by the Nazis, did a double take when he saw her name surface, via Google Alert, on a neo-Nazi website. So it started to worry me quite a bit. Years earlier, Lucas had come across an online trove of the real broadcasts hosted by Axis Sally, whose messages were scripted by her married German lover to sow discord in the American armed forces and the homefront during the war. A freelance writer, Lucas used the recordings as an opportunity to dive into the true story of the woman behind the name, one Mildred Gillars. He combed through declassified federal documents and newspaper archives to write the first full-length biography on Axis Sally and her Reich Radio broadcasts—programs that ultimately made Gillars one of the few people ever convicted for treason in the United States. People are not black and white; there are all kinds of tradeoffs that lead them to become who they are.

Nicknamed "Axis Sally" by her American soldier listeners, she was found guilty of treason in a United States court after the war and spent twelve years in prison. Gillars was born on November 29, She was born as Mildred Elizabeth Sisk in Portland, Maine, to Mae Hewitson Sisk, a painter, and Vincent Sisk, an indifferent husband and father who didn't cherish the idea of having children. When Gillars was seven years old, her father abandoned the small family. When she was eleven, her name was changed to Mildred Gillars, after her mother officially divorced Vincent Sisk and married Dr. Robert Bruce Gillars, a dentist. The family eventually moved to Ohio. As a child, Gillars displayed exceptional talent as a pianist.

Mildred elizabeth gillars

Mildred 'Axis Sally' Gillars taunted U. Her program was filled with hateful rhetoric directed against U. President Franklin D. Her radio broadcasts were heard not only by U. Girls, watch out! Hundreds of thousands of American servicemen in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and northwestern Europe listened to her broadcasts from to at the height of World War II. They instantly recognized both her distinctive voice and appealing format that encompassed Big Band-era tunes played by a live orchestra.

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Gillespie, Dizzy actually, John Birks. Retrieved March 6, Kelley, Jr. She also gave piano lessons on Saturdays to inner-city children. But who was she, really? Observers called these emotional displays her greatest performance. Kelly also presented witnesses who testified that Gillars had posed as a worker for the International Red Cross in order to obtain recorded messages from American soldiers that she could use in her propaganda broadcasts. In , a project at Princeton University studying the programs targeting U. But there were political considerations. A freelance writer, Lucas used the recordings as an opportunity to dive into the true story of the woman behind the name, one Mildred Gillars. Surrounded by books and art in her small home, she refused all further interviews, ending her 30 years of supervision in , her past largely unknown to her students, friends, and neighbors.

It was and Axis Sally was, once again, on the air. Shortwave radio enthusiast Richard Lucas, doing promotional work for his new book on the infamous American broadcaster employed by the Nazis, did a double take when he saw her name surface, via Google Alert, on a neo-Nazi website. So it started to worry me quite a bit.

After Germany was defeated in May , Gillars became an anonymous figure among the half-million Germans either leaving Berlin or seeking food and shelter from the occupying Allied forces. When Koischwitz suddenly died in August of tuberculosis and heart disease, Gillars at last began to fully realize the postwar political and criminal implications that her wartime activities would have for her: both imprisonment and even possible execution in the electric chair. Gillars smokes a cigarette as she talks to reporters at U. Gillespie, Diane Filby. Midge at the Mike Axis Sally. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. He did not drive, at all. Her program was filled with hateful rhetoric directed against U. Her last broadcast was on May 6, , just two days before the surrender of Germany. Following her capture in post-war Berlin , Gillars became the first woman to be convicted of treason against the United States. You can opt out at any time. Shortly afterwards, Karlson was sent to the Eastern Front , where he was killed in action. Joseph Academy, Columbus.

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