Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany (11 page)

Berger’s intimation that German officials suspected that her political conversion might not be genuine may have stemmed from what they knew about her personal life. It was not politics that would wed Mildred Gillars to the German cause, but a man.

The Professor

Shortly after she joined Reichsradio in 1940, Mildred appeared as an actress in a series of ten radio dramas entitled
Dr. Anders and Little Margaret
, written by the commentator and Foreign Office official Max Otto Koischwitz. From a dramatic standpoint, the plays were poorly written. “Most of those things were so boring,” she remembered in 1949.
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Unimpressed by the plays, she was drawn to the dark-haired, moody intellectual. An erudite Silesian-born scholar, Koischwitz emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1924. Unable to earn a living in the Weimar Republic, he taught German Literature and Drama courses at New York University, Columbia University and Hunter College.

Shortly after arriving in New York, he gained a reputation as a prolific writer and entertaining lecturer. In 1926, he married a Swissborn governess named Erna (Bea) Keller who would bear him three daughters. By the time he was appointed to a full-time position as an assistant professor in 1928, he was already one of Hunter’s most popular instructors. The couple resided in Sunnyside, Queens where Erna kept house and raised the children while Koischwitz wrote and taught. The young professor also had a reputation for pursuing the female students who frequently idolized him.

John Carver Edwards, in his book
Berlin Calling,
described the demise of Koischwitz’s academic career in the United States. Before 1933, he was known to be an enthusiastic mentor to Jewish students. He even unsuccessfully recommended one Jewish student for foreign study in Germany. When word of the persecution of Jews started to leak out of Germany shortly after Hitler became Chancellor, Koischwitz angrily denounced such repression to his class. Over the course of the next few years, however, he grew to support the new order ever more vocally.

According to Edwards, the theme of the preservation of German “blood and soil” was prevalent in Koischwitz’s writings long before the Nazi accession to power. Recurring trips back to his native land reinforced his deepening conversion to National Socialism. However, his changing political views did not interfere with his efforts to become a naturalized American citizen. In 1935, he took the oath to become a US citizen, effectively removing any danger of deportation for his increasingly unpopular political views.

The timing of his naturalization was fortuitous because it was in 1935 that he came to the attention of the popular newspaper columnist and radio personality Walter Winchell. Winchell, one of the most powerful journalists in the United States, and Jewish, did not hesitate to point to Koischwitz as an example of Nazi infiltration into higher learning. The professor strenuously denied Winchell’s accusations. Now a newly minted US citizen, Koischwitz returned to Germany in 1935 and again in 1937 for “study”—each time without Erna and the children, without fear of being denied re-entry.
¹³⁵

Mildred would later attribute his repeated trips to Germany to his “love for the land.”

Essentially an economic migrant to America, Koischwitz’s loyalty to the United States was virtually non-existent. It was at the time of his frequent trips to Germany that Koischwitz aroused the interest of anti-Fascist groups who took note of his use of the classroom as a platform for his political views. Koischwitz peppered his lectures with pro-Nazi rhetoric, much to the dismay of the Hunter student body, faculty and administration. By 1939, it had become increasingly difficult for the college administration to defend him and his views. Only the Chairman of the German Department, Adolphe Büsse, championed his cause in the name of “academic freedom.”

In the classroom, students who challenged his ideas were either harangued or ignored.
¹³⁷
Despite his naturalization and the administration’s repeated attempts to defend Koischwitz in the name of “academic liberty,” Hunter College did not grant him a full professorship. Instead, he was tenured as an Assistant Professor in 1938, the same year he was feted by the student body as the “Outstanding Professor of 1938.” Koischwitz saw the slight as an effort to stall his career prospects and to punish him for his unpopular political views. The tension between Hunter and Koischwitz came to a head a year later when the undergraduate newspaper condemned Fascism in its pages and challenged all members of the German Department to publicly do the same. Chairman Büsse and Koischwitz both refused. The anti-Fascist American Council against Nazi Propaganda wrote to Hunter College President George N. Shuster, warning that Koischwitz was a subversive and/or foreign agent, and that it had photo static copies of his activities. Shuster responded that Koischwitz was solely guilty of “Hitlerite sympathies” rather than outright subversion.
¹³⁸

The Anti-Nazi League also petitioned New York State’s Department of Education regarding the Professor, stating that “whether, under the circumstances, he is a fit person to remain a teacher of youth in the City of New York, is we believe, of major importance, particularly at this time when Nazi-inspired incitements of racial hatred and fratricidal strife are so much to the fore.”
¹³⁹

Hunter finally granted Koischwitz an unpaid six-month leave of absence to return again to Germany, effective as of September 1, 1939, the day that Hitler’s armies invaded Poland. Although he was scheduled to return on January 31, 1940, it was apparent from the farewell party given by friends and colleagues that the leave might well be permanent. Unlike his other journeys, his wife and three daughters joined him. His staunchest supporter at Hunter, Chairman Büsse, also fled the US for Germany to live with his daughter and her husband—a Nazi official.

Within months, Koischwitz was reported to be living in Denmark on the German border awaiting the opportunity to re-enter the United States (Erna and the children remained in Germany). When the Professor returned to Berlin, he was hired almost immediately by the Foreign Office to work for the English service of the German Overseas Radio.
The Hour
, a newsletter devoted to identifying Fascist and Nazi fifth-columnists in the United States, speculated that the Professor feared American justice:

Three days before his official resignation from Hunter took effect, Koischwitz made his debut broadcast as Reichsradio’s newest acquisition, “Mr. O.K.” (
A.k.a.
Dr. Anders).
¹⁴¹
By June 1940 he was the host of
The College Hour, O.K. Speaks
and other “educational” programs.
¹⁴²
The educational series was aimed at young people of college age and mixed the Professor’s extensive knowledge of German literature and history with a healthy dose of National Socialist opinion.

As Koischwitz’s career blossomed as a radio personality, and eventually into a position as the Foreign Office’s chief liaison to Reichsradio, Mildred’s responsibilities increased. In 1941 she became the host of
Club of Notions
, a music and variety program produced by the Overseas Service that was heard frequently in the US.

Supported by the Lutz Templin Orchestra and other combos, she introduced big band hits and standards played live in the studio. After years of working to survive and pursue her career as an actress, she was employed in a position where she was well liked and respected for her work. As her duties increased, she emerged from the poverty that characterized most of her adult life into a comfortable financial existence.

While walking through the halls of the Big House on her way to the
Sender Bremen
studios in late 1940, she encountered Professor Koischwitz for the first time since their radio plays. Stopping the shapely American woman he teased, “It’s not very nice of you to never have any time for my fireside chats.”

Replying that she was unaware of his talks, she responded in kind: “[I] thanked him for his interest, and told him he’d never asked me.”

“I’d like to go on record now as having asked,” Koischwitz flirtatiously responded.
¹⁴³
Although she was attracted to the scholar, whom she described as “gallant” and “charming,” Mildred did not see him again socially until December 1942.

Without a Country

As the United States became more deeply involved in aiding Britain in its war effort, Mildred’s position in Germany became increasingly precarious. She was walking a tightrope between her status as citizen of a “neutral” nation and German government employee. Throughout 1940, she had kept her US papers in order, applying for permission to stay in Germany five days after being hired. Failing to state that she was an employee of the German government, she instead swore that she was still Brigitte Horney’s personal assistant.

In the spring of 1941, she brought her passport to be renewed by the United States consulate in Berlin. She approached a consular secretary and mentioned in an offhand manner that she was working for the German Radio. “I didn’t see anything wrong with it,” she claimed.
¹⁴⁴
The secretary asked her to return the following day. It was there that Mildred encountered a vice consul named Vaughn who brusquely “snatched” the passport out of her hand. Angered by her reluctance to be repatriated to America in the face of the coming war, she claimed the official took the passport, threw it into his desk drawer and refused to return it to her.

“He just snatched it from me so violently that I knew there was something wrong,” she remembered in 1949. “I even wanted to get it back, and he opened a drawer in a great hurry, and the passport just disappeared in the drawer, and the drawer was shut and that was that.”
¹⁴⁵
The vice consul had been tipped off by the secretary about the true nature of her work and reclaimed the passport. Mildred was nonplussed. “He offered no explanation. That’s why I couldn’t understand his very gruff and uncivil manner,” she recalled.
¹⁴⁶
With only a receipt for the passport, she walked out of the consulate with little proof of her American citizenship.

Embassy personnel in Berlin were inundated by American citizens attempting to leave Germany at the outbreak of war, as well as droves of Jewish refugees seeking asylum from their Nazi tormentors. William Russell, in his 1941 memoir of his experiences at the American Embassy in Berlin, described the animus felt by the consul personnel for the Nazi regime:

The Vice Consul was revolted by the sight of an American citizen requesting an
extension
to her passport in order to further aid that detested government. The level of repression against Jews had increased exponentially since the beginning of the war, and was common knowledge among Berliners. Dr. Goebbels, in his role as Gauleiter (regional party leader) of the capital city, demanded draconian measures against the remaining 70,000 Jews still in Berlin as of 1940 (19,000 of which still had some kind of employment).
¹⁴⁸
Ostensibly angered by the fact that returning front-line soldiers could witness Jews freely roaming the streets of the Reich, he beseeched Hitler to order their immediate deportation to the East. However, a lack of transport and the need for Jewish labor in war-related industries postponed such an effort.

Goebbels was undaunted in his effort to show the remaining Jews no mercy. On September 1, 1941, the decree was issued that the yellow Star of David be worn in public at all times throughout the Greater Reich. By October, Jews were required to have special permission to ride public transportation. On December 21, 1941, a further decree forbade Jews from using public telephones. Early 1942 brought the expropriation of Jewish private property designated by the state as “luxury goods,” and in April they were forbidden to ride subways and buses altogether. The average Berliner could not help but notice the stage being set for the complete removal of Jews from their midst.