Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany (30 page)

When Kelley completed his brief opening statement, James Laughlin stood up to address the jury. Laughlin was no stranger to the crumbling green walls of the District Court. In the sweltering spring and summer of 1944, he had been center-stage as a public defender in the great Sedition Trial of that year. In a prosecution personally demanded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a motley assemblage of anti-Semites and Nazi sympathizers was put on trial for violation of the Smith Act (which made it a crime to conspire to overthrow the government). A canny lawyer with a talent for publicity, Laughlin revealed to the press that the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith provided the FBI with “evidence” against the defendants—sup porting his assertion that Jewish interests had instigated the sedition prosecutions in retaliation for the defendants’ unpopular views. His public grandstanding resulted in a contempt of court citation. Laughlin made headlines when he defended himself on the contempt charge. Nevertheless, the jury found him guilty.

The chaotic Sedition case ended in mistrial in November of 1944 when Judge Edward Eichler died of a sudden heart attack. The Justice Department refused to pursue the prosecutions further (Roosevelt died in April 1945 and the original impetus for the trial disappeared with the President’s death), but the public defender had established a less than sterling reputation among Washington lawyers. Now, Laughlin faced another politically driven case of even greater importance.

In a thunderous voice, Laughlin portrayed Axis Sally as a loyal but misunderstood American trapped in an impossible situation. Like many Americans before the war, he said that Mildred Gillars believed Franklin Roosevelt’s promises to keep the nation out of Europe’s conflicts. She felt a deep sense of betrayal when the President pursued policies that undercut US neutrality and blatantly tied America’s fate to that of Britain. The defense attorney reminded the jury that only a decade earlier her opinion was not at all uncommon: “She said no more and did no more than thousands and perhaps millions in this country said or did,” he claimed.
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Moreover, she was trapped in Hitler’s Germany without a valid passport and relied on the good graces of her German hosts. “She had no passport, no money. She had to remain where she was,” he emphasized.
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At first, Mildred was coaxed by what the attorney called the “magnetic—nay, hypnotic” personality of Dr. Otto Koischwitz. When all of the Professor’s charm proved insufficient to convince her to make propaganda broadcasts, she was finally coerced. Laughlin cast O.K. as a calculating Svengali—a Nazi cad who preyed on the hopes and affections of a lonely matron longing for marriage. With his finger pointing at the steel cases containing her broadcasts, Laughlin warned the jury that although the voice might belong to Mildred Gillars, the words and the message were that of Otto Koischwitz.

“The voice is Jacob’s voice but the hand is the hand of Esau!” he shouted across the courtroom.
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“Professor Koischwitz was a dynamic, hypnotic personality. He was a vigorous, determined man with fixed ideas and this defendant was under his influence,” the defense lawyer said, pointing at his client.
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O.K. was a philanderer and ladies’ man who promised marriage to his mistress, but suddenly died and left her alone to face Germany’s defeat and America’s vengeance. At the mention of the Professor’s name, Mildred dabbed at her eyes with the flowing indigo scarf she kept wrapped around her neck.

Laughlin insisted that she was only a small cog in the wheel of the Nazi propaganda machine, one that never had “any connection with Hitler, Goebbels, Goering or any others of that unholy lot. She made it plain to the Germans that she would do nothing that was hurtful to the United States government. She was proud to be a citizen of the United States and rejected material for her scripts that she believed harmful.” Laughlin asked the jury to reject the government’s assertion that Mildred held a highly paid position of great importance, for she lived in “constant fear of her life, under the threat of the Gestapo.”

Chief Prosecutor John Kelley’s first witness was Adelbert Houben. The 41-year-old former Program Controller at the Overseas Service testified to the financial success of Axis Sally’s radio career, claiming that, at her peak, she earned 3,000 Reich marks a month ($1,200 in 1949 dollars)—almost twice the amount of Houben’s own salary. Only one man at Reichsradio earned more money than Axis Sally—the Director General of the Overseas Service, Dr. Anton (“Toni”) Winkelnkemper.

Houben admitted that he was an enthusiastic National Socialist who joined the party in 1932. He readily told the court that he believed in the party and “everything it stood for,” even displaying a reverent tone in his voice when referring to “the Führer.” Houben acknowledged that the radio drama
Vision of Invasion
was an attempt “to prevent the invasion by telling the American people and American soldiers that [it] would be a risky task with respect to the lives of the soldiers.”
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Furthermore, Houben made the damaging, yet debatable assertion that no foreigner was ever forced to appear on German radio.

On cross-examination, Laughlin asked the stocky ex-Nazi about his prior experience as a material witness. Noting that he had testified for the prosecution at both the Douglas Chandler and Robert H. Best treason trials in Boston, the confrontational lawyer asked, “You make your living by testifying against people, don’t you Mr. Houben?” Offended, Houben sputtered, “What do you mean by that?” Laughlin pointed out that he had collected between $800 and $900 from the US government for his prior appearances. Taking the bait, Houben volunteered that he had earned $2,400 more on his own as a laborer in Philadelphia—an admission sure to fuel further resentment against unapologetic Nazis profiting from the treason prosecutions.
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Houben’s testimony was momentarily halted while John Kelley read aloud from a list of stipulations agreed to by the defense. The first and most crucial was to inalterably affect the outcome of the trial: both sides agreed that Mildred Gillars was a native-born American citizen and remained so throughout the war. This blanket pronouncement about a woman who privately questioned whether she still held American citizenship effectively removed any possibility of an acquittal under the provisions of the 1940 Nationality Act—a law that allowed the renunciation of American citizenship in favor of the assumption of another nationality. This is what allowed Rita Zucca (the “Rome Axis Sally”) to avoid prosecution by the US government.

When Houben’s testimony resumed, he told the court of his internment with Mildred in Germany after the war and acknowledged that he felt quite differently about her guilt in those days. Privately, Houben made several statements critical of the government’s treatment of her, even calling it “a shame.”
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Houben also admitted that he told Justice Department prosecutors that it was a “mistake” to bring Miss Gillars to trial because she “had done nothing wrong.”
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Damning Messages

In his opening statement, John Kelley told the jury that it would be Mildred’s own words that would convict her. In the corner of the room, a stack of 29 acetates sat near a waiting phonograph. Kelley stated his intention to play only the propaganda portions of the broadcasts, but Laughlin objected. The judge agreed that the entire recording should be played to ensure that the defendant’s words remain in context. Only the judge, jury, attorneys and press had access to the forty headphones strung throughout the courtroom. With the mannerisms of a young starlet, Mildred slipped on her pair, resting her chin on folded hands in the style of her idol Theda Bara.
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Spectators leaned forward to try to hear snippets from reporters’ headphones.

Laughlin objected to the introduction of seven recordings as evidence because they were seized by the Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) from the basement of Mildred’s Berlin apartment house without a search warrant. Judge Curran asked the jury to leave while the court heard testimony from the agent who retrieved the recordings. Special Agent Hans Wintzen came to the stand to describe how he stumbled upon the recordings in a nearby storage room after interviewing the building’s superintendent.

Mildred then briefly took the stand and complained to the judge that her apartment and its contents were seized by the Allies and given to a Communist after the German surrender. Curran quickly ruled that although Axis Sally would be tried as an American citizen, the Constitution’s protections against warrantless search and seizure did not apply to her. She was a citizen pursued by the American military in a foreign land, and had no such legal protection. After Curran decided that the seven recordings would remain as evidence, the jury returned to the courtroom. Soon, toes were tapping in the jury box as Midge’s house band, Dick and His Footwarmers, played Nazified versions of swing and jazz. Between the musical selections, the jury heard the legendary voice for the first time:

With the inference that America’s late, beloved president was the leader of a cabal of Jewish homosexuals fresh in the jury’s collective mind, prosecutors turned to the July 27, 1944 edition of the
Home Sweet Home
program to illustrate the hidden purpose of the broadcasts:

By the end of the trial’s first week, the court had heard a series of recordings that spanned the length and breadth of Midge’s radio career. Friday’s proceedings began with the lilting strains of
Lilli Marlene
and ended with the despondent voice of Axis Sally on September 19, 1944 as American forces crossed the Rhine.

The Actor as Traitor

“Stop chewing gum!” Judge Curran lashed out at the heavyset Prussian aristocrat in the witness chair. Hans von Richter was nervously chewing a stick of gum as he took the oath. Of all the prosecution witnesses, von Richter and his American-born wife, Georgia, were personally closest to the defendant. The couple knew Midge intimately, had dined with her and Otto Koischwitz at their home, and sadly bade her farewell as Allied troops closed in on the capital. When she was on the run as a haggard and hungry fugitive, Hans von Richter turned her away. Hans and Georgia met in Cleveland, Ohio where he was a dashing German consular officer and she was the daughter of a successful local businessman. When the German Foreign Office transferred him to Brazil, Georgia followed him. The couple lived in Belo Horizonte for two and a half years, and then the Reich called him home to Berlin.