Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany (9 page)

A careful review of these anonymous dispatches from Berlin makes the reader wonder if Mildred’s film criticism was not “prepared to the king’s taste” as well. The Propaganda Minister, with input from Hitler, handpicked those actors and actresses who exemplified the “Aryan” ideal of man and womanhood. Stars like Kristina Sönderbaum, Zarah Leander, Brigitte Horney, Sybille Schmitz and Marika Rökk were placed in the forefront in order to replace great stars such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Mildred left no doubt about her understanding of the critic’s role: “trying to give American producers an idea of the kind of material, human material particularly, that was available in Germany.”
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Comfortable with the fact that her role was to promote rather than critique, she was unconcerned or unaware that her role had a political component.

Her breathless review of
Der Gelse Flagge
(The Yellow Flag) is another indication of her early propensity for promoting the interest of the German film industry and its masters in the Propaganda Ministry:

She sang the praises of the politically sensitive German-Italian co-production
Mutterlied
(Mother Song):

Because Mrs. Trask refused payment for room and board, Mildred worked for
Variety
without a byline and accepted whatever money Trask offered for her efforts. She claimed that she never knew how much money Claire Trask was being paid by the newspaper. Mildred became so busy that she stopped working for the Berlitz School in 1938 to devote all her time to writing. With the March 1938
Anschluss
of Austria into the Reich,
Variety
’s editors became increasingly sensitive about publishing anything that could be construed as Nazi propaganda. Almost overnight, the entertainment industry became skittish about accepting content from Berlin. In Canada, a huge outcry erupted over CBC Radio’s announcement that it would accept cultural programming from Germany in May 1938.
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In the United States, NBC’s shortwave division fired its newscaster and announcer Ernest Kotz due to charges that he was pro-Nazi. American and Canadian outlets were on guard to ensure that they would not be duped. From March 1938 on,
Variety
’s communiqués from Berlin carried only the name of Claire Trask. Mildred’s cheerleading for Nazi film came to an end.

Most likely, Mildred’s fevered movie reviews were rewritten with the more sober prose of Claire Trask and published under her byline. When Claire Trask fled Germany for the Netherlands in August 1939 in the face of the imminent declaration of war, eventually making it to the United States, she could maintain that it was her grateful assistant who promoted the virtues of Germany’s “human material” for American consumption. The columns bearing her byline carried muted criticisms, while her protégée supplied the enthusiastic praise that ensured that the correspondents would not run afoul of the authorities.

No matter how distasteful the politics or how much her mentor disapproved of the regime, it must have seemed to Mildred that she was finally part of a world she had long dreamed of. She was familiar with the elite of the German film industry, and writing for a leading trade publication aimed at the decision-makers of New York and Hollywood. The “Aryanization” of the German film industry helped her achieve what she found impossible to do in America: build an influential career in the dramatic arts.

As the months passed and the world careened toward conflict over Hitler’s territorial demands, exhibition of German films in the United States fell sharply. As the opportunities to publish faded, Mrs. Trask began to look for other employment possibilities for Mildred. One of her favorite actresses was the exotic-looking Brigitte Horney, the stunning, husky-voiced blonde star of several hit films. Horney needed a personal assistant, and Mildred was immediately hired. Brigitte Horney and Mildred Gillars were two independent women from similar backgrounds.

The daughter of the eminent psychotherapist Karen Horney (1885–1952), Brigitte came from a harsh and difficult upbringing. Like Mildred’s stepfather, Oskar Horney was a cruel and abusive parent who suffered the collapse of his business. As conditions in the home worsened, Brigitte’s mother became suicidal and finally left her husband in 1926. Opportunistic, brilliant and ambitious, Brigitte remained in Nazi Germany after her mother left for the US to benefit from the “Aryanization” of the arts. She became one of Dr. Goebbels’ favored actresses; a member of the
Volksböhne
who starred in the cream of Nazi-era films. Groomed as a replacement for the exiled Marlene Dietrich, Horney starred in the hits
Liebe, Tod und Teufel
(Love, Death and the Devil, 1934),
Savoy-Hotel 217
(1935) and
Das Mädchen von Fanö
(The Girl From the Isle of Fanö, 1941).

The striking actress made four successful films with the popular actor Joachim “Joschy” Gottschalk. Gottschalk’s immense popularity temporarily ensured his survival in the German film industry despite his marriage to a Jewish woman and his half-Jewish son. When Gottschalk made the mistake of introducing his wife to prominent Nazis at a social function, Goebbels demanded that the actor end the marriage. Gottschalk refused and the Minister threatened his wife and son with deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Goebbels arranged for Gottschalk’s induction into the army when the actor insisted on going with his family to the camp. In 1941, Gottschalk and his wife sedated their son and turned on the gas. The three perished moments before the arrival of the Gestapo. In open contempt of Goebbels (who wanted to keep news of the actor’s death a secret), Brigitte Horney openly attended the funeral of her close friend and colleague.

Despite it all, Brigitte went on working for the Nazi propaganda machine until the end of the war. Her most notable role came in 1943 when she portrayed the Russian empress Catherine the Great in the film
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
. An expensive disaster of epic proportions,
Munchausen
was one of the regime’s final productions. She went on to finish the fittingly titled
Am Ende der Welt
(The End of the World, 1944) as Allied bombs fell around her. With her career and country in shambles, Horney fled to Switzerland in 1945 and five years later immigrated to the United States.

Berlin Darkens

While Mildred Gillars was enjoying her patron’s connections with Nazi cinema’s leading lights, the repression of German Jewry progressed rapidly. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, for the average Berliner not to notice the brutal effects of anti-Jewish legislation. From the inauguration of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935, when the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” forbade intermarriage and sexual relations between Gentiles and Jews, an unrelenting effort to drive Germany’s Jews abroad was underway.

The very definition of German citizenship was changed with the “Reich Citizenship Law” establishing “German or kindred blood” as the sole factor determining citizenship in the Third Reich. The Nuremberg Laws were quickly amended on November 15, 1935, when it was decreed that a Jew could not be a citizen, could not vote, partake in political activities or hold public office. The term “Jew” was defined in law as anyone descended from at least three fully Jewish grandparents. The category
Mischlinge
(half or partially Jewish) was established to denote anyone who was descended from two fully Jewish grandparents, belonged to the Jewish religious community, was married to a Jew, was the offspring of a mixed Gentile–Jewish marriage, or was the offspring of an extramarital sexual relationship with a Jew. This discreet hairsplitting became the foundation for the body of Nazi racial law that would become a niche for pseudo-scientists and barbaric physicians determined to flush out the last drop of Jewish blood from German society.

Despite the lull in street violence and harassment against Jews during the period immediately prior to and during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, 24 laws explicitly discriminating against Jews were instituted that year. An additional 22 followed in 1937.
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This torrent of exclusionary law ranged from the removal of Jewish children from German schools to the “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses—the brazen expropriation and reassignment of property to party members and their associates. As the world edged toward the conflict that Hitler sought over Czechoslovakia, the race laws were amended again to regulate the naming of Jewish infants. Jewish parents were obligated to adhere to the “Guidelines on the Use of Given Names” issued by the Reich Minister of the Interior. To ensure that Jews were readily identifiable and unable to evade persecution, the decree also announced that as of January 1, 1939, all Jewish males and females must assume an additional given name—Israel for men and boys and Sarah for women and girls.

Those Jews who did not or could not leave faced harassment, arrest and ultimately deportation to concentration camps. On October 18, 1938, Hitler ordered over 12,000 Polish-born Jews deported to the East—4,000 of whom were accepted by the Polish government. The remaining deportees were left on the German–Polish border without a country. The son of one of those wretched and starving families was in Paris when he was notified of his family’s plight. Herschel Grynszpan decided to take action and walked into the German Embassy in Paris. Drawing a pistol, he shot and critically injured the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on November 7, 1938. On the evening of November 9, vom Rath died and Goebbels asked Hitler for permission to unleash the wrath of the German people on the Jews in retaliation for the diplomat’s death.

With Hitler’s consent,
Kristallnacht
(the Night of Broken Glass) erupted in so-called “spontaneous” outbursts orchestrated by the Gestapo and the SS. Nazis and their followers burned synagogues, beat and humiliated Jews in the streets, looted Jewish-owned businesses, and killed in cold blood. The Gestapo was at least partly responsible for the eleven Berlin synagogues that went up in flames, as well as the destruction of temple books and Torah scrolls. At the end of it all, at least 91 Jews were killed, with hundreds injured and others sent to concentration camps. Foreign journalists, vocal in their disgust and nauseated by the unrestrained orgy of racial hatred, reported on the bloodletting. It was obvious to the Western democracies that Germany was no place for their citizens, and their respective foreign services and embassies counseled their nationals to return home. Mildred, who was riding higher than she had ever been, chose to remain in Berlin.

Mae Gillars made one final attempt in the summer of 1939 to convince her daughter to return to the United States. Mildred traveled to England to meet her mother and brought her back to Germany. Mae remembered her daughter as “very young and happy” that summer. As the two women strolled through the city, they came upon a massive throng of people in a square listening to a speech. Over the loudspeakers came the unmistakable voice of Adolf Hitler.

Mae remembered: “Mildred and I were walking along the street when we came to the square where he was speaking. It was impossible to get by. We slipped into a restaurant and had a cup of coffee. Of course, you couldn’t help hearing him. There was a public address system in the restaurant and Mildred translated his speech for me. But she was never interested in politics—never, not even in the U.S.”
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As Germany’s dispute with Poland over Danzig moved Europe toward war, Mae left without her beloved daughter. “I could hardly get out of the country,” she recalled. “Trains were almost tied up with troop movements when I left.”
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As Mae Gillars boarded a train crowded with soldiers destined for combat, she embraced her daughter for the very last time.

SEPTEMBER 1939–DECEMBER 1941

When Hitler’s armies marched into Poland on September 1, 1939, Mildred had been working for the German actress Brigitte Horney as a personal assistant for over a year. When the film star fell on hard times and could no longer pay a secretary, she was sacked. For the next nine months, she had no regular employment. Attempting to parlay her lifelong interest in antiques into a source of income, she occasionally bought and sold a few pieces, and added to her meager income by teaching a few English lessons and translating documents.
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