Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany (18 page)

Zimmerman was the second to be interviewed and was the most talkative of the prisoners.

This exchange is fascinating because it is between a virulently anti-Semitic broadcaster and a prisoner described in an FBI report as having “a very Jewish appearance.”
²²⁸
One must wonder what Midge knew of the fate of Europe’s Jews when she commented, “I’ll bet you’re glad for a lot of things.” Sharing a bed with an official of the Foreign Office, she was very likely exposed to the rumors if not the details surrounding the relocation of Jews to the East.

Midge asked Zimmerman if he was getting enough to eat. In a syrupy tone, she replied, “Well, lots of people aren’t, so that is something to be happy about too, isn’t it?”

Zimmerman’s reply, “Yes, if you call grass soup once a day enough to eat,” was edited out of the final broadcast. The
Survivor
interviews were, at times, heavily edited to dispose of comments that did not fit the profile of the happy and thankful prisoner. Zimmerman’s response about “grass soup” was just one incident. Listening to the recorded conversations today, the exchanges seem oddly disjointed.

The volatility of Mildred Gillars’s emotional state is evident from the broadcasts as well. The exchanges between Midge and the prisoners could go from extremely warm and chatty to cold, cutting and distant in a matter of seconds. Even the editing and splicing of the engineering room could not disguise the sudden change in tone. One prisoner from Ohio who preceded Carl Zimmerman on the August 22, 1944 broadcast made the mistake of assuring his wife that he hoped to be home by Christmas:

Midge’s voice suddenly became cold and caustic.

The idea that Germany would be defeated within four months was not the message that Midge wanted conveyed to the listeners in America or to her superiors in Berlin. For Mildred and Koischwitz, the month of July was filled with visits to prisoner-of-war camps, stockades and hospitals. At Chartres in mid-July, she accidentally lifted up her skirt when a soldier became entangled in the microphone wire. The watching prisoners began to whistle and catcall. She smiled and said tauntingly, “You like that, eh?” then raised her dress up around her thighs revealing her most attractive feature, the long legs of a former showgirl.
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At the Hospital de la Pitiè near Paris, she interviewed severely wounded soldiers sporting a Red Cross armband.
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Meantime, the disappearance of Koischwitz’s “breezy” commentaries that summer raised suspicions about the fate of “O.K.” William L. Shirer of CBS took notice of the Professor’s new role on the frontlines:

Koischwitz was unexpectedly called back to Berlin at the end of July 1944. As Midge and O.K. waited for the train, she borrowed some money to buy a rare leather-bound set of books by Goethe. She gave it to him as an early Christmas present because she feared that they might not be together during the holidays. Before he left, Koischwitz made arrangements for the safe evacuation of Mildred with his German Foreign Office colleague, Werner Plack.
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As the Americans approached the French capital in early August, Plack abandoned her. When she reminded him of his promise to Koischwitz to drive her back to Germany in his car, he refused, saying, “I am sorry. I have no room. There is so much baggage.”
²³⁴
In a panic, she telephoned Koischwitz in Berlin.

“When I telephoned Berlin,” she would remember, “I had a feeling that something had happened. I asked for Dr. Koischwitz and at that moment I knew that I’d never hear his voice again.…”
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A voice came on the line: “Professor Koischwitz is dead.”
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Mildred immediately fled Paris on August 15 for Holland in a military convoy. She then boarded a train bound for Berlin, paying for her ticket by bribing a conductor with coffee.
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Despite rumors of suicide, Koischwitz died in the Berlin-Spandau Hospital on August 31, 1944 of tuberculosis and heart failure.
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Crushed by the death, Mildred barely arrived in Berlin in time for his funeral on September 4.

Max Otto Koischwitz died alone. The war had taken his wife and infant son. The Germany he loved was crumbling around him. Although it is plausible that he could have taken his own life, it is more likely that Koischwitz, who had been diagnosed with incipient tuberculosis in 1929, and was looking for interviews with POWs in the sickrooms of the Hospital de la Pitié not more than four to five weeks before his death, had finally succumbed.
²³⁹
It is also possible that the deteriorating sanitary conditions in wartime Europe played a role in aggravating his already fragile state. Either way, Midge was now without the man to whom she had cast her fate. Her lover—the man who convinced her to betray her nation, who protected her and provided her access to the highest echelons of German society—was gone.

“Well Sally, we’ll be in Berlin soon—with a great big kiss for you—if you have any kisser left.”—Corporal Edward Van Dyne in the
Saturday Evening Post,
January 1944
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“Our fate is rolling in from the East…”
—Anonymous diarist, Berlin, April 20, 1945
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SEPTEMBER 1944–JANUARY 1947

As Mildred said goodbye to Max Otto Koischwitz in September 1944, Allied forces were closing in on the Reich. On the Western Front, the US First Army stood north of Aachen poised to breach 400-plus kilometers of fortifications known as the Westwall. Patton’s Third Army had reached Metz farther south, while Montgomery’s British-Canadian forces were pushing into Belgium and Holland. The advance would slow in the ensuing months, culminating in the last great German offensive, in the sector of the Ardennes.

In the East, the military situation was dire. Following the destruction of Army Group Center that summer after a huge Soviet offensive, the W
ehrmacht
was in retreat from Finland and the Baltics, Ukraine and the Balkans. By October, Riga and Belgrade were in Soviet hands, while the Red Army had advanced to the outskirts of Warsaw. Despite the self-delusion that characterized Hitler’s inner circle in the last months of the war, more practical leadership prepared for the inevitable siege of Berlin. On October 18, the
Volkssturm
(Home Guard) announced the imminent call-up of all males between the age of 16 and 60 for the final defense of German soil.
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It was in that desperate autumn that Axis Sally returned to the microphone. Shaken and grieving from the loss of her mentor and protector, she feared an Allied victory. Her attitude began to change toward her superiors at
Reichsradio
. Returning to the studios at
Köenigs Wusterhausen
, she was called into a meeting with Johannes Schmidt-Hansen and Eduard Dietze. In a blatant appeal to her ego, the two radio executives had plans for their “star”—a transfer to a new clandestine station in the Black Forest aimed at the advancing Allied forces:

Schmidt-Hansen’s description of the new effort amounted to nothing less than psychological warfare on the advancing US soldiers. “The soldiers would have the impression that this female voice was right in the bivouac with them,” she recalled.
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Mildred was unmoved by the flattery and Dietze testily invoked the name of her late lover, insisting that Professor Koischwitz would not approve of such intransigence. She stood her ground: