Mildred Gillars is a name synonymous with treason in the United States. During the Second World War the American became a broadcaster in Nazi Germany, tasked with devastating the morale of US troops. Yet despite her minimal impact on America's fighting spirit, Gillars dubbed Axis Sally by her listeners - today boasts a legacy comparable to defector Benedict Arnold, spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and double-agent Robert Hanssen.
However, exactly how and why the failed actress descended from the Broadway stage and onto the fascist airwaves of the Third Reich, still largely remains a unexplained. "Even now, mystery and ambiguity shroud her troubled life. Many, many questions surrounding her choices remain unanswered and, frankly, probably unanswerable," Professor Michael Flamm, a scholar of modern American political history at Ohio Wesleyan University (where Gillars studied before the war), told History of War.
A troubled childhood
Born on 29 November, 1900, Mildred Elizabeth Sisk was the daughter of Canadian parents Mary (Mae), a seamstress, and Vincent, an alcoholic blacksmith. Her early years were spent across the border in Portland, Maine, where she bore witness to her father's drunken tirades and abusive behaviour. Eventually, her mother divorced Vincent and remarried dentist Robert Bruce Gillars, also an alcoholic, whose surname Mildred took. After the birth of her half-sister Edna in 1909, the family moved to settle in Ohio.
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NAUMACHIA TRUTH BEHIND ROME'S GLADIATOR SEA BATTLES
In their quest for evermore novel and bloody entertainment, the Romans staged enormous naval fights on artificial lakes
OPERATION MANNA
In late April 1945, millions of Dutch civilians were starving as Nazi retribution for the failed Operation Market Garden cut off supplies. eet as In response, Allied bombers launched a risky mission to air-drop food
GASSING HITLER
Just a month before the end of WWI, the future Fuhrer was blinded by a British shell and invalided away from the frontline. Over a century later, has the artillery brigade that launched the fateful attack finally been identified?
SALAMANCA
After years of largely defensive campaigning, Lieutenant General Arthur Wellesley went on the offensive against a French invasion of Andalusia
HUMBERT 'ROCKY'VERSACE
Early in the Vietnam War, a dedicated US Special Forces officer defied his merciless Viet Cong captors and inspired his fellow POWs to survive
LEYTE 1944 SINKING THE RISING SUN
One of the more difficult island campaigns in WWII's Pacific Theatre saw a brutal months-long fight that exhausted Japan’s military strength
MAD DAWN
How technology transformed strategic thinking and military doctrine from the Cold War to the current day
BRUSHES WITH ARMAGEDDON
Humanity came close to self-annihilation with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Broken Arrows’ and other nuclear near misses
THE DEADLY RACE
How the road to peace led to an arms contest between the USA and USSR, with prototypes, proliferation and the world’s biggest bomb
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
Einstein, Oppenheimer and the race to beat Hitler to the bomb. How a science project in the desert helped win a war
