World War II Allied Troops couldn’t get enough of the jazz played by radio propagandist Axis Sally, but her poison messages didn’t dent the morale of the American troops.
See more History Minute videos.
Become a Saturday Evening Post member and enjoy unlimited access. Subscribe now
Comments
I was born 01-11-1943, I never had anything to remember, Anything said against the free world to the shoulders trying to put things back together would deserve the death penalty for sure. It was hard enough for the men & women fighting for freedom of our world to sort things out without this kind of help.
I’d never heard of the sinister exploits of Axis Sally before, anywhere. Not from my Dad who was a World War II veteran, but I heard plenty from him on ‘what a traitor’ Jane Fonda was, how terrible she was, and of course how terrible President Nixon was, and what a horrific crime Watergate was!
Axis Sally was a master manipulator of using her various short-wave radio broadcasts for evil propaganda as described and instructed to do, using every dirty trick in the book. She bookended them with popular music and “that’s all boys, and a sweet kiss from Sally!” I’m sure she knew how and when to use a little baby talk effectively too.
In the end, I’m surprised she wasn’t in a lot more trouble than she was, and should have been. It’s likely she used some of these tactics on the right men in the legal system. With her prison release being in 1961, it sounds more like a 10-15 year sentence than 10-30. I’m sure she was a model prisoner too.