WEBVTT - The Inner Front 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:24.236 Pushkin. There's a place in our world where the doubtful 0:00:24.276 --> 0:00:31.516 things go, a morgue of fakes, hoaxes, and frauds. File 0:00:31.596 --> 0:00:38.156 drawers crammed with folders, the Federal Bureau of Investigation classified. 0:00:39.956 --> 0:00:44.276 There must be a thousand pages here, the treason files. 0:00:45.036 --> 0:00:48.036 It's like, not the X files, it's the T files. 0:00:49.556 --> 0:00:53.596 This place, this vault of suspicious claims and dubious evidence, 0:00:54.316 --> 0:00:58.036 lies half hidden in the shadow of doubt, half lost 0:00:58.316 --> 0:01:01.916 in a time between now and then. The sign on 0:01:01.956 --> 0:01:07.156 the door reads the last Archive. The first thing I 0:01:07.236 --> 0:01:09.036 usually do when I come in here is switch on 0:01:09.196 --> 0:01:12.716 this old radio and turn the dial, this time to 0:01:12.796 --> 0:01:24.636 the year nineteen forty four. This is Berlin, Calle Blon 0:01:24.716 --> 0:01:30.316 call the American Mothers, as from some lass, And I'd 0:01:30.316 --> 0:01:33.556 just like to say, girl from the Lion call. If 0:01:33.596 --> 0:01:36.436 I used to listen a lot of calls it going 0:01:36.516 --> 0:01:41.116 used to listen in. The tape is old and wobbly 0:01:41.316 --> 0:01:44.556 and raspy. It can be hard to make out, but 0:01:44.716 --> 0:01:46.796 what you're hearing is the voice of an American woman 0:01:46.996 --> 0:01:50.116 who's working for Nazi Germany. Since the middle of the 0:01:50.236 --> 0:01:54.156 nineteen thirties, Germany had been broadcasting via shortwave radio to Africa, 0:01:54.276 --> 0:01:58.156 Latin America, the Far East, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Australia, 0:01:58.836 --> 0:02:01.356 but it's broadcast to the United States outnumbered all of 0:02:01.396 --> 0:02:05.196 its other programs by far. These broadcasts reported on a 0:02:05.236 --> 0:02:10.476 supposed communist Jewish conspiracy newspapers to to calling these broadcasts 0:02:10.756 --> 0:02:14.596 fake news. That's where the expression comes from, and this 0:02:14.796 --> 0:02:19.276 is what it sounds like. I'm on the side. I'm 0:02:19.396 --> 0:02:21.796 not on the side of Rosabel and his two weak 0:02:21.876 --> 0:02:25.756 friends and two friends, because I've came back up to 0:02:25.876 --> 0:02:34.156 be a one and assistent American girl. This broadcaster Americans 0:02:34.236 --> 0:02:38.316 called her Axis Sally. She was trying to destroy American morale, 0:02:38.436 --> 0:02:40.796 trying to convince Americans that the Allies were going to 0:02:40.916 --> 0:02:43.356 lose the war, trying to get Americans to doubt the 0:02:43.476 --> 0:02:46.756 real news that they heard on American radio. But Access 0:02:46.796 --> 0:02:50.916 Sally she was an American too, an American in Berlin. 0:02:52.836 --> 0:02:55.236 Welcome to the Last Archive. This show about how we 0:02:55.356 --> 0:02:57.836 know what we know and why it seems lately because 0:02:57.876 --> 0:03:01.476 if we don't know anything at all. I'm Jillipoor. This season, 0:03:01.716 --> 0:03:04.796 I'm trying to trace the history of doubt. We talk 0:03:04.796 --> 0:03:07.516 a lot these days about all the white nationalist propaganda 0:03:07.596 --> 0:03:12.156 on the Internet, trolls memes neo Nazis. The founder of 0:03:12.276 --> 0:03:15.076 a neo Nazi website is facing a lawsuit for allegedly 0:03:15.156 --> 0:03:18.996 targeting a Jewish woman in Montana with a quote troll storm. 0:03:20.076 --> 0:03:22.236 There are lots of reasons to worry today about how 0:03:22.276 --> 0:03:25.076 this stuff spreads and what it does. But I'm a historian, 0:03:25.356 --> 0:03:27.756 so I thought it might be worth asking, not about 0:03:27.756 --> 0:03:31.876 the neo Nazis, but about the actual Nazis. What did 0:03:31.956 --> 0:03:35.676 their troll storms sound like? They used a different technology, 0:03:36.196 --> 0:03:40.316 not the ethernet, but the airwaves. So this episode Nazi 0:03:40.516 --> 0:03:43.476 radio propaganda, and I have to warn you some of 0:03:43.476 --> 0:03:45.716 the language you're going to hear is explicit and disturbing. 0:03:46.036 --> 0:03:50.236 I mean, it's Nazi radio. Still, I think it's really 0:03:50.316 --> 0:03:59.196 important because her Gamoni with los atamaticis about pads. I'm 0:03:59.276 --> 0:04:03.876 staying off here and having them to accustops. I want 0:04:03.956 --> 0:04:07.836 the week. The Voice of Access ally came broadcast by 0:04:07.876 --> 0:04:13.156 shortwave radio into American homes. Here she was addressing herself 0:04:13.236 --> 0:04:17.436 to American women, mothers, wives, girlfriends. Everything she said was 0:04:17.516 --> 0:04:21.796 animated by anti Semitism, hatred, and venom deception, and then 0:04:21.956 --> 0:04:25.876 in between the racist ranting, she'd play these jaunty little jingles. 0:04:33.516 --> 0:04:35.396 The tape's so hard to make out because of how 0:04:35.476 --> 0:04:39.996 it got recorded in the first place. During the war, 0:04:40.236 --> 0:04:43.756 a federal government listening post in Maryland staffed twenty four 0:04:43.796 --> 0:04:48.156 hours a day tuned in to Radio Berlin. Engineers there 0:04:48.276 --> 0:04:51.716 recorded as best they could whatever broadcast they could catch, 0:04:52.436 --> 0:04:54.996 and then after the war ended, the Justice Department thought 0:04:55.036 --> 0:04:57.316 about whether it might be possible to put access Sally 0:04:57.396 --> 0:05:01.796 on trial for these recordings. I gonna say my country 0:05:02.156 --> 0:05:07.876 right for ham No Bill, that's sentimentality, But I can 0:05:08.116 --> 0:05:12.996 not play by country. I love a manager, but I 0:05:14.236 --> 0:05:17.796 Prontada and all of his tips boyfriends who have thrown 0:05:17.836 --> 0:05:29.516 up into the cremdel good t Look. I just as 0:05:29.556 --> 0:05:33.996 soon forget this lady, good night, crazy lady. But this episode, 0:05:34.076 --> 0:05:36.196 I'm going to play more of this dreck because as 0:05:36.276 --> 0:05:39.596 bad as it is, understanding it still requires what literary 0:05:39.636 --> 0:05:43.636 scholars call a close reading, the way you'd read say 0:05:43.836 --> 0:05:50.876 something completely different a very good poem. Propaganda hijacks language 0:05:51.076 --> 0:05:53.516 and puts it into the service of the state. The 0:05:53.596 --> 0:05:57.116 opposite of propaganda is poetry, which puts language in the 0:05:57.156 --> 0:06:00.636 service of humanity. A really good poem is a lot 0:06:00.716 --> 0:06:04.316 like that badass sticker on Woody Guthrie's guitar. This machine 0:06:04.436 --> 0:06:09.356 kills fascists, This poem kills propaganda. I like to think 0:06:09.916 --> 0:06:13.636 poetry eats propaganda for breakfasts and then spits out the bones. 0:06:14.876 --> 0:06:20.396 Words in Time, bewildered with the broken tongue of wakened 0:06:20.516 --> 0:06:25.036 angels in our sleep. That's the American Archibald McLeish reading 0:06:25.076 --> 0:06:29.756 his post war poem Words in Time. McLeish was a poet, 0:06:30.116 --> 0:06:32.516 but he was also, during the Second World War, the 0:06:32.636 --> 0:06:37.396 US government official charged with countering German propaganda. There is 0:06:37.436 --> 0:06:41.996 a moment when we lie bewildered, wakened out of sleep, 0:06:42.396 --> 0:06:48.236 when light and sound and all reply that moment time 0:06:48.436 --> 0:06:54.636 must tame and keep. McLeish, as a young man, had 0:06:54.716 --> 0:06:57.676 fought in the First World War. His poems about that 0:06:57.836 --> 0:07:03.236 war chronicle its atrocities and most of all, its meaninglessness. 0:07:04.556 --> 0:07:06.956 If it was written at the time four or five 0:07:07.076 --> 0:07:10.316 years after the First World War, when it began to 0:07:10.476 --> 0:07:13.636 dawn on some of us who had not been intelligent 0:07:13.796 --> 0:07:17.276 enough to have it dawn on us earlier, that that 0:07:17.436 --> 0:07:22.756 war had been misfought and for nothing, and that those 0:07:22.796 --> 0:07:26.876 who had died in it had died pretty much for nothing. 0:07:28.636 --> 0:07:33.116 That war, the First World War, haunted McLeish. The American 0:07:33.156 --> 0:07:35.556 public hadn't wanted to get involved in the war in Europe, 0:07:35.916 --> 0:07:38.676 and once the US got in, Woodrow Wilson had to 0:07:38.796 --> 0:07:42.236 establish a thing called the Committee on Public Information, which 0:07:42.316 --> 0:07:44.716 was charged with whipping up a frenzy for the war. 0:07:46.956 --> 0:07:50.356 It used the tools of mass advertising and mass communication. 0:07:51.116 --> 0:07:53.996 It lied a lot. After the war. One guy wrote 0:07:53.996 --> 0:07:57.116 a book about it. All was called Falsehood in Wartime. 0:07:57.756 --> 0:08:00.356 He argued, there must have been more deliberate lying in 0:08:00.436 --> 0:08:03.356 the world from nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen than in 0:08:03.436 --> 0:08:06.516 any other period of the world's history. That might even 0:08:06.556 --> 0:08:08.996 be right. There was so much lying in the First 0:08:09.196 --> 0:08:11.996 World War that lying as a deliberate, well funded, state 0:08:12.076 --> 0:08:16.156 sponsored campaign got another name. People started calling it propaganda. 0:08:17.036 --> 0:08:20.036 McLeish he was sick of that stuff. He'd lost his 0:08:20.156 --> 0:08:22.796 brother in the war. He stood in the field and 0:08:22.956 --> 0:08:26.956 watched his friends fall one by one. So he wrote 0:08:27.036 --> 0:08:34.196 poems that told the truth the disastrous war, and crossed 0:08:34.316 --> 0:08:38.676 the dark defile at last, and found at Roncevaux upon 0:08:38.756 --> 0:08:43.076 the darkening plain, the dead against the dead, dunned on 0:08:43.156 --> 0:08:53.396 the silent ground, the silent slain. McLeish, after he came 0:08:53.396 --> 0:08:56.036 back from the First World War, worked as a reporter 0:08:56.156 --> 0:08:59.756 for Henry Luce, who'd founded Time magazine in nineteen twenty three. 0:09:00.676 --> 0:09:03.716 Luce had wanted to call the magazine simply facts, because 0:09:03.796 --> 0:09:05.876 Luce had fought in that War of lies two and 0:09:06.076 --> 0:09:09.556 like mc leish, he was sick of it. Mcle and 0:09:09.676 --> 0:09:12.036 all these other veterans of the war who became journalists, 0:09:12.436 --> 0:09:15.636 they brought home a passion for truth and clarity and 0:09:15.796 --> 0:09:20.196 stark description. They brought it into their writing. McLeish wrote 0:09:20.236 --> 0:09:23.796 for Loose's magazines, and then he also wrote poems and plays. 0:09:24.156 --> 0:09:26.636 He became one of the nation's best known writers, with 0:09:26.756 --> 0:09:30.876 a deep commitment to public service. Then, in nineteen thirty nine, 0:09:31.156 --> 0:09:35.516 FDR appointed him Librarian of Congress, the keeper of the Keys, 0:09:35.996 --> 0:09:40.156 the man who opens the gate to knowledge, the last Archivist. 0:09:43.196 --> 0:09:46.676 The year McLeish accepted that appointment, the Second World War began, 0:09:47.236 --> 0:09:49.716 a war that would eventually take the lives of over 0:09:49.836 --> 0:09:55.156 sixty million people. By now, propaganda had gotten a lot 0:09:55.236 --> 0:09:59.956 more sophisticated, and it got a new name, psychological warfare. 0:10:01.436 --> 0:10:04.716 Americans came to believe that the Germans were particularly good 0:10:04.756 --> 0:10:08.556 at it, deviously good, and that in top secret psychological 0:10:08.636 --> 0:10:11.796 laboratory worries, they were perfecting methods more dangerous than the 0:10:11.876 --> 0:10:16.116 most potent bomb. One American journalist wrote a book about it, 0:10:16.236 --> 0:10:20.196 called The Strategy of Terror. He said that the Germans 0:10:20.236 --> 0:10:23.556 had defeated the French before even a single German soldier 0:10:23.596 --> 0:10:26.396 had entered France by way of an inner front of 0:10:26.516 --> 0:10:30.876 the mind. Do you wonder what Hitler will do next? 0:10:30.996 --> 0:10:33.916 More often than you wonder what America will do next? 0:10:34.116 --> 0:10:37.036 Do you sit up before the eleven o'clock news broadcast? 0:10:37.516 --> 0:10:41.276 Do the headlines get you down? In nineteen forty, when 0:10:41.316 --> 0:10:44.156 The Strategy of Terror came out, the book's publisher took 0:10:44.196 --> 0:10:47.156 up a splashy ad in The New York Times asking 0:10:47.196 --> 0:10:50.876 Americans to examine their own news consumption. If your answer 0:10:50.996 --> 0:10:54.716 to these three questions is yes, then the psychological barrage 0:10:55.076 --> 0:10:59.796 has reached you. The only defense is understanding. The Strategy 0:10:59.876 --> 0:11:08.756 of Terror will give you this understanding. The publication of 0:11:08.796 --> 0:11:12.196 the Strategy of Terror stirred up a nationwide panic about 0:11:12.276 --> 0:11:16.356 Nazi propaganda coming across the ocean on shortwave radio. But 0:11:16.676 --> 0:11:20.076 did the Nazi strategy of terror really work. The director 0:11:20.156 --> 0:11:22.956 of the radio program at the University of Chicago was 0:11:23.076 --> 0:11:27.596 skeptical radio is a secret weapon. He said, the secret 0:11:27.756 --> 0:11:31.196 is how to use it as a weapon. But the 0:11:31.276 --> 0:11:35.556 alarm about German psychological warfare had achieved its purpose. It 0:11:35.636 --> 0:11:37.996 convinced a lot of Americans that even though the Germans 0:11:38.076 --> 0:11:43.756 were an ocean away, they had already invaded the United States. Today, 0:11:43.796 --> 0:11:46.156 we call this sort of thing a perception hack. Like 0:11:46.356 --> 0:11:48.636 with the election of twenty twenty, Russia didn't need to 0:11:48.716 --> 0:11:51.516 hack our entire election system. They just needed to scare 0:11:51.516 --> 0:11:55.156 Americans into thinking that they could. The United States is 0:11:55.236 --> 0:11:58.836 now subject to a total barrage of the Nazi strategy 0:11:58.996 --> 0:12:04.316 of terror. That's Archibald McLeish again, Okay, except this time 0:12:04.396 --> 0:12:06.716 it's our actor reading what McLeish wrote about all this. 0:12:07.436 --> 0:12:10.836 He'd been Librarian of Congress, but FDR put mclesian charge 0:12:10.876 --> 0:12:14.956 of the Office of Facts and Figures, America's own propaganda operation. 0:12:15.956 --> 0:12:18.236 As it happened before the First World War, a lot 0:12:18.276 --> 0:12:20.196 of Americans didn't want to have anything to do with 0:12:20.316 --> 0:12:24.316 this new war in Europe. They were isolationists. Mcleishi and 0:12:24.396 --> 0:12:27.996 FDR were interventionists and they were trying to convince Americans 0:12:28.156 --> 0:12:30.796 that they were already involved in the war because they 0:12:30.836 --> 0:12:35.316 were being attacked psychologically by way of the airwaves. Hitler 0:12:35.436 --> 0:12:39.196 thinks Americans are suckers. By the very vastness of his 0:12:39.396 --> 0:12:43.196 program of lies, he hopes to frighten us into believing 0:12:43.236 --> 0:12:48.996 that the Nazis are invincible. Mcleshi here was describing exactly 0:12:49.076 --> 0:12:51.756 what Accessali was trying to do with her radio program, 0:12:52.236 --> 0:13:02.916 frightening Americans into believing that the Nazis are invincible. McLeish 0:13:03.156 --> 0:13:06.076 heading up the Office of Facts and Figures, he was 0:13:06.116 --> 0:13:09.156 a little uncomfortable in the role of a propagandist. He 0:13:09.236 --> 0:13:11.996 didn't believe in telling lies to destroy the enemy's morale. 0:13:12.356 --> 0:13:14.596 There had to be a better way. He believed that 0:13:14.716 --> 0:13:17.556 writers have an obligation to fight fascism in the battle 0:13:17.636 --> 0:13:21.436 for public opinion, not by lying, but by telling the truth. 0:13:21.876 --> 0:13:25.396 The truth of journalism was his weapon. The honesty required 0:13:25.516 --> 0:13:30.556 for the proper functioning of a democracy. The duty of 0:13:30.756 --> 0:13:34.396 government is to provide a basis for judgment, and when 0:13:34.476 --> 0:13:37.916 it goes beyond that, it goes beyond the prime scope 0:13:37.956 --> 0:13:42.036 of its duty. McLeish believed a democracy should wage a 0:13:42.076 --> 0:13:45.276 War of facts should bring the same commitment to wartime 0:13:45.316 --> 0:13:48.596 information for the public that journalists bring to good reporting. 0:13:49.236 --> 0:13:52.956 He wanted to oppose the Germans strategy of terror with 0:13:53.156 --> 0:13:59.156 what he called the strategy of truth. It is the 0:14:00.116 --> 0:14:05.036 strategy of truth, the simple and clarifying truths by which 0:14:05.076 --> 0:14:08.756 a nation such as ours must guide itself. But the 0:14:08.836 --> 0:14:12.316 strategy of truth is not because it deals in truth 0:14:12.756 --> 0:14:16.676 devoid of strategy. It is not enough in this war 0:14:16.916 --> 0:14:23.156 of hoaxes and delusions and perpetuated lies to be nearly honest. 0:14:23.796 --> 0:14:29.516 It is necessary also to be wise. McLeish said that 0:14:29.556 --> 0:14:32.996 Americans could count on truth because of the nation's extraordinary 0:14:33.076 --> 0:14:38.436 tradition of journalistic excellence, accuracy, and fairness. So he tried 0:14:38.476 --> 0:14:41.076 to run this Office of Facts and Figures getting information 0:14:41.156 --> 0:14:44.596 out to the public, real information, the way a magazine 0:14:44.716 --> 0:14:48.316 might work. But that's not what a wartime propaganda office does. 0:14:49.196 --> 0:14:54.836 His idealism did not survive the war. In nineteen forty two, 0:14:55.156 --> 0:14:57.716 McLeish scaled back his involvement at the Office of Facts 0:14:57.756 --> 0:15:01.276 and Figures FDR, then hired an ad man from Coca 0:15:01.356 --> 0:15:03.636 Cola to work there. People who used to work for 0:15:03.756 --> 0:15:06.676 McLeish made fun of this new guy, as if American 0:15:06.756 --> 0:15:10.236 propaganda was now going to sound like this, that right 0:15:10.356 --> 0:15:14.236 up and get your four delicious freedoms. It's a refreshing war. 0:15:16.036 --> 0:15:20.036 So yeah, there was Allied propaganda. Still, let me be clear, 0:15:20.756 --> 0:15:24.316 selling the four freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, 0:15:24.676 --> 0:15:28.076 freedom from fear, and freedom from want is a world 0:15:28.156 --> 0:15:32.436 of difference from selling anti semitism, race hatred and white 0:15:32.596 --> 0:15:49.796 nationalism and committing genocide and the females a world of difference. 0:16:01.396 --> 0:16:07.116 Google of America, I don't know all. I think you 0:16:07.436 --> 0:16:10.716 are a law Ali him to get to ask you 0:16:11.076 --> 0:16:14.876 out of my head women in America. Starting in nineteen 0:16:14.956 --> 0:16:19.076 forty two, Access Sally's broadcasts went out to American troops. 0:16:19.596 --> 0:16:24.116 She also visited pow camps and interviewed American prisoners and 0:16:24.236 --> 0:16:26.876 then sent word of them on broadcasts that were meant 0:16:26.916 --> 0:16:29.156 to go all the way back across the Atlantic and 0:16:29.316 --> 0:16:35.356 into American homes. Now of all time, sit at the 0:16:35.476 --> 0:16:39.996 town of the Gong. It was exactly nine o'clock Eastern 0:16:40.116 --> 0:16:44.316 War times. There were actually a couple of wartime broadcasters 0:16:44.436 --> 0:16:49.036 known as Axis Sally. This one's real name was Mildred Gillers. 0:16:50.676 --> 0:16:53.116 She'd been born in Portland, Maine. For a while, she 0:16:53.196 --> 0:16:55.596 was an actress in New York. In the nineteen thirties, 0:16:55.756 --> 0:16:58.596 she moved to Germany. How she ended up working for 0:16:58.756 --> 0:17:00.836 Radio Berlin is kind of a big mess, but she 0:17:00.956 --> 0:17:03.516 was a star there. One thing she had a sinister 0:17:03.676 --> 0:17:07.276 talent for was baiting American listeners who were desperate to 0:17:07.316 --> 0:17:10.556 hear news, any kind of news of their loved ones. 0:17:11.476 --> 0:17:15.116 Are you women in America waiting for the one you love? 0:17:15.916 --> 0:17:19.156 Waiting and weeping in the sky of your own room, 0:17:19.996 --> 0:17:26.076 thinking of Ustan or the brother we've been sacrificed? Salcuncan 0:17:26.356 --> 0:17:33.636 d Rosberg Pari show on the Fringe about her. In 0:17:33.796 --> 0:17:36.796 order for American officials to try Gillers for treason, they 0:17:36.916 --> 0:17:40.276 first had to find her, and that proved to be 0:17:40.356 --> 0:17:46.596 a challenge. Germline has surrendered unconditionally. Ethonie have just officially 0:17:46.756 --> 0:18:04.316 laid down their own. Berlin nineteen forty six, a city 0:18:04.356 --> 0:18:08.516 in ruins, piles of rubble towering on street corners, alongside 0:18:08.556 --> 0:18:13.796 the empty husks of bombed buildings. Hans Winson, an American 0:18:13.876 --> 0:18:18.676 counterintelligence agent, put up wanted posters looking for acts Sally. 0:18:19.636 --> 0:18:32.316 He knocked on doors, flashing a photographs fall mine. She 0:18:32.516 --> 0:18:35.956 carried an alligator purse and clutched a cigarette like a dagger. 0:18:36.636 --> 0:18:39.196 She was pushing fifty. She wore the clothes of a 0:18:39.276 --> 0:18:43.236 college girl. She was about as natural as a hydrogen bomb. 0:18:44.036 --> 0:18:50.436 American reporters would later call her Hitler's girlfriend. One day, 0:18:50.556 --> 0:18:53.316 Winson got lucky. He got a tip that acts as Sally. 0:18:53.796 --> 0:18:57.116 Mildred Gillers was selling her furniture to second hand shops 0:18:57.156 --> 0:19:00.676 all around town. Before she'd gone into hiding. She'd stored 0:19:00.756 --> 0:19:02.676 some of her things in the basement of her old 0:19:02.676 --> 0:19:07.836 apartment building. Winson got the superintendent to let him in. Well, 0:19:07.876 --> 0:19:13.276 I'll be damned. Thus is the alice Jack Pott stowed 0:19:13.316 --> 0:19:16.636 in a basement. Winson found exactly what US authorities had 0:19:16.676 --> 0:19:21.676 been searching for records of Mildred Gillers's radio broadcasts. You 0:19:21.796 --> 0:19:24.876 can hear listening to those records how this stuff might 0:19:24.916 --> 0:19:29.516 have worked as propaganda. It's pretty subtle. That would make 0:19:29.636 --> 0:19:33.636 bringing her to trial tricky. Grow well, don't cook up 0:19:33.676 --> 0:19:41.716 the patibul fool, don't have a home. Two years after 0:19:41.796 --> 0:19:44.756 Winston tracked Gillers down, she was brought to the US 0:19:44.916 --> 0:19:48.196 to face charges of treason. The case against her would 0:19:48.236 --> 0:19:50.796 have to establish that she had given aid and comfort 0:19:50.956 --> 0:19:53.876 to the enemies of the United States, and, under the 0:19:53.996 --> 0:19:56.756 terms of a recent Supreme Court decision, that she had 0:19:56.836 --> 0:20:01.156 intended to provide that aid and comfort. There's still a question, though, 0:20:01.316 --> 0:20:05.236 can you commit treason by radio. By the time the 0:20:05.316 --> 0:20:08.076 Justice Department was really putting together its case against Gillers, 0:20:08.556 --> 0:20:12.596 another American who'd broadcast under the name Paul Revere had 0:20:12.636 --> 0:20:16.676 just been tried from the heart of Hitler, Germany. Your messenger, 0:20:16.756 --> 0:20:23.916 Paul Revere, greets you again, countrymen, friends, bows jew haters, 0:20:24.356 --> 0:20:29.556 and Jew's surveys. That guy he was found guilty of treason. 0:20:30.396 --> 0:20:32.996 Well would happened to Gillers, though was still not clear. 0:20:33.876 --> 0:20:36.756 To convict her, prosecutors would have to provide either a 0:20:36.836 --> 0:20:41.396 confession or two witnesses. Gillers wasn't about to confess to treason. 0:20:41.636 --> 0:20:44.796 The punishment for treason could be death, so the prosecution 0:20:44.916 --> 0:20:48.076 needed those two witnesses who could both identify her and 0:20:48.236 --> 0:20:52.596 speak to her intent. Special Agent Joseph T. Jenko, a 0:20:52.716 --> 0:20:56.596 lawyer from Brooklyn, headed the investigation. He'd been tracking Gillers 0:20:56.716 --> 0:21:03.916 for years in the nineteen twenties. Before Gillers went to Germany. 0:21:04.076 --> 0:21:06.516 She'd worked as an actress and a model in New York. 0:21:06.916 --> 0:21:09.956 Djenko interviewed people who'd known her, people like a guy 0:21:10.036 --> 0:21:14.676 named Wilfred Thomas. She was very dumb. I'm at a 0:21:14.796 --> 0:21:17.836 loss to understand how she could be doing anything which 0:21:17.876 --> 0:21:21.476 would be considered animical to the interests of the country. 0:21:22.796 --> 0:21:25.836 Building a case against Gillers took months. Jenko and other 0:21:25.956 --> 0:21:28.956 FBI agents tracked down and interviewed men who might have 0:21:29.036 --> 0:21:33.036 heard Gillers while in prison camps German stallogs. The FBI 0:21:33.276 --> 0:21:35.636 heard rumors that Gillers had coursed some of those men 0:21:35.956 --> 0:21:39.676 into making recordings saying they were being treated well. That 0:21:39.756 --> 0:21:43.116 would have been very damning evidence. But Jenko couldn't find 0:21:43.156 --> 0:21:46.276 those recordings, and I can't find them either. For a while, 0:21:46.516 --> 0:21:50.196 the Justice Department thought about just dropping the case. The 0:21:50.276 --> 0:21:53.116 break came when investigators obtained a recording of a broadcast 0:21:53.236 --> 0:21:57.076 called Vision of Invasion, was a radio play in which 0:21:57.156 --> 0:22:00.916 Gillers had starred. With this evidence, the grand jury issued 0:22:00.956 --> 0:22:05.076 an indictment. It included some pointed legal language, charging her 0:22:05.156 --> 0:22:09.756 with having participated in a phonographic recording that it would 0:22:09.756 --> 0:22:13.236 be broadcast to the United States to its citizens and 0:22:13.356 --> 0:22:16.036 soldiers at home and abroad, as an element of German 0:22:16.116 --> 0:22:24.396 propaganda and an instrument of psychological warfare. Giller's trial began 0:22:24.476 --> 0:22:28.076 early in nineteen forty nine in US District Court in Washington, 0:22:28.156 --> 0:22:33.956 d c. The reporters gasped at their first look at 0:22:33.996 --> 0:22:37.476 her at forty eight. She has the figure of a 0:22:37.556 --> 0:22:40.196 woman of forty eight who has worked hard and sacrifice 0:22:40.316 --> 0:22:43.276 much to keep the figure. She added twenty four. Richard 0:22:43.356 --> 0:22:46.916 Rovera covered the trial for The New Yorker. Her entire 0:22:46.996 --> 0:22:50.636 get up, the type black dresses, the black spike heeled shoes, 0:22:50.716 --> 0:22:54.116 the indigo scarf that she uses for gesturing, the generous 0:22:54.156 --> 0:22:58.156 applications of lipstick and nail polish suggests that she is 0:22:58.276 --> 0:23:02.636 torn by an inner conflict. Although she is trying desperately 0:23:02.756 --> 0:23:06.396 to avoid conviction, she is at the same time determined 0:23:06.436 --> 0:23:08.516 not to destroy the illusion of herself as a woman 0:23:08.556 --> 0:23:15.676 of mystery, glamor, and injury. This is before television. Rivera 0:23:15.756 --> 0:23:19.156 is painting a picture. Also, as he describes Gillars, she 0:23:19.316 --> 0:23:23.676 does sound not only terrible, but fascinatingly clueless. The notion 0:23:23.716 --> 0:23:26.916 of miss Gillars is a woman of glamor, either sinister 0:23:27.196 --> 0:23:29.756 or otherwise is one that at this stage of the 0:23:29.836 --> 0:23:36.076 game anyway, only miss Gillars herself can harbor. And here's 0:23:36.076 --> 0:23:38.996 the part that knocks me out, the novelty of the evidence, 0:23:39.196 --> 0:23:42.796 the technological novelty of it. Gillers was being tried for 0:23:42.876 --> 0:23:45.796 the crime, the treason of having been an instrument of 0:23:45.916 --> 0:23:50.196 psychological warfare. But to accommodate the evidence of this crime, 0:23:50.556 --> 0:23:53.716 the courtroom was outfitted with a record player and forty 0:23:53.796 --> 0:23:58.076 sets of headphones, and only forty the judge, the defendant, 0:23:58.236 --> 0:24:01.596 the lawyers, the jurors, in a handful of reporters. Each 0:24:01.636 --> 0:24:03.916 of them had a set of headphones. Was said that 0:24:03.996 --> 0:24:07.556 it looked like a miniature United Nations in there. The judge. 0:24:07.556 --> 0:24:10.196 Set of headphones were necessary because the recordings were hard 0:24:10.236 --> 0:24:12.596 to hear without them, which I think is true. The 0:24:12.716 --> 0:24:15.876 recordings are really difficult to hear. But I also don't 0:24:15.916 --> 0:24:20.156 totally buy the judge's explanation. In a crowded courtroom, forty 0:24:20.196 --> 0:24:22.676 sets of headphones really isn't that many. It meant that 0:24:22.756 --> 0:24:24.836 no one in the audience could hear the evidence, not 0:24:25.036 --> 0:24:28.716 Gillers's family or any of the spectators. Her lawyer later 0:24:28.836 --> 0:24:32.116 filed an appeal saying that she'd been denied a public trial, 0:24:32.276 --> 0:24:35.596 which is a constitutional right. But I think maybe the 0:24:35.716 --> 0:24:39.836 judge had thought these recordings are toxic. Let's not expose 0:24:39.876 --> 0:24:44.996 the whole room to it. The prosecution had first to 0:24:45.076 --> 0:24:48.116 prove that Gillers's voice, not someone else's voice, was the 0:24:48.196 --> 0:24:51.036 voice on those records. I did that by bringing to 0:24:51.116 --> 0:24:54.756 the stand a guy who'd worked at Radio Berlin. They 0:24:54.796 --> 0:24:58.196 asked him if he'd ever seen her speaking into a microphone? Yes, 0:24:58.396 --> 0:25:01.956 many times. Did he recognize her voice on the stack 0:25:01.996 --> 0:25:06.796 of twenty two records right here? Yes. Gillers's lawyer didn't 0:25:06.796 --> 0:25:09.636 have much by way of a defense, that she'd been 0:25:09.716 --> 0:25:12.996 hypnotized in Berlin by a Germans Bengali who, before she 0:25:13.076 --> 0:25:15.356 went to Europe, had been her professor at Hunter College. 0:25:16.596 --> 0:25:20.276 At that point, reporters noted Miss Gillers dabbed her eyes. 0:25:21.356 --> 0:25:24.356 But his argument was undercut by the prosecution bringing in 0:25:24.436 --> 0:25:27.036 witnesses who pointed out the Gillers was the best paid 0:25:27.236 --> 0:25:31.196 of all the Third Reich's broadcasters. And then the prosecution 0:25:31.396 --> 0:25:36.476 began the playback and our Sixtus suns as well about 0:25:36.516 --> 0:25:41.956 the fire the door. The prosecution played those records for 0:25:42.116 --> 0:25:48.396 hours and hours on the arts at once amaticly to 0:25:48.476 --> 0:25:54.676 a novel. Wo not the busy now got a British 0:25:54.676 --> 0:25:58.396 slap up? Where else should say that? But we are 0:25:58.476 --> 0:26:01.716 fighting for them, We're not having all our good wrong 0:26:01.916 --> 0:26:06.356 blood for the high quark from the British war. Oh girls, 0:26:06.476 --> 0:26:10.116 I don't you wake up? The most crucial piece of 0:26:10.156 --> 0:26:14.516 evidence was the poorest quality recording that radio drama Vision 0:26:14.556 --> 0:26:17.996 of Invasion, which had been broadcast just before D Day 0:26:21.996 --> 0:26:28.996 of Invasion. Vision of Invasion was essential to the prosecution's 0:26:29.076 --> 0:26:33.116 argument about intent because it supported the contention that Gillers 0:26:33.156 --> 0:26:37.196 had tried to undermine American morale. Broadcast in the weeks 0:26:37.236 --> 0:26:39.876 before D Day, it tells the story of an American 0:26:39.996 --> 0:26:42.756 mother worrying that her son might drown in the English 0:26:42.836 --> 0:26:55.556 channel during an invasion attempt. Other actors who had performed 0:26:55.556 --> 0:26:58.116 in the radio play testified that Gillers had performed the 0:26:58.196 --> 0:27:00.876 role of the mother. But anyone in the courtroom could 0:27:00.916 --> 0:27:13.516 hear that for themselves. Roosevelt had no right to go 0:27:13.596 --> 0:27:18.276 to war, she said. Richard Rivere, the New Yorker reporter, 0:27:18.476 --> 0:27:20.916 found listening to the stuff in that courtroom with those 0:27:20.956 --> 0:27:25.436 headphones unbearable. Five years ago, one could listen to it 0:27:25.596 --> 0:27:29.396 partly for its comic value and partly dissensed the full 0:27:29.476 --> 0:27:32.436 evil of the thing. But now it has lost its 0:27:32.476 --> 0:27:36.596 power to either amuse or a rouse. Its only effect 0:27:36.716 --> 0:27:38.916 is to make one feel ashamed of one's ownership of 0:27:38.996 --> 0:27:42.756 a human mind. It got worse for Gillers from there 0:27:43.196 --> 0:27:45.916 when the prosecution played another record in which Gillers said, 0:27:46.436 --> 0:27:48.996 damn Roosevelt, and damn Churchill, and damn all of their 0:27:49.076 --> 0:27:52.836 Jews who have made this war possible. Gillers's attorney answered 0:27:53.396 --> 0:27:55.516 she had a right to be anti Roosevelt, a right 0:27:55.596 --> 0:27:58.556 to be anti British, and a right to be anti Jewish. 0:27:59.876 --> 0:28:05.956 That was his best argument. Mildred Gillers was convicted of treason, 0:28:06.396 --> 0:28:10.596 of betraying her country, of having become instrument of psychological 0:28:10.676 --> 0:28:13.796 warfare because she had tried to cause Americans to doubt 0:28:13.836 --> 0:28:17.716 their ability to win the war. In nineteen sixty one, 0:28:17.796 --> 0:28:20.356 when she got out of prison, a reporter asked her 0:28:20.476 --> 0:28:24.316 for her thoughts after some fifteen years in prison? What 0:28:24.396 --> 0:28:28.716 am I supposed to say? She was at last speechless. 0:28:41.076 --> 0:28:42.876 There's a lot to be learned about the now by 0:28:42.956 --> 0:28:45.636 looking back to the nineteen forties and at the many 0:28:45.716 --> 0:28:51.316 costs and tragedies of psychological warfare. In nineteen forty two, 0:28:51.556 --> 0:28:55.956 the US War Department created a Psychological Warfare branch. It 0:28:56.116 --> 0:28:59.276