Speaker 1: Pushkin. There's a place in our world where the doubtful
Speaker 1: things go, a morgue of fakes, hoaxes, and frauds. File
Speaker 1: drawers crammed with folders, the Federal Bureau of Investigation classified.
Speaker 1: There must be a thousand pages here, the treason files.
Speaker 1: It's like, not the X files, it's the T files.
Speaker 1: This place, this vault of suspicious claims and dubious evidence,
Speaker 1: lies half hidden in the shadow of doubt, half lost
Speaker 1: in a time between now and then. The sign on
Speaker 1: the door reads the last Archive. The first thing I
Speaker 1: usually do when I come in here is switch on
Speaker 1: this old radio and turn the dial, this time to
Speaker 1: the year nineteen forty four. This is Berlin, Calle Blon
Speaker 1: call the American Mothers, as from some lass, And I'd
Speaker 1: just like to say, girl from the Lion call. If
Speaker 1: I used to listen a lot of calls it going
Speaker 1: used to listen in. The tape is old and wobbly
Speaker 1: and raspy. It can be hard to make out, but
Speaker 1: what you're hearing is the voice of an American woman
Speaker 1: who's working for Nazi Germany. Since the middle of the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, Germany had been broadcasting via shortwave radio to Africa,
Speaker 1: Latin America, the Far East, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Australia,
Speaker 1: but it's broadcast to the United States outnumbered all of
Speaker 1: its other programs by far. These broadcasts reported on a
Speaker 1: supposed communist Jewish conspiracy newspapers to to calling these broadcasts
Speaker 1: fake news. That's where the expression comes from, and this
Speaker 1: is what it sounds like. I'm on the side. I'm
Speaker 1: not on the side of Rosabel and his two weak
Speaker 1: friends and two friends, because I've came back up to
Speaker 1: be a one and assistent American girl. This broadcaster Americans
Speaker 1: called her Axis Sally. She was trying to destroy American morale,
Speaker 1: trying to convince Americans that the Allies were going to
Speaker 1: lose the war, trying to get Americans to doubt the
Speaker 1: real news that they heard on American radio. But Access
Speaker 1: Sally she was an American too, an American in Berlin.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Last Archive. This show about how we
Speaker 1: know what we know and why it seems lately because
Speaker 1: if we don't know anything at all. I'm Jillipoor. This season,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to trace the history of doubt. We talk
Speaker 1: a lot these days about all the white nationalist propaganda
Speaker 1: on the Internet, trolls memes neo Nazis. The founder of
Speaker 1: a neo Nazi website is facing a lawsuit for allegedly
Speaker 1: targeting a Jewish woman in Montana with a quote troll storm.
Speaker 1: There are lots of reasons to worry today about how
Speaker 1: this stuff spreads and what it does. But I'm a historian,
Speaker 1: so I thought it might be worth asking, not about
Speaker 1: the neo Nazis, but about the actual Nazis. What did
Speaker 1: their troll storms sound like? They used a different technology,
Speaker 1: not the ethernet, but the airwaves. So this episode Nazi
Speaker 1: radio propaganda, and I have to warn you some of
Speaker 1: the language you're going to hear is explicit and disturbing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's Nazi radio. Still, I think it's really
Speaker 1: important because her Gamoni with los atamaticis about pads. I'm
Speaker 1: staying off here and having them to accustops. I want
Speaker 1: the week. The Voice of Access ally came broadcast by
Speaker 1: shortwave radio into American homes. Here she was addressing herself
Speaker 1: to American women, mothers, wives, girlfriends. Everything she said was
Speaker 1: animated by anti Semitism, hatred, and venom deception, and then
Speaker 1: in between the racist ranting, she'd play these jaunty little jingles.
Speaker 1: The tape's so hard to make out because of how
Speaker 1: it got recorded in the first place. During the war,
Speaker 1: a federal government listening post in Maryland staffed twenty four
Speaker 1: hours a day tuned in to Radio Berlin. Engineers there
Speaker 1: recorded as best they could whatever broadcast they could catch,
Speaker 1: and then after the war ended, the Justice Department thought
Speaker 1: about whether it might be possible to put access Sally
Speaker 1: on trial for these recordings. I gonna say my country
Speaker 1: right for ham No Bill, that's sentimentality, But I can
Speaker 1: not play by country. I love a manager, but I
Speaker 1: Prontada and all of his tips boyfriends who have thrown
Speaker 1: up into the cremdel good t Look. I just as
Speaker 1: soon forget this lady, good night, crazy lady. But this episode,
Speaker 1: I'm going to play more of this dreck because as
Speaker 1: bad as it is, understanding it still requires what literary
Speaker 1: scholars call a close reading, the way you'd read say
Speaker 1: something completely different a very good poem. Propaganda hijacks language
Speaker 1: and puts it into the service of the state. The
Speaker 1: opposite of propaganda is poetry, which puts language in the
Speaker 1: service of humanity. A really good poem is a lot
Speaker 1: like that badass sticker on Woody Guthrie's guitar. This machine
Speaker 1: kills fascists, This poem kills propaganda. I like to think
Speaker 1: poetry eats propaganda for breakfasts and then spits out the bones.
Speaker 1: Words in Time, bewildered with the broken tongue of wakened
Speaker 1: angels in our sleep. That's the American Archibald McLeish reading
Speaker 1: his post war poem Words in Time. McLeish was a poet,
Speaker 1: but he was also, during the Second World War, the
Speaker 1: US government official charged with countering German propaganda. There is
Speaker 1: a moment when we lie bewildered, wakened out of sleep,
Speaker 1: when light and sound and all reply that moment time
Speaker 1: must tame and keep. McLeish, as a young man, had
Speaker 1: fought in the First World War. His poems about that
Speaker 1: war chronicle its atrocities and most of all, its meaninglessness.
Speaker 1: If it was written at the time four or five
Speaker 1: years after the First World War, when it began to
Speaker 1: dawn on some of us who had not been intelligent
Speaker 1: enough to have it dawn on us earlier, that that
Speaker 1: war had been misfought and for nothing, and that those
Speaker 1: who had died in it had died pretty much for nothing.
Speaker 1: That war, the First World War, haunted McLeish. The American
Speaker 1: public hadn't wanted to get involved in the war in Europe,
Speaker 1: and once the US got in, Woodrow Wilson had to
Speaker 1: establish a thing called the Committee on Public Information, which
Speaker 1: was charged with whipping up a frenzy for the war.
Speaker 1: It used the tools of mass advertising and mass communication.
Speaker 1: It lied a lot. After the war. One guy wrote
Speaker 1: a book about it. All was called Falsehood in Wartime.
Speaker 1: He argued, there must have been more deliberate lying in
Speaker 1: the world from nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen than in
Speaker 1: any other period of the world's history. That might even
Speaker 1: be right. There was so much lying in the First
Speaker 1: World War that lying as a deliberate, well funded, state
Speaker 1: sponsored campaign got another name. People started calling it propaganda.
Speaker 1: McLeish he was sick of that stuff. He'd lost his
Speaker 1: brother in the war. He stood in the field and
Speaker 1: watched his friends fall one by one. So he wrote
Speaker 1: poems that told the truth the disastrous war, and crossed
Speaker 1: the dark defile at last, and found at Roncevaux upon
Speaker 1: the darkening plain, the dead against the dead, dunned on
Speaker 1: the silent ground, the silent slain. McLeish, after he came
Speaker 1: back from the First World War, worked as a reporter
Speaker 1: for Henry Luce, who'd founded Time magazine in nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 1: Luce had wanted to call the magazine simply facts, because
Speaker 1: Luce had fought in that War of lies two and
Speaker 1: like mc leish, he was sick of it. Mcle and
Speaker 1: all these other veterans of the war who became journalists,
Speaker 1: they brought home a passion for truth and clarity and
Speaker 1: stark description. They brought it into their writing. McLeish wrote
Speaker 1: for Loose's magazines, and then he also wrote poems and plays.
Speaker 1: He became one of the nation's best known writers, with
Speaker 1: a deep commitment to public service. Then, in nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: FDR appointed him Librarian of Congress, the keeper of the Keys,
Speaker 1: the man who opens the gate to knowledge, the last Archivist.
Speaker 1: The year McLeish accepted that appointment, the Second World War began,
Speaker 1: a war that would eventually take the lives of over
Speaker 1: sixty million people. By now, propaganda had gotten a lot
Speaker 1: more sophisticated, and it got a new name, psychological warfare.
Speaker 1: Americans came to believe that the Germans were particularly good
Speaker 1: at it, deviously good, and that in top secret psychological
Speaker 1: laboratory worries, they were perfecting methods more dangerous than the
Speaker 1: most potent bomb. One American journalist wrote a book about it,
Speaker 1: called The Strategy of Terror. He said that the Germans
Speaker 1: had defeated the French before even a single German soldier
Speaker 1: had entered France by way of an inner front of
Speaker 1: the mind. Do you wonder what Hitler will do next?
Speaker 1: More often than you wonder what America will do next?
Speaker 1: Do you sit up before the eleven o'clock news broadcast?
Speaker 1: Do the headlines get you down? In nineteen forty, when
Speaker 1: The Strategy of Terror came out, the book's publisher took
Speaker 1: up a splashy ad in The New York Times asking
Speaker 1: Americans to examine their own news consumption. If your answer
Speaker 1: to these three questions is yes, then the psychological barrage
Speaker 1: has reached you. The only defense is understanding. The Strategy
Speaker 1: of Terror will give you this understanding. The publication of
Speaker 1: the Strategy of Terror stirred up a nationwide panic about
Speaker 1: Nazi propaganda coming across the ocean on shortwave radio. But
Speaker 1: did the Nazi strategy of terror really work. The director
Speaker 1: of the radio program at the University of Chicago was
Speaker 1: skeptical radio is a secret weapon. He said, the secret
Speaker 1: is how to use it as a weapon. But the
Speaker 1: alarm about German psychological warfare had achieved its purpose. It
Speaker 1: convinced a lot of Americans that even though the Germans
Speaker 1: were an ocean away, they had already invaded the United States. Today,
Speaker 1: we call this sort of thing a perception hack. Like
Speaker 1: with the election of twenty twenty, Russia didn't need to
Speaker 1: hack our entire election system. They just needed to scare
Speaker 1: Americans into thinking that they could. The United States is
Speaker 1: now subject to a total barrage of the Nazi strategy
Speaker 1: of terror. That's Archibald McLeish again, Okay, except this time
Speaker 1: it's our actor reading what McLeish wrote about all this.
Speaker 1: He'd been Librarian of Congress, but FDR put mclesian charge
Speaker 1: of the Office of Facts and Figures, America's own propaganda operation.
Speaker 1: As it happened before the First World War, a lot
Speaker 1: of Americans didn't want to have anything to do with
Speaker 1: this new war in Europe. They were isolationists. Mcleishi and
Speaker 1: FDR were interventionists and they were trying to convince Americans
Speaker 1: that they were already involved in the war because they
Speaker 1: were being attacked psychologically by way of the airwaves. Hitler
Speaker 1: thinks Americans are suckers. By the very vastness of his
Speaker 1: program of lies, he hopes to frighten us into believing
Speaker 1: that the Nazis are invincible. Mcleshi here was describing exactly
Speaker 1: what Accessali was trying to do with her radio program,
Speaker 1: frightening Americans into believing that the Nazis are invincible. McLeish
Speaker 1: heading up the Office of Facts and Figures, he was
Speaker 1: a little uncomfortable in the role of a propagandist. He
Speaker 1: didn't believe in telling lies to destroy the enemy's morale.
Speaker 1: There had to be a better way. He believed that
Speaker 1: writers have an obligation to fight fascism in the battle
Speaker 1: for public opinion, not by lying, but by telling the truth.
Speaker 1: The truth of journalism was his weapon. The honesty required
Speaker 1: for the proper functioning of a democracy. The duty of
Speaker 1: government is to provide a basis for judgment, and when
Speaker 1: it goes beyond that, it goes beyond the prime scope
Speaker 1: of its duty. McLeish believed a democracy should wage a
Speaker 1: War of facts should bring the same commitment to wartime
Speaker 1: information for the public that journalists bring to good reporting.
Speaker 1: He wanted to oppose the Germans strategy of terror with
Speaker 1: what he called the strategy of truth. It is the
Speaker 1: strategy of truth, the simple and clarifying truths by which
Speaker 1: a nation such as ours must guide itself. But the
Speaker 1: strategy of truth is not because it deals in truth
Speaker 1: devoid of strategy. It is not enough in this war
Speaker 1: of hoaxes and delusions and perpetuated lies to be nearly honest.
Speaker 1: It is necessary also to be wise. McLeish said that
Speaker 1: Americans could count on truth because of the nation's extraordinary
Speaker 1: tradition of journalistic excellence, accuracy, and fairness. So he tried
Speaker 1: to run this Office of Facts and Figures getting information
Speaker 1: out to the public, real information, the way a magazine
Speaker 1: might work. But that's not what a wartime propaganda office does.
Speaker 1: His idealism did not survive the war. In nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: McLeish scaled back his involvement at the Office of Facts
Speaker 1: and Figures FDR, then hired an ad man from Coca
Speaker 1: Cola to work there. People who used to work for
Speaker 1: McLeish made fun of this new guy, as if American
Speaker 1: propaganda was now going to sound like this, that right
Speaker 1: up and get your four delicious freedoms. It's a refreshing war.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there was Allied propaganda. Still, let me be clear,
Speaker 1: selling the four freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of worship,
Speaker 1: freedom from fear, and freedom from want is a world
Speaker 1: of difference from selling anti semitism, race hatred and white
Speaker 1: nationalism and committing genocide and the females a world of difference.
Speaker 1: Google of America, I don't know all. I think you
Speaker 1: are a law Ali him to get to ask you
Speaker 1: out of my head women in America. Starting in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two, Access Sally's broadcasts went out to American troops.
Speaker 1: She also visited pow camps and interviewed American prisoners and
Speaker 1: then sent word of them on broadcasts that were meant
Speaker 1: to go all the way back across the Atlantic and
Speaker 1: into American homes. Now of all time, sit at the
Speaker 1: town of the Gong. It was exactly nine o'clock Eastern
Speaker 1: War times. There were actually a couple of wartime broadcasters
Speaker 1: known as Axis Sally. This one's real name was Mildred Gillers.
Speaker 1: She'd been born in Portland, Maine. For a while, she
Speaker 1: was an actress in New York. In the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: she moved to Germany. How she ended up working for
Speaker 1: Radio Berlin is kind of a big mess, but she
Speaker 1: was a star there. One thing she had a sinister
Speaker 1: talent for was baiting American listeners who were desperate to
Speaker 1: hear news, any kind of news of their loved ones.
Speaker 1: Are you women in America waiting for the one you love?
Speaker 1: Waiting and weeping in the sky of your own room,
Speaker 1: thinking of Ustan or the brother we've been sacrificed? Salcuncan
Speaker 1: d Rosberg Pari show on the Fringe about her. In
Speaker 1: order for American officials to try Gillers for treason, they
Speaker 1: first had to find her, and that proved to be
Speaker 1: a challenge. Germline has surrendered unconditionally. Ethonie have just officially
Speaker 1: laid down their own. Berlin nineteen forty six, a city
Speaker 1: in ruins, piles of rubble towering on street corners, alongside
Speaker 1: the empty husks of bombed buildings. Hans Winson, an American
Speaker 1: counterintelligence agent, put up wanted posters looking for acts Sally.
Speaker 1: He knocked on doors, flashing a photographs fall mine. She
Speaker 1: carried an alligator purse and clutched a cigarette like a dagger.
Speaker 1: She was pushing fifty. She wore the clothes of a
Speaker 1: college girl. She was about as natural as a hydrogen bomb.
Speaker 1: American reporters would later call her Hitler's girlfriend. One day,
Speaker 1: Winson got lucky. He got a tip that acts as Sally.
Speaker 1: Mildred Gillers was selling her furniture to second hand shops
Speaker 1: all around town. Before she'd gone into hiding. She'd stored
Speaker 1: some of her things in the basement of her old
Speaker 1: apartment building. Winson got the superintendent to let him in. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll be damned. Thus is the alice Jack Pott stowed
Speaker 1: in a basement. Winson found exactly what US authorities had
Speaker 1: been searching for records of Mildred Gillers's radio broadcasts. You
Speaker 1: can hear listening to those records how this stuff might
Speaker 1: have worked as propaganda. It's pretty subtle. That would make
Speaker 1: bringing her to trial tricky. Grow well, don't cook up
Speaker 1: the patibul fool, don't have a home. Two years after
Speaker 1: Winston tracked Gillers down, she was brought to the US
Speaker 1: to face charges of treason. The case against her would
Speaker 1: have to establish that she had given aid and comfort
Speaker 1: to the enemies of the United States, and, under the
Speaker 1: terms of a recent Supreme Court decision, that she had
Speaker 1: intended to provide that aid and comfort. There's still a question, though,
Speaker 1: can you commit treason by radio. By the time the
Speaker 1: Justice Department was really putting together its case against Gillers,
Speaker 1: another American who'd broadcast under the name Paul Revere had
Speaker 1: just been tried from the heart of Hitler, Germany. Your messenger,
Speaker 1: Paul Revere, greets you again, countrymen, friends, bows jew haters,
Speaker 1: and Jew's surveys. That guy he was found guilty of treason.
Speaker 1: Well would happened to Gillers, though was still not clear.
Speaker 1: To convict her, prosecutors would have to provide either a
Speaker 1: confession or two witnesses. Gillers wasn't about to confess to treason.
Speaker 1: The punishment for treason could be death, so the prosecution
Speaker 1: needed those two witnesses who could both identify her and
Speaker 1: speak to her intent. Special Agent Joseph T. Jenko, a
Speaker 1: lawyer from Brooklyn, headed the investigation. He'd been tracking Gillers
Speaker 1: for years in the nineteen twenties. Before Gillers went to Germany.
Speaker 1: She'd worked as an actress and a model in New York.
Speaker 1: Djenko interviewed people who'd known her, people like a guy
Speaker 1: named Wilfred Thomas. She was very dumb. I'm at a
Speaker 1: loss to understand how she could be doing anything which
Speaker 1: would be considered animical to the interests of the country.
Speaker 1: Building a case against Gillers took months. Jenko and other
Speaker 1: FBI agents tracked down and interviewed men who might have
Speaker 1: heard Gillers while in prison camps German stallogs. The FBI
Speaker 1: heard rumors that Gillers had coursed some of those men
Speaker 1: into making recordings saying they were being treated well. That
Speaker 1: would have been very damning evidence. But Jenko couldn't find
Speaker 1: those recordings, and I can't find them either. For a while,
Speaker 1: the Justice Department thought about just dropping the case. The
Speaker 1: break came when investigators obtained a recording of a broadcast
Speaker 1: called Vision of Invasion, was a radio play in which
Speaker 1: Gillers had starred. With this evidence, the grand jury issued
Speaker 1: an indictment. It included some pointed legal language, charging her
Speaker 1: with having participated in a phonographic recording that it would
Speaker 1: be broadcast to the United States to its citizens and
Speaker 1: soldiers at home and abroad, as an element of German
Speaker 1: propaganda and an instrument of psychological warfare. Giller's trial began
Speaker 1: early in nineteen forty nine in US District Court in Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. The reporters gasped at their first look at
Speaker 1: her at forty eight. She has the figure of a
Speaker 1: woman of forty eight who has worked hard and sacrifice
Speaker 1: much to keep the figure. She added twenty four. Richard
Speaker 1: Rovera covered the trial for The New Yorker. Her entire
Speaker 1: get up, the type black dresses, the black spike heeled shoes,
Speaker 1: the indigo scarf that she uses for gesturing, the generous
Speaker 1: applications of lipstick and nail polish suggests that she is
Speaker 1: torn by an inner conflict. Although she is trying desperately
Speaker 1: to avoid conviction, she is at the same time determined
Speaker 1: not to destroy the illusion of herself as a woman
Speaker 1: of mystery, glamor, and injury. This is before television. Rivera
Speaker 1: is painting a picture. Also, as he describes Gillars, she
Speaker 1: does sound not only terrible, but fascinatingly clueless. The notion
Speaker 1: of miss Gillars is a woman of glamor, either sinister
Speaker 1: or otherwise is one that at this stage of the
Speaker 1: game anyway, only miss Gillars herself can harbor. And here's
Speaker 1: the part that knocks me out, the novelty of the evidence,
Speaker 1: the technological novelty of it. Gillers was being tried for
Speaker 1: the crime, the treason of having been an instrument of
Speaker 1: psychological warfare. But to accommodate the evidence of this crime,
Speaker 1: the courtroom was outfitted with a record player and forty
Speaker 1: sets of headphones, and only forty the judge, the defendant,
Speaker 1: the lawyers, the jurors, in a handful of reporters. Each
Speaker 1: of them had a set of headphones. Was said that
Speaker 1: it looked like a miniature United Nations in there. The judge.
Speaker 1: Set of headphones were necessary because the recordings were hard
Speaker 1: to hear without them, which I think is true. The
Speaker 1: recordings are really difficult to hear. But I also don't
Speaker 1: totally buy the judge's explanation. In a crowded courtroom, forty
Speaker 1: sets of headphones really isn't that many. It meant that
Speaker 1: no one in the audience could hear the evidence, not
Speaker 1: Gillers's family or any of the spectators. Her lawyer later
Speaker 1: filed an appeal saying that she'd been denied a public trial,
Speaker 1: which is a constitutional right. But I think maybe the
Speaker 1: judge had thought these recordings are toxic. Let's not expose
Speaker 1: the whole room to it. The prosecution had first to
Speaker 1: prove that Gillers's voice, not someone else's voice, was the
Speaker 1: voice on those records. I did that by bringing to
Speaker 1: the stand a guy who'd worked at Radio Berlin. They
Speaker 1: asked him if he'd ever seen her speaking into a microphone? Yes,
Speaker 1: many times. Did he recognize her voice on the stack
Speaker 1: of twenty two records right here? Yes. Gillers's lawyer didn't
Speaker 1: have much by way of a defense, that she'd been
Speaker 1: hypnotized in Berlin by a Germans Bengali who, before she
Speaker 1: went to Europe, had been her professor at Hunter College.
Speaker 1: At that point, reporters noted Miss Gillers dabbed her eyes.
Speaker 1: But his argument was undercut by the prosecution bringing in
Speaker 1: witnesses who pointed out the Gillers was the best paid
Speaker 1: of all the Third Reich's broadcasters. And then the prosecution
Speaker 1: began the playback and our Sixtus suns as well about
Speaker 1: the fire the door. The prosecution played those records for
Speaker 1: hours and hours on the arts at once amaticly to
Speaker 1: a novel. Wo not the busy now got a British
Speaker 1: slap up? Where else should say that? But we are
Speaker 1: fighting for them, We're not having all our good wrong
Speaker 1: blood for the high quark from the British war. Oh girls,
Speaker 1: I don't you wake up? The most crucial piece of
Speaker 1: evidence was the poorest quality recording that radio drama Vision
Speaker 1: of Invasion, which had been broadcast just before D Day
Speaker 1: of Invasion. Vision of Invasion was essential to the prosecution's
Speaker 1: argument about intent because it supported the contention that Gillers
Speaker 1: had tried to undermine American morale. Broadcast in the weeks
Speaker 1: before D Day, it tells the story of an American
Speaker 1: mother worrying that her son might drown in the English
Speaker 1: channel during an invasion attempt. Other actors who had performed
Speaker 1: in the radio play testified that Gillers had performed the
Speaker 1: role of the mother. But anyone in the courtroom could
Speaker 1: hear that for themselves. Roosevelt had no right to go
Speaker 1: to war, she said. Richard Rivere, the New Yorker reporter,
Speaker 1: found listening to the stuff in that courtroom with those
Speaker 1: headphones unbearable. Five years ago, one could listen to it
Speaker 1: partly for its comic value and partly dissensed the full
Speaker 1: evil of the thing. But now it has lost its
Speaker 1: power to either amuse or a rouse. Its only effect
Speaker 1: is to make one feel ashamed of one's ownership of
Speaker 1: a human mind. It got worse for Gillers from there
Speaker 1: when the prosecution played another record in which Gillers said,
Speaker 1: damn Roosevelt, and damn Churchill, and damn all of their
Speaker 1: Jews who have made this war possible. Gillers's attorney answered
Speaker 1: she had a right to be anti Roosevelt, a right
Speaker 1: to be anti British, and a right to be anti Jewish.
Speaker 1: That was his best argument. Mildred Gillers was convicted of treason,
Speaker 1: of betraying her country, of having become instrument of psychological
Speaker 1: warfare because she had tried to cause Americans to doubt
Speaker 1: their ability to win the war. In nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: when she got out of prison, a reporter asked her
Speaker 1: for her thoughts after some fifteen years in prison? What
Speaker 1: am I supposed to say? She was at last speechless.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to be learned about the now by
Speaker 1: looking back to the nineteen forties and at the many
Speaker 1: costs and tragedies of psychological warfare. In nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: the US War Department created a Psychological Warfare branch. It
Speaker 1: concluded that American troops in the Pacific were being subjected
Speaker 1: to Japanese psychological warfare. Hollywood got interested. In nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: in a Carried Grant film, Americans were introduced to a
Speaker 1: Japanese radio broadcast called Tokyo Rose. I can't have anything
Speaker 1: sparks history. Tokyo Rose giving out with that nightly guff
Speaker 1: to the USA been defeated in a war, the pseudo
Speaker 1: you Americans realize that Japan is invincible, so perfect of
Speaker 1: the iron ring of defensively after the Japanese bomb Pearl
Speaker 1: Harbor at the end of nineteen forty one, FDR signed
Speaker 1: an executive order calling for the mass evacuation and mass
Speaker 1: imprisonment of over one hundred thousand people of Japanese descent
Speaker 1: living in the United States. Many of them were US citizens,
Speaker 1: And then the government put out an especially despicable piece
Speaker 1: of propaganda defending internment by lying about it evacuation. More
Speaker 1: than a hundred thousand men, women, and children, all of
Speaker 1: Japanese ancestry removed from their homes in the Pacific Coach
Speaker 1: State to wartime community established an out of the way places.
Speaker 1: Their evacuation did not imply individual dis loyalty. They are
Speaker 1: not prisoners, They are not in turney. They are merely
Speaker 1: displicated people, the unwounded casualties of war. After the war,
Speaker 1: about the same time the federal authorities were building a
Speaker 1: case against Mildred Gillers, the Justice Department also got interested
Speaker 1: and finding and prosecuting a Japanese radio broadcaster. Someone who
Speaker 1: liked Gillers was an American citizen and so could be
Speaker 1: charged with treason. Her name was Iva Tuguri, reading everybody
Speaker 1: is your number one enemy, your favorite framemate, often an
Speaker 1: a radio sociate, the little sumby who grosly likes to cut.
Speaker 1: They're ready again for this is her solve on your morale.
Speaker 1: The Justice Department began building a case against Tiguri. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the American press decided to refer to her by the
Speaker 1: name of the fictional character from that Carry Grant movie.
Speaker 1: They called her Tokyo Rose. But you lad, it's a
Speaker 1: good guy. I will five helped do that, hopefully. Who
Speaker 1: is the first blow. I killed Morale. Hey, I don't
Speaker 1: want to go away directly. Reporters at the time wrote
Speaker 1: about the radio ladies together Acces Sally in Tokyo, Rose,
Speaker 1: Mildred Gillers, and Ivor Toguri, but Tguri's case was in
Speaker 1: fact nothing like Gillers's case. She was born in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles on the fourth of July nineteen sixteen. Both her
Speaker 1: parents were from Japan. She graduated from UCLA in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty and the next year went to Japan to visit
Speaker 1: an aunt who was dying. While she was there, the
Speaker 1: US and Japan went to war in nineteen forty two.
Speaker 1: FDR issued his infamous Japanese in Tournament order, and both
Speaker 1: of Togury's parents were imprisoned in a relocation center in Arizona.
Speaker 1: Her mother would die there. Tguri was stranded in Japan.
Speaker 1: She got a job as a typist, first at a
Speaker 1: news agency and then at Radio Tokyo. Meanwhile, the head
Speaker 1: of propaganda for the Japanese Army instructed Radio Tokyo to
Speaker 1: make its propaganda more effective. The station found three prisoners
Speaker 1: of war who had been radio announcers before the war,
Speaker 1: an American, an Australian and a Filipino, and these three
Speaker 1: men hired to Guri as the host of a new
Speaker 1: variety show called The Zero Hour. She was mainly what
Speaker 1: we'd call a DJ not bad, not bad and now
Speaker 1: the judikanasi widneys from the American Hall Fronts. Tiguri and
Speaker 1: the three prisoners of war she worked with were instructed
Speaker 1: to make propaganda on behalf of Japan to be broadcast
Speaker 1: to Allied troops, but they seem to have decided to
Speaker 1: make fun of access propaganda. Seventy five little sidneys geeks
Speaker 1: for our friends, I mean I am leaving the South
Speaker 1: provided Later, Tiguri told the FBI that she tried to
Speaker 1: give the show a double meaning so that it just
Speaker 1: wouldn't work as propaganda, and that seems to be borne
Speaker 1: out by the evidence, which consists of a handful of
Speaker 1: scripts and a reconstruction of her recordings that Tiguri made
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty five after the Japanese surrender. Then, two
Speaker 1: the people who had worked at Radio Tokyo interrogated by
Speaker 1: the FBI refused to implicate her. They said she'd been
Speaker 1: trying not to produce propaganda, but to undermine it. Tiguri
Speaker 1: was arrested but released for lack of evidence. One reason
Speaker 1: the evidence against Tiguri was so flimsy was that during
Speaker 1: the war, Tokyo rose had become a catch all term
Speaker 1: for any English speaking woman's voice on Japanese radio. There
Speaker 1: really was Japanese propaganda on the radio, of course, it
Speaker 1: just sounded like this. I was the United States trans
Speaker 1: meeting her years of the full freedoms into her leaving
Speaker 1: into her labor and the ratio programs. What about her
Speaker 1: ever present negro problem? Her a notorious slee choose, a
Speaker 1: rare practice even among savages the Americans. I've completely forgotten
Speaker 1: that the Negroes are just as much a part of
Speaker 1: a humanity of the air themselves. That's what real Japanese
Speaker 1: propaganda sounded like. Radio Tokyo propagandists talked about race relations
Speaker 1: in the US all the time. Here's what Iva Takuri
Speaker 1: sounded like. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's all
Speaker 1: an enemy. But there'll be more to thank you night.
Speaker 1: Until then, there's your number one enemy. G I always
Speaker 1: will be good good right now? Is that psychological warfare?
Speaker 1: To me? It really does sound a lot more like
Speaker 1: a satire of psychological warfare. Anyway. To convict Aguri of treason.
Speaker 1: As with Gillers, the government needed two witnesses. He couldn't
Speaker 1: find them, so it pressured two American born Japanese men,
Speaker 1: George Mitsushio and Kenichi Oki, who'd go on to Japan
Speaker 1: during the war and become Japanese citizens. They agreed to
Speaker 1: testify that Tuguri had taunted American sailors on the air,
Speaker 1: that she'd said three damning sentences. You fellows have lost
Speaker 1: all your ships. You really are orphans of the Pacific. Now,
Speaker 1: how do you think you will ever get home? On
Speaker 1: the basis of these words, these three sentences of which
Speaker 1: no recording survives, the jury found Iva Tuguri guilty of treason.
Speaker 1: She was sentenced to ten years in prison at the
Speaker 1: Federal Reformatory for Women in West Virginia, the same prison
Speaker 1: where Mildred Gillers was serving her time. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they ever met or what they could possibly have
Speaker 1: said to one another. Iva Tiguri was released in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six. She went on to run a gift shop
Speaker 1: in Chicago. Twenty years after her release. A reporter for
Speaker 1: the Chicago Tribune tracked down the witness is who testified
Speaker 1: in her trial. They told the reporter that they'd lied,
Speaker 1: that they'd been coached and threatened. President Gerald Ford, on
Speaker 1: his final day in office, pardoned her. But I am
Speaker 1: still haunted by how she answered a question about her
Speaker 1: trial on sixty minutes. Had that experience a better ye
Speaker 1: towards this country. I don't think bid in this is
Speaker 1: the word. I'm kind of disappointed that I had to
Speaker 1: go through what I did because of some untruths, and
Speaker 1: it couldn't separate the myths from facts. That's one cost,
Speaker 1: a big cost of conducting psychological warfare. It requires so
Speaker 1: much lying during a war that when it's all over,
Speaker 1: it can be hard ever again to separate myths from facts,
Speaker 1: to sort truth from lies. This is called geography of
Speaker 1: this time. This is a poem. Archibald McLeish wrote at
Speaker 1: the end of the war. He was trying to reckon
Speaker 1: with what the war had done to time, to nations,
Speaker 1: to language and to knowledge. What is required of us
Speaker 1: is the recognition of the frontiers between the centuries. McLeish
Speaker 1: had the idea that in the aftermath of atrocity, people
Speaker 1: have to work out all over again how change happens
Speaker 1: what separates one time from another, one place from another.
Speaker 1: As if the signposts have fallen, the street signs, the
Speaker 1: lamp posts, the land is barren, seemingly timeless. Who thought
Speaker 1: tomorrow was of the same nation as today. There are
Speaker 1: many who came to the frontiers between the times and
Speaker 1: did not know them. Who looked for the sentry box
Speaker 1: at the stone bridge, for the barricade, and the pines,
Speaker 1: and the declaration and two lang, which is the warning
Speaker 1: and the opportunity to turn. They are dead there in
Speaker 1: the down light, in the sheep's barren. This, I think,
Speaker 1: is the actual strategy of truth, reposting the street signs,
Speaker 1: attaching meaning towards fighting propaganda, with poetry, finding our way
Speaker 1: on the long road to knowledge in the aftermath of atrocity.
Speaker 1: What is required of us is the recognition with no sign,
Speaker 1: with no word, with the roads raveled out into ruts,
Speaker 1: and the ruts into dust, and the dust stirred by
Speaker 1: the wind, the roads from behind us ending in the dust.
Speaker 1: What is required of us is the recognition of the
Speaker 1: frontiers where the roads end. We are very far. That's
Speaker 1: the place I'm trying to get to on this season
Speaker 1: of the Last Archive across the frontiers of history over Rhodes,
Speaker 1: rutted by lies and doubt. That place is very far.
Speaker 1: The Last Archive is written and hosted by me Joe Lapour.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Sophie Crane, mckibbon and Ben Natt of Hafrey.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Julia Barton, and our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Mia Lobel. Martin Gonzalez is our engineer. Fact checking by
Speaker 1: Amy Gaines. Original music by Matthias boss and John Evans
Speaker 1: of Stellwagen Symfinett. Our research assistants are Michelle Gau, Olivia
Speaker 1: Oldham and Oliver Riskin. Cuts special thanks to Joan Donovan
Speaker 1: and Simon Leake. Our full proof players are Yoshia Mao,
Speaker 1: Raymond Blankenhorne, Matthias Bossi, Dan Epstein, Ethan Herschenfeld, Becca A.
Speaker 1: Lewis and Ruper Hello, Robert Roccatta and Nick Saxton. The
Speaker 1: Last Archive is a production of Pushkin Industries. At Pushkin
Speaker 1: thanks to Jacob Weisburg, Heather Fame, John Schnarz, Harley Migliori,
Speaker 1: Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Emily Rostak, Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanig
Speaker 1: and Daniella Lacan Many of us out effects are from Harry,
Speaker 1: Janette Junior, and the Star Jenette Foundation. If you like
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to rate, share, and review. To
Speaker 1: find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen at podcasts. I'm Jill Lapoor.