13. Axis Sally committed treason against the United States throughout World War II
In 1941, Mildred Gillars was working as a radio broadcaster in Germany when the US State Department began advising Americans to leave the country. Gillars was an American citizen who remained in Germany because of her German fiancé. He was killed on the Eastern Front that same year. After the attack on Pearl Harbor Gillars later said that she went into a state of shock, and fear of the Germans led her to sign an oath of allegiance to the Nazi Party and the Fuhrer. For the rest of the war, she produced propaganda broadcasts, meant to damage the morale of the Allied troops, particularly the Americans, who were far from home, away from wives and sweethearts who Gillars routinely presented as being unfaithful.
The troops called her Axis Sally and when Berlin fell she was arrested by Americans sent to the city for the purpose. In 1948 she was indicted with ten counts of treason against the United States, though only eight counts were tried in 1949. Most of her broadcasts had been recorded by the Federal Communications Commission, and were used at trial. Her defense was that she was merely broadcasting her own opinions, which though unpopular was not treasonous. She was convicted on one count and sentenced to ten to thirty years in prison. Her appeal was unsuccessful and she was imprisoned until paroled in 1961. She then entered a convent in Columbus, Ohio, having converted to Roman Catholicism during her years in prison.