Berlin-based Correspondent
Drexel returned to Germany in 1939, officially to care for her ailing mother in Wiesbaden, Germany, but travelling at the expense of the German government. In the months leading to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, Drexel wrote feature stories for American newspapers that were ostensibly about the home life of ordinary Germans, but that consistently reflected positively on the Nazi regime and negatively on its future adversaries. For example, six weeks before the outbreak of war, she wrote in the Oakland Tribune that the annexation of Austria had prevented the Viennese population from starving; even though this was “rendered more difficult by the United States sudden boycott of manufactured goods from the annexed territories . . . now that the peculiar genius of the North Germans for organization and efficient administration is in full play under the new regime, this and other problems with which they are harassed are being overcome.”
For a few months after World War II began, she wrote more feature articles about life in Germany that appeared in the New York Times.
But by that stage of her career, her colleagues in the American press corps had little respect for the quality or integrity of her work. One American network hired her at the beginning of the war, but dropped her almost at once. She had constantly pestered Berlin-based CBS radio correspondent William L. Shirer for a job, but as he later explained, he had considered her “the worst broadcaster I ever heard.”
In 1940, she began broadcasting on Nazi-controlled shortwave radio channels. She was introduced to listeners as a “world-renowned journalist and a member of the famous Drexel family of Philadelphia.” According to M. Williams Fuller, “sounding like a grand dame with a stuffy nose, she described Germany as a cornucopia – a land of plenty destined for a glorious future. Her broadcasts concluded with titillating accounts of Germany’s art exhibits, concerts, food surplus, haute couture and world-class entertainment.” Shirer’s September 26, 1940 entry in his "Berlin Diary" notes that “the Nazis hire her, as far as I can find out, principally because she’s the only woman in town who will sell her American accent to them.”
When applying (through Swiss authorities) for an extension of her U.S. passport in November 1942, she stated that "in speaking for the German radio, I am following my own ideas; I am not speaker about political or military matters but reporting cultural activities such as activities in the theatre, music and the film."
Drexel soon fell from grace among her new colleagues, and top Nazis began avoiding her. Long after the war, it was reported that she had committed a faux pas while attending a reception for Nazi Party leaders. “On being introduced to a beautiful young German woman, Drexel blurted: ‘oh, you are the girlfriend of Adolf Hitler!’” As Propaganda Ministry official Inge Doman later testified in the treason trial of Mildred Gillars, known as “Axis Sally”, Doman warned Gillars that “you’d do well to keep your distance from that Drexel woman. She’s a pest and a crackpot.”
Read more about this topic: Constance Drexel