Constance Drexel - Indictment, Arrest, and Release

Indictment, Arrest, and Release

On October 1, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a memo to U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle that stated in part, "There are a number of Americans in Europe who are aiding Hitler et al on the radio. Why should we not proceed to indict them for treason even though we might not be able to try them until after the war?" A Federal Bureau of Investigation review of excerpts of such broadcasts stated that Drexel was attempting to show that the war had not lowered the morale of the German people in an effort to discourage the American people from continuing with the war effort. In July 1943, the United States Department of Justice filed treason charges against Drexel and seven other United States citizens who had been broadcasting from Axis-controlled radio stations. On August 17, 1945, over three months after the war in Europe had ended, she was arrested in Vienna by American forces after she revealed her identity to a Stars and Stripes reporter on a walk behind the Vienna City Hall. Wearing an American flag lapel pin, she claimed she had always been a loyal citizen, and had only broadcast on cultural questions. At the time of her arrest, her age was listed as 60 (in one newspaper) and almost 70 (in another).

Drexel was detained for over a year before she was transferred to Ellis Island in New York Harbor, pending an October 1946 hearing by a board of inquiry of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, on her eligibility to re-enter the United States. On October 3, 1946, the board decided that she had not forfeited her citizenship, and allowed her to re-enter the country.

At the time of her release and re-entry, the United States Department of Justice said that her prosecution on the treason charges was no longer contemplated because lawyers who went to Germany to seek further evidence against her failed to uncover any. An internal Department of Justice memorandum dated June 14, 1946 repeats information from the Office of Strategic Services that she "was stranded in Germany and since she needed money she found a job with the American Propaganda Section of the Reichrundfunk," but that her twice-weekly broadcasts dealt "mainly with women, children, and the beauties of the German landscape." The memo recommended taking no further action against her. But Walter Winchell and others were still urging prosecution and stiff sentences for the Berlin broadcasters. When the charges were formally dropped on April 14, 1948, the investigators explained that none of Drexel’s broadcasts was “political in nature.”