Mildred Gillars - German Radio

German Radio

In 1940 she obtained work as an announcer with the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG), German State Radio.

By 1941, as the U.S. State Department was counseling American nationals to return home, Gillars chose to stay in Germany after her fiancé, a naturalized German citizen named Paul Karlson, said that he would never marry her if she returned to the United States. Shortly afterwards, Karlson was sent to the Eastern Front, where he died in action.

On December 7, 1941, Gillars was working in the studio when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was announced. She broke down in front of her colleagues and denounced their allies in the east. "I told them what I thought about Japan and that the Germans would soon find out about them," she recalled. "The shock was terrific. I lost all discretion."

She later said that she knew that such an outburst could send her to a concentration camp. Faced with the prospect of joblessness or prison, she produced a written oath of allegiance to Germany and returned to work, her duties limited to announcing records and participating in chat shows.