Read Online Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany by Richard Lucas - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Richard Lucas
Ads: Link
was a very pregnant Rita Zucca who took the microphone and told the GIs:
Hello, boys… how are you tonight? A lousy night it sure is… Axis Sally is talking to you… you poor silly dumb lambs, well on your way to be slaughtered! 268
Her baby, fathered by Mariottini, was born on December 15, 1944. Rita returned to the studio 40 days after the birth and continued broadcasting until her final show on April 25, 1945. With Italian partisans a few miles away, she fled Fino. On May 5, she quietly boarded a train to Milan where she was met at the station by one of her cousins. He took her to safety at the family home in Turin where she remained until her capture.
Rita Zucca and her child were ushered into IV Corps Military Police Headquarters. “When I saw her coming through the door I said to myself, ‘What the hell is this, another rape case?’” an officer remembered. The MPs found her and her baby, now six months old, staying with her aunt and uncle in Turin. Wearing an American field jacket, blue print dress and sandals, Rita was loaded into a jeep with her child on her lap for the overnight drive to Rome. Although the Stars and Stripes military newspaper was forbidden to interview the prisoner, the paper described the feminine charms of this particular Axis Sally. One officer observed that she was “really stacked,” while the correspondent noted, “True, her left eye is inclined to wander—but that cooey, sexy voice really has something to back it up.” As the jeep pulled out for the long drive, the American soldiers gave her and her baby eight blankets to protect them against the night air.
Immediately, the American press and military announced in no uncertain terms that Rita Zucca was the Axis Sally, and emphasized that the sultry voice that greeted the doughboys on the beach at Anzio belonged to the cross-eyed mother of a newborn infant. 269 Zucca was pictured in front of a large radio and a baby’s cradle in Stars and Stripes . Her picture graced The New York Times of June 14, 1945 with the heading “Reminder of Anzio.” Newspapers in the United States demolished the Axis Sally mystique by claiming that the actual woman was nothing like the fantasies of a million GIs. “Soft-Voiced ‘Sally from Berlin’ Found to Be Ugly Ex-N.Y. Girl” was a typical headline, with stories describing the young mother as “ugly and unattractive in person as her voice was appealing.” 270 One Stars and Stripes writer called Zucca “cross-eyed, bow-legged and sallow-skinned.”
Nevertheless, Rita was more fortunate than Mildred Gillars would ever be. The Zucca family hired a New York lawyer, Max Spekle, on her behalf. Spekle traveled to Washington to investigate the evidence against her. The press was allowed to tout the successful arrest of the woman who had tormented and teased soldiers throughout the war, but it soon became clear to the Justice Department that Zucca could not be prosecuted for treason in an American court. When the FBI discovered documentation of her 1941 renunciation of citizenship, J. Edgar Hoover informed the Justice Department that a treason case was impossible. Only a month after Rita Zucca’s arrest, Hoover wrote to the Assistant Attorney General:
In view of the fact that [she] has lost her American citizenship, no efforts are being made at the present time to develop a treason case against her. In the absence of a request from you, no further action will be taken regarding this individual. 271
The US Government’s case against Zucca was closed. On September 30, 1945, Rita was tried and found guilty by an Italian court of collaboration. Based on the testimony of three American soldiers over two days, Rita Luisa Zucca was sentenced to four years and five months in an Italian jail. She would serve only nine months, after the Italian government declared a general amnesty for collaborators in 1946.
Although Mildred Gillars took no part in the Italian broadcasts and divulged no
Hello, boys… how are you tonight? A lousy night it sure is… Axis Sally is talking to you… you poor silly dumb lambs, well on your way to be slaughtered! 268
Her baby, fathered by Mariottini, was born on December 15, 1944. Rita returned to the studio 40 days after the birth and continued broadcasting until her final show on April 25, 1945. With Italian partisans a few miles away, she fled Fino. On May 5, she quietly boarded a train to Milan where she was met at the station by one of her cousins. He took her to safety at the family home in Turin where she remained until her capture.
Rita Zucca and her child were ushered into IV Corps Military Police Headquarters. “When I saw her coming through the door I said to myself, ‘What the hell is this, another rape case?’” an officer remembered. The MPs found her and her baby, now six months old, staying with her aunt and uncle in Turin. Wearing an American field jacket, blue print dress and sandals, Rita was loaded into a jeep with her child on her lap for the overnight drive to Rome. Although the Stars and Stripes military newspaper was forbidden to interview the prisoner, the paper described the feminine charms of this particular Axis Sally. One officer observed that she was “really stacked,” while the correspondent noted, “True, her left eye is inclined to wander—but that cooey, sexy voice really has something to back it up.” As the jeep pulled out for the long drive, the American soldiers gave her and her baby eight blankets to protect them against the night air.
Immediately, the American press and military announced in no uncertain terms that Rita Zucca was the Axis Sally, and emphasized that the sultry voice that greeted the doughboys on the beach at Anzio belonged to the cross-eyed mother of a newborn infant. 269 Zucca was pictured in front of a large radio and a baby’s cradle in Stars and Stripes . Her picture graced The New York Times of June 14, 1945 with the heading “Reminder of Anzio.” Newspapers in the United States demolished the Axis Sally mystique by claiming that the actual woman was nothing like the fantasies of a million GIs. “Soft-Voiced ‘Sally from Berlin’ Found to Be Ugly Ex-N.Y. Girl” was a typical headline, with stories describing the young mother as “ugly and unattractive in person as her voice was appealing.” 270 One Stars and Stripes writer called Zucca “cross-eyed, bow-legged and sallow-skinned.”
Nevertheless, Rita was more fortunate than Mildred Gillars would ever be. The Zucca family hired a New York lawyer, Max Spekle, on her behalf. Spekle traveled to Washington to investigate the evidence against her. The press was allowed to tout the successful arrest of the woman who had tormented and teased soldiers throughout the war, but it soon became clear to the Justice Department that Zucca could not be prosecuted for treason in an American court. When the FBI discovered documentation of her 1941 renunciation of citizenship, J. Edgar Hoover informed the Justice Department that a treason case was impossible. Only a month after Rita Zucca’s arrest, Hoover wrote to the Assistant Attorney General:
In view of the fact that [she] has lost her American citizenship, no efforts are being made at the present time to develop a treason case against her. In the absence of a request from you, no further action will be taken regarding this individual. 271
The US Government’s case against Zucca was closed. On September 30, 1945, Rita was tried and found guilty by an Italian court of collaboration. Based on the testimony of three American soldiers over two days, Rita Luisa Zucca was sentenced to four years and five months in an Italian jail. She would serve only nine months, after the Italian government declared a general amnesty for collaborators in 1946.
Although Mildred Gillars took no part in the Italian broadcasts and divulged no
Similar Books
