Mildred Gillars  Mildred Elizabeth Gillars (November 29, 1900 – June 25, 1988), nicknamed "Axis Sally" along with Rita Zucca, was an American broadcaster employed by Nazi Germany to disseminate propaganda during World War II. Following her capture in post-war Berlin, she became the first woman to be convicted of treason against the United States. In March 1949, she was sentenced to ten to thirty years' imprisonment. She was released in 1961. Born Mildred Elizabeth Sisk in Portland, Maine, she took the surname Gillars in 1911 after her mother remarried. At 16, she moved to Conneaut, Ohio, with her family. In 1918, she enrolled at Ohio Wesleyan University to study dramatic arts, but left without graduating. She then moved to Greenwich Village, New York City, where she worked in various low-skilled jobs to finance drama lessons. She toured with stock companies and appeared in vaudeville but she was unable to establish a theatrical career. She also worked as an artist's model for sculptor Mario Korbel, but was unable to find regular employment, so in 1929, she moved to France and lived in Paris for six months. In 1933, she left the United States again, residing first in Algiers, where she found work as a dressmaker's assistant. In 1934, she moved to Dresden, Germany, to study music, and was later employed as a teacher of English at the Berlitz School of Languages in Berlin. In 1940, she obtained work as an announcer with the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG), German State Radio. By 1941, the US State Department was advising American nationals to leave Germany and German occupied territories. However, Gillars chose to remain because her fiancé, Paul Karlson, a naturalized German citizen, said he would never marry her if she returned to the United States. Shortly afterwards, Karlson was sent to the Eastern Front, where he was killed in action. Gillars' broadcasts initially were largely apolitical. This changed in 1942 when Max Otto Koischwitz, the program director in the USA Zone at the RRG, cast Gillars in a new show called "Home Sweet Home". She soon acquired several names amongst her GI audience, including the "Bitch of Berlin," Berlin Babe, Olga, and Sally, but the one most common was "Axis Sally". This name probably came when asked on air to describe herself, Gillars had said she was "the Irish type… a real Sally."