The History Channel, original podcast.

History This Week, March 10, 1949.

I'm Sally Helm.

The jury did not reach a verdict last night,

and Mildred Gillers is hoping that's a good thing for her.

She arrives at the courthouse in Washington, D.C. on a bus packed together with other prisoners.

She's the last to step off. Throughout the trial, she's gone to some lengths to maintain her glamorous look.

Her white hair is done up kind of in the style of the movie star Rita Hayworth.

A New Yorker magazine writer covering the trial said that to his eye, her whole outfit,

black heels, blue scarf, fake tan, suggests that she is torn by an inner conflict.

But on this windy March morning, Gillers seems in good spirits. She greets her half-sister who's

been by her side throughout the trial. Good morning, dear, she says. She sounds hopeful. Maybe the jury has managed to

find some sympathy in their hearts for her, this former actress who is now on trial for treason.

To a lot of people watching this trial, Mildred Gillers is better known as Axis Sally.

The name comes from what she decided to do while living in Berlin during World War II.

She got a job with Reichs Radio, an influential arm of the Nazi government,

and she broadcast propaganda, anti-Semitic, anti-American messages aimed at soldiers overseas,

an attempt to weaken their morale and help the Germans win the ever-important information war.

But throughout this trial, Gillers has been insisting that she's innocent.

She swears she loves her country, that she was forced to do what she did or die. Today, the story of Axis Sally. How did a struggling

actress from Maine become a potent weapon of the Nazis. And is there a way to understand the

choices that she made? That trial in 1949 is not the first time that Mildred Gillers has seen

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