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The history of the German Shepherd, in comparison to other breeds, is a comparatively recent tale. However, a century is all it took for this breed to secure it’s place as the top breed for canine protection. The UK Kennel Club, the American Kennel Club and the Canadian Kennel Club have all systematically ranked the German Shepherd among the top three most general breeds alongside the Labrador Retriever and Golden Retriever.
Prior to the registration of the German Shepherd as an official breed, shepherd dogs allround Germany were being bred for strength, intelligence and loyalty. Despite being bred for similar working qualities, shepherd breeds in Germany varied primarily in capacity and aspect from community to community. The 1800s sought to standardize dog breeds in Germany with fixed success. The Phylax society was devised for this intent in 1891, but disbanded three years later as it’s members could not agree amongst breeding solely for working calibers versus breeding for aspect and showmanship as well. It was not until 1899 that Captain Max von Stephanitz, heralded by some as the father of the German Shepherd, traditionalisti standards for the breed. His motto was “utility and intelligence,” and insisted that dogs be bred for their working abilities above all else. Von Stephanitz had seen a yellow and black wolf-like dog named Hektor Linksrhein at a dog show in Germany. He was so impressed by the strength and dedication of the dog that he decisive to buy it on the spot. He renamed the dog Horand von Grafrath, and founded the Verein fur Deutsche Schaferhunde (Society for the German Shepherd Dog) with Horand as the initial registered German Shepherd. Horand was bred with admirable Shepherd dogs owned by other society members, and inbreeding amid the best of these pups standardized the breed. Prior to the establishment of the Verein für Deutsche Schäferhunde, all dogs applied for shepherding in Germany were known as Deutsche Schaferhunde. These un-standardized breeds were renamed to Altdeutsche Schaferhunde (old German Shepherd).
At the turn of the century, just prior to the First World War, Von Stephanitz prevised the decline in demand for dogs as shepherds in an more and more industrial society. Showing his dedication to the breed, Von Stephanitz started out to publicize the working German Shepherd for it’s intelligence and adaptability to dissimilar roles in German society. Most notably, German Shepherds started out work with German police forces, a role for which the breed would later achieve world-wide recognition. In order to prove the strength, intelligence and dedication of the breed, Von Stephanitz started out the primary of what would later become the Schutzhund trials. These tryouts were meant to prove a dog’s worth as a shelter dog, a guard dog and a tracker. Dogs who did not carry out admirably in these tryouts were not permitted to breed. This practise is continued in Germany to this day. Imports in America and Britain would also prove their worth through adaptability. Britain, already having some competent shepherd breeds, found use for German Shepherds as guide dogs for the visually impaired.
World War I saw the initial use of German Shepherds in military roles. The same inherent abilities that helped the breed’s success in police roles made the German Shepherd critical to the German war effort. German Shepherds were applied as security dogs, trackers and messengers. Heroic German Shepherds were even trained to pull wounded soldiers away from the front lines. The heroism of the German Shepherd did not go unnoticed as French, American and British soldiers returned with rescued German Shepherd puppies. Stories of the valiant breed told by returning soldiers after the war devised a spike in international popularity of the German Shepherd. However, anti-German sentiment caused Britain to rename the breed to the Alsatian Wolf-Dog, after the French-German border area of Alsace-Lorraine. The name German Shepherd would not be employed again in Britain until 1977.
Fueled by the stories of soldiers after World War I, German Shepherds took the air-waves of American television. Televised German Shepherds such as Rin Tin Tin and Strongheart in the 1920s and 1930s boosted the popularity of the breed in the United States. Unfortunately, a lack of breeding standards in the United States, and the rise of puppy mills aim on cashing out on German Shepherd popularity, devised an influx of poorly bred dogs. Fortunately, the attempts of a handful of severe breeders were competent to maintain strong bloodlines in the German Shepherds of America.
In Germany, the rise of the Nazi party prior to World War II started out to take it’s toll on the German Shepherd kennels and German Shepherd breeders of Germany. The Nazi party started out taking kennels all around Germany. Von Stephanitz himself was forced by the Nazis to relinquish control over the Verein für Deutsche Schäferhunde. Von Stephanitz passed away a year later. The German Shepherd was a powerful asset to both the Allied and Axis powers all around the war. German Shepherds served as sentries, messengers, trackers and even mine-detectors. Adolf Hitler promoted himself as an animal-lover, and was ofttimes seen with his beloved German Shepherd Blondi. However, behind closed doors, a heap of German Shepherds met their deaths at the hands of Nazi officials who deemed them to be unfit for service. In the weeks prior to Hitler’s suicide, the beloved Blondi met the same fate as Hitler had his doctor feed her a cyanide pill in order to test it’s effectiveness. Many of Germany’s best bloodlines were destroyed for the duration of the war. Those that pulled through the war succumbed to famine and sickness in the battered and beaten post-war Germany. The few remnants of the established German bloodlines would revive the German Shepherd breed in Germany. However, it would take until 1949 for the German bloodlines to make a full come-back.
The end of World War II formulated the firstborn definitive split in German Shepherd bloodlines. German Shepherd bloodlines in the United States continued on after the war. American bloodlines were marked by a number of subtle, yet distinct features, such as an elongated torso. The dogs that pulled through in Germany were tough and lean, and this was reflected in the traditionalisti German bloodlines that were built up from the survivors.
Throughout the 50s, 60s and early 70s, German Shepherds continued their work in police roles throughout the globe. Meanwhile, German Shepherds were accompanying United States and United Nations forces as scouts and trackers in the Korean War and the War in Vietnam. Many veterans assert they owe their lives the valiant attempts of German Shepherds in Vietnam. Unfortunately, a lot of of these dogs were labeled as “surplus armaments” and were euthanized after the war.
In recent history, it is not not common to see German Shepherds on the news bravely accompanying police forces in drug-busting raids, or sniffing out illegal arms-smuggling operations amidst a jungle of freight-containers. The United States has continued to use German Shepherds allround the Gulf War and the War in Iraq. Some controversy has been caused by the use of aggressively-trained German Shepherds as intimidation for the duration of interrogation of insurgent detainees, but the majority of German Shepherd roles in Iraq have been as scouts and trackers. It has even been reported that the United States special forces have begun training German Shepherds to parachute into enemy territory in front of US troops in order to scout in front using little cameras attached to their heads. While this may sound more or less absurd, it’s interesting to note that the German Shepherd is not immune for the tech-savvy cyber-soldier inventions of modern war-fare. Domestically, German Shepherds are finding loving families and life-time employment as family shelter dogs alongside similar breeds such as the Dutch Shepherd and Belgian Malinois.
In only a century, the German Shepherd breed has flourished in working roles around the world, and stubbornly pulled through the hardships of history’s bloodiest wars. No matter what the future may bring, there is no doubt that the German Shepherd will be there, standing strong, proud, and ready to serve.
Axis Sally American Voice Germany
One of the most illfamed Americans of the twentieth century was a failed Broadway actress turned radio announcer named Mildred Gillars (1900-1988), better known to American GIs as “Axis Sally.” Despite the richness of her life story, there has never been a full-length biography of the ambitious, star-struck Ohio girl who evolved into a reviled disseminator of Nazi propaganda.
At the outbreak of war in September 1939, Mildred had been living in Germany for five years. Hoping to marry, she chose to stay in the Nazi-run state even as the last Americans departed for home. In 1940, she was hired by the German overseas radio, where she evolved from a simple disc jockey and announcer to a master propagandist. Under the tutelage of her married lover, Max Otto Koischwicz, Gillars became the personification of Nazi propaganda to the American GI.
Spicing her broadcasts with music, Mildred used her comforting voice to taunt Allied troops when it comes to the supposed infidelities of their wives and girlfriends back home, as well as the horrid deaths they were likely to meet on the battlefield. Supported by German military intelligence, she was competent to convey personal greetings to person US units, creating an eerie foreboding among troops who realized the Germans knew who and where they were.
After broadcasting for Berlin up to the very end of the war, Gillars tried but failed to pose as a refugee, but was captured by US authorities. Her 1949 trial for treason captured the attention and raw emotion of a nation fresh from the horrors of the Second World War. Gillars’s twelve-year imprisonment and life on parole, including a stay in a convent, is a remarkable story of a woman who attempts to rebuild her life in the country she betrayed.
Written by Richard Lucas, a freelance writer and lifelong shortwave radio enthusiast, Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany is the introductory exhaustively documented look at this mythologized figure of World War II.
From Publishers WeeklyShortwave radio ardent Lucas conservatively chronicles the life of Mildred Gillars, known to American GIs for the duration of WWII as “Axis Sally,” in this primary full-length biography of the notorious radio propagandist for Nazi Germany. With the support of declassified federal documents and a glut of newspaper coverage after the war, Lucas follows Gillars from her Ohio upbringing to a failed New York acting career to her transformation into the Axis Sally beneath the tutelage of her married German lover. Known for a voice that oozed “like honey out of a huge wooden spoon,” Gillars was mythologized by GIs as the personification of Nazi propaganda. In her prolific broadcasts she interviewed POWs, taunted American soldiers, and revealed mystery emplacements of American troops. She was ultimately tried for treason, served a 12-year prison sentence, and expended the rest of her long life on parole. In this fascinating, well-researched account, Lucas attempts to isolate the people and events that may have led Gillars to assume her moniker, telling a story “of poverty and hunger.” Gillars was “a woman who, like the Führer she served, wished to accomplish great artistic feats but rather wandered into history and infamy.” Photos. (Oct.)
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Axis Sally American Voice Germany Pic
Axis Sally American Voice Germany Photo
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Most helpful client reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
 A pathetic life…
By Jill Meyer
Richard Lucas has written a biography of Mildred Gillars, an American woman, who was known as “Axis Sally”, a nick-name she acquired from her broadcast days in Berlin for the duration of WW2. I closed the book sentiment sorry for this pathetic woman, who searched all her life for fame, and rather found infamy.
4 of 4 humans found the following review helpful.
 Star-Struck American on the Nazi Airwaves
By R. Hardy
You might recognise of Tokyo Rose, the female voice broadcasting to the Pacific to dishearten and entertain our troops approaching Japan in World War II. For a lot of reason, less famous is her counterpart in Berlin, and chances are you never heard of Mildred Gillars. She identified herself on the air as “Midge,” but the GIs who were her target audience had respective nicknames for her, like Berlin Bitch, Berlin Babe, or Olga. The most widely known and esteemed of her nicknames is in the title of _Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany_ (Casemate) by Richard Lucas. It’s a sad story not just of misplaced political views and stupid anti-Semitism, but of a endeavoring woman with a little bit of talent who could not make it huge except through the doors that the Third Reich, for the most part by chance, opened for her. Lucas’s book is definitive; Gillars did not leave a essay or diary, but she did leave recordings and transcripts of her work, and the exploration into these and other wartime and postwar documents seems to have been exhaustive.
Gillars, born in 1900, quit her college theatrical studies so she could get on the stage. She worked hard at menial jobs for the duration of the day and rehearsals at night. She had one-night-stands in theaters, and joined a stock company, but she yearned for more prominent roles. They never came. She fell in with a dashing Briton (who happened to be Jewish) and followed him to Algiers where the kinship cooled. She went to Europe, and went to Berlin in 1934, and lucked into a occupation reviewing German movies for _Variety_. The German propaganda machine had a niche to fill. A memo said that German radio necessitated “speakers who have a command of English with an American accent” because Americans were put off by British accents. Gillars, perhaps because of her role in praising German cinema, came to the attention of German State Radio. She was initially a shift announcer, calling the tunes coming up and identifying the station. Eventually she became a radio star, the highest-paid personality in the Overseas Service. To get along, she increased the political nature of her broadcasts, which consisted of blasting Roosevelt and global Jewry. “I love America,” she said into the mike one time, “but I do not love Roosevelt and all of his `kike’ boyfriends who have thrown us into this awful turmoil.” When the Soviets broke into Berlin and all German forces surrendered, Gillars and all non-German commentators for Reichsradio became fugitives. She started a hardscrabble existence on the run for eleven months. Captured, she was returned to Washington to be tried for treason. Her trial in 1949 got much attention from a country that was more in fear of communism than in a one-time Nazi propagandist. She seemed to take pleasure in the attention, and was ready to pose for the cameras. Veterans groups particularly wanted her badly punished, and there was a range of charges versus her. It turns out that she was merely convicted of acting in a radio play that she had no hand in writing. She served twelve years in prison, paroled in 1961. She expended the remaining seventeen years of her life attempting to stay clear from the attention she had so earnestly courted at the beginning. She converted to Catholicism and expended her last years instructing French and German in a Catholic academy, dying in 1988.
Along the way, Lucas profiles the careers of Tokyo Rose, Lord Haw Haw, and the Italian broadcaster who was _also_ known as Axis Sally (Gillars didn’t like this). Lucas’s indepth biography does not exculpate Gillars from the wrong that Axis Sally did, but explains what might be a story unbelievable in fiction, with regards to how a down-on-her-luck stage-struck middle-class woman got caught up in the Nazi machine just because she wanted to be a star. Oh, and wanted to stick it to the Jews and those fighting at their behest. She accepted the Nazi world view, but it was clear by her trial that she was deluding herself that she was no propagandist and had done not one thing versus her country. These delusions along with those in regards to her lovers and her artistry caught up with her eventually. It’s a sorry story, and an necessary one for those mesmerized in the history of the war.
11 of 15 humans found the following review helpful.
Very interesting look at one of our nation’s traitors
By lordhoot
I read this book with great interest since this is the original innovative biography I read on “Axis Sally” other than as supposed or expected known as Mildred Gillars. The book appears to be well researched and interesting reading material. The author plainly wasn’t sway by Ms. Gillars’ legendary voice and it is finelooking clear by the book that this woman did without doubt committed treason versus her nation by aiding and abetting Nazi Germany. The book many times referred to her as in a state of self-delusion whenever Ms. Gillars spoke with regards to her “services” to the Third Reich. But it hard to refused her own voice, her anti-Semitic remarks and her attempts to applied American POWs for German propaganda. Her time in jail was well deserved.
I was likewise mesmerized that the book on various occasions, cited her Asian counterpart, Tokyo Rose. Like Ms. Gillars who came to represent Axis Sally even though there were other voices, Iva Toguri d’Aquino came to represent Tokyo Rose though other voices likewise represented the moniker. Of course the contrast couldn’t be more dissimilar amid the two women. D’Aquino’s broadcasts were considered as a morale booster by Allied high command and she work to saved numerous POWs working around her from their Japanese captors who were not very tame with POWs to get started with. All of their testimonies on her behalf were suppressed at her racist-oriented trial but she was pardoned by President Ford. Gillars on the other hand, can’t find a single fellow Americans to speak up on her behalf outside of her lawyer and family. The book stated that Gillars didn’t asked for a pardon but giving careful consideration to none was offering, she didn’t have much choice.
The book come highly commended for any person fascinated in this side subject of World War II. Its an interesting story of an American who claims to be “100% American” but yet supported the enemy of her country 100%. She was lucky to grow old in a nation that is so forgiving toward traitors and even had celebrity traitors like Jane Fonda walking around like a super star for the duration of the latter portion of Ms. Gillars’ life. We are a very forgiving nation indeed!
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