TREASON: True to the Red, White & Blue

As her trial for treason dragged into its fifth week, theatrical, horse-faced Mildred ("Axis Sally") Gillars finally got to the witness stand herself in Washington's Federal District Court. Before a jury of five women and seven men, she slipped into the role of a foolish gentlewoman as though it were a loose kimono, got a handkerchief within easy dabbing distance of her eyes, and set out to explain that she had been true to the red, white & blue all the time.

Her World War II broadcasts from Berlin were prompted, she told the jury, by two basic precepts, neither the...