Max Otto Koischwitz

Max Oscar Otto Koischwitz (February 19, 1902 – August 31, 1944) was a naturalized American of German origin who directed and broadcast Nazi propaganda against the United States during World War II. Koischwitz was the son of a prominent physician, born into a family with a history of military service to Prussia and Germany. In 1920, he completed his secondary education at one of the most famous Gymnasia in Berlin, the Collège Royal Français, and graduated from the University of Berlin in 1924. He immigrated to the United States that year. He then taught German at Columbia University and became a professor of German Literature at Hunter College, New York City. Initially he took an anti-Nazi view of developments in Germany but as the 1930s progressed, he came to support Hitler and Nazism openly. However, Koischwitz took U.S. citizenship at Long Island City on March 29, 1935. In the fall of 1939, Koischwitz was required by Hunter College to take leave of absence after he had put anti-Semitic material into his lectures. He immediately made plans to return to Germany and resigned his position in January 1940. By spring 1940, Koischwitz was working as a program director in the U.S.A. Zone at the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, German State Radio. He broadcast talks to the U.S. under the pseudonyms of ‘Mister O.K.’ and ‘Doctor Anders’. His propaganda was directed to college students and German-American listeners who might be susceptible to Nazism. He spoke on literature, music, drama, philosophy and geopolitics, his broadcasts being anti-Semitic, anti-British, anti-Roosevelt, Sinophobic, and anti-communist in tone. In Berlin, Koischwitz began a relationship with another American working for German state radio, Mildred Gillars, who would become widely known as ‘Axis Sally’. Koischwitz and Gillars became lovers and before long Koischwitz was working her into his political broadcasts. Together they formed a powerful propaganda duo. They began a joint series, the Home Sweet Home Hour, aimed at the Allied forces in North Africa.