by Bryan & Heather
As sensational and potentially dire a crime as treason is, there have been surprisingly few prosecutions—let alone convictions—of it in American history. This is largely by the design of the founding generation. Both the Constitution’s framers and Chief Justice John Marshall wished to avoid the indiscriminate weaponization of the charge against political opponents, as was common under monarchies of the day. There are occasions, however, when treason is an appropriate charge. One such occasion arose during the Second World War when an American citizen acted as a figurehead of the Nazi propaganda machine: the radio personality known as Axis Sally.
The 2021 film American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally attempts to relate this story, depicting the prosecution of Mildred “Axis Sally” Gillars (Meadow Williams) and her complicated defense by lawyer James Laughlin (Al Pacino). Going into the movie, we weren’t quite sure what to expect. We hadn’t remembered hearing of the film when it came out, and despite the presence of household name Pacino, American Traitor had all the look of a straight-to-streaming B period piece. We later learned that it did receive a theatrical release simultaneous to its release on streaming platforms, but that the theatrical release had bombed hard. We can’t say we were surprised—the writing and acting felt like that of a Lifetime movie, and the material culture and costuming felt more like an attempt at cheaply evoking the era than accurately portraying it.
What really made us pause, however, was American Traitor’s failure to critically engage with Laughlin’s historical and semi-successful defense of Gillars.
In the film, Laughlin is initially ill-disposed toward his client, inclined to ensure only a fair trial. Gradually, though, he comes to empathize with her prolonged struggle to survive within a fascist state that stripped her of much agency and daily threatened personal harm unless she unquestioningly followed orders. Intriguing legal technicalities come to light during the trial that seem to support a motion to dismiss, like Gillars’s renouncement of her American citizenship after the United States declaration of war. But Laughlin largely ignores these complexities, favoring instead a more basic defense: Gillars can’t be held responsible for actions taken under duress and in fear for her life.
In a thundering closing argument, Laughlin declares not only that these harrowing circumstance mitigate Gillars’s subversion but that her actions did not demonstrably lead to American lives lost. It’s flawed justice and an infringement on her First Amendment right to free speech, he argues, to convict her of treason, especially when Americans like Ernest Hemingway and Eleanor Roosevelt criticized the war without the same. American Traitor offers no real rebuttal to these comments, seemingly presenting them to the viewer as the moral of the film, and Gillars is pronounced not guilty on seven of the eight counts of treason she was charged with.
Yet no part of that defense holds water for us.
First and most obviously, an act of treason’s competence has no bearing on whether it was committed.
Further, no right is unlimited. A US citizen expressing their opinions within the United States is clearly not the same as a US citizen actively aiding a country at war with the United States.
The issue of coercion is grayer, but here, too, Gillars is more culpable than the movie lets on. She moved to Germany in 1929 and could have left at any point after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Even more importantly, the Nuremberg tribunals that took place three years before Gillars’s own trial established that “just following orders” was no longer a valid defense. Every soldier has a moral responsibility to disobey and counteract immoral orders, no matter their source. Under a fascist regime, this principal logically results in direct physical danger to any soldier who speaks up. We couldn’t buy that Gillars shouldn’t have been held to the same standard.
By the time we finished the film, we couldn’t help but think the apparent message of American Traitor was precisely the wrong one for our current times. In these days of threatened democracy, rising authoritarianism, and, yes, fascism, we can’t enjoy or recommend movies that argue for moral mediocrity over taking a stand for what’s right, regardless of personal cost. American Traitor can safely be skipped.