Donald S . Day Donald Satterlee Day ( May 15 , 1895 Brooklyn , New York City – October 1 , 1966 Helsinki , Finland ) was an American reporter and a broadcaster of Nazi propaganda during World War II . He was arrested and investigated for treason after the war but no charges were brought due to lack of evidence . Early life . Day ’ s parents were John and Grace , née Satterlee . He had two brothers , Sam and John , and two sisters , Della and Dorothy Day . He followed his father , who was editor of the " New York Morning Telegraph " into journalism , working for " The Day Book " , a tabloid newspaper aimed at the working - class market which campaigned on behalf of labor unions and the right of women to vote . In 1917 he became a pilot in the United States Navy and on discharge following the end of World War I he returned to New York , working as a sports reporter for " The Morning Telegraph " . He later became the editor of the " New York World " . Reporter in Europe . In 1921 , Day was invited by the unofficial Soviet representative in New York , Ludwig Martens , to accompany him on his deportation from the U . S . to the Soviet Union and to report on events there . When he arrived in Riga , Latvia , he received a Soviet visa and an offer from the European Director of the " Chicago Tribune " , Floyd Gibbons , to be that newspaper ’ s Northern Europe Correspondent . Day accepted the offer ; and , from August 1921 , as the only U . S . reporter in the region , he reported on events in the Baltic States , Finland , and the Soviet Union . His visa for the Soviet Union was withdrawn when he refused to report on the Soviet system in a consistently favorable light . He was unable to comply when faced by the realities of Soviet tyranny and the Communist subversion of Estonia , Latvia , and Lithuania . Denied direct access , he relied on reports from refugees and correspondents he sent across the Soviet border . His experiences made him a committed anti - Communist , which was reflected in his reports , especially those on the forced collectivization of agriculture in the 1920s and the Soviet famine of 1932 – 1933 . Unlike other Western reporters such as Walter Duranty , Day ’ s uncompromising reports on the Soviet Union were almost unique at the time . Day survived a reporting gaffe when , three months before the United States presidential election , 1936 , the " Tribune " headlined his story , ' Moscow orders Reds in U . S . to back Roosevelt ' . The rival " Chicago Times " offered $ 5 , 000 for proof that the story was true . The reward was never collected . In March 1939 , Polish authorities barred Day from verifying reports of the persecution of the country ' s ethnic German minority , as he was sympathetic to the German position . Day was a war correspondent in the Finnish - Soviet Winter War ( 1939 – 40 ) . When the Soviets invaded Latvia on 17 June 1940 he was given 24 hours to leave the country . He reported from Riga that the invasion was facilitated by the Russian and Jewish minorities in the country : " On June 17 there was a mob at the railway station , waving red rags and screaming in hysterical joy about the arrival of the Russians . The Latvian language could not be heard . The speeches , the shouts , the screams were all in Russian or Yiddish . " Following the annexation of the Baltic States by the USSR , Day relocated to Sweden to continue reporting as the Tribune ’ s Stockholm correspondent . In 1941 , again as a war correspondent , Day accompanied Finnish troops as they advanced into Soviet territory in the Continuation War ( 1941 – 44 ) and in September 1942 he quit his post to join the Finnish Army . His enlistment was rejected by the Finns due to U . S . political pressure . His passport had expired and had not been renewed , so Day then found himself both unemployed and technically a stateless person . Propaganda for Nazi Germany . As the Continuation War was drawing to a close and convinced that the West had to be warned of Communist expansion into Eastern Europe behind the advancing Red Army , he relocated in the summer of 1944 to Nazi Germany . There , he was employed in Berlin as a commentator for the Reichs - Rundfunk - Gesellschaft , German State Radio . He was the last American recruit to the RRG ’ s USA Zone . Day began broadcasting from Berlin on August 31 , 1944 , to American forces in Europe and continued until April 1945 . He was convinced that the Third Reich was the only bulwark of the West against Soviet tyranny . His broadcasts denounced President Franklin D . Roosevelt and America ' s military - political alliance with the USSR , and he blamed Jews for Soviet atheistic Communism . Day was ideologically convinced of his actions : " I also feel that in fighting the Jewish - Bolshevik regime of Russia that Germany is performing a service for Western civilization which will be properly appreciated and recognized in the future . " However , he was paid $ 3 , 000 a month as a broadcaster , putting him in the top six on the RRG ’ s payroll . Ironically , Day was included on the Nazi list of those to be detained in 1940 following a successful invasion of Great Britain and the conclusion of the war in Europe on Nazi terms . Arrest and charges of treason . Day was arrested in May 1945 and detained , along with Mildred Gillars and Herbert John Burgman , by the Army Counterintelligence Corps at Camp King , Oberursel , until he was conditionally released on December 24 , 1946 . Day returned to his wife and home in Bad Tolz , Bavaria . He was rearrested pending treason charges on January 12 , 1949 ; but the U . S . Department of Justice dropped the case soon after . During the Berlin Blockade , there was no interest in prosecuting Day for his mainly anti - Soviet broadcasts during the war . The DOJ had noted in a memorandum of January 22 , 1947 : " His broadcasts consisted primarily of anti - Russian and anti - Communist sentiments , although he sometimes suggested that the United States should not have entered the war and that Germany ’ s cause against Russia was just . " Later life . On his release , Day returned to Finland with his wife , whom he had married in Riga in 1940 . He appears to have recommenced as the " Tribune " Baltic correspondent in late 1962 and was still filing copy for that newspaper until just before his death in Helsinki of a heart attack in 1966 .