Rita Zucca

Rita Luisa Zucca (Italian pronunciation: [ˈriːta luˈiːza ˈdzukka], 1912–1998) was an Italian-American radio announcer who broadcast Axis propaganda to Allied troops in Italy and North Africa. She became known as one of the "Axis Sallys", along with Mildred Gillars, who broadcast out of Berlin, Germany.

Zucca's father, Louis, owned a very successful restaurant in New York's Midtown district in the 1930s and 1940s, called Zucca's Italian Garden. Located at 116-118-120 West 49th Street, the restaurant had its own promotional postcards which displayed a distinctly refined setting. Zucca spent her teenage years in a convent school in Florence and, as a young woman, had worked in the family business.

She returned to Italy in 1938, working as a typist and renouncing her American citizenship three years later to save her family's property from expropriation by Mussolini's government.

As the Allied invasion of Italy progressed, the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini decided to try and emulate the German radio’s Axis Sally broadcasts of Mildred Gillars. In the summer of 1943, the Italian national radio network in Rome hired the 30-year-old Zucca with this aim in mind, in spite of her losing a typing job in 1942 for copying an anti-Fascist pamphlet.

Zucca was teamed with German broadcaster Charles Goedel in the program 'Jerry's Front Calling'. Much to Gillars' chagrin, Zucca was also referred to as Axis Sally. Zucca's trademark sign-off was "a sweet kiss from Sally", and she was often mistaken for Gillars.

According to one account, Zucca signed onto each show by uttering "Hello Suckers!" and her signature tune was "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea".

Her broadcasts sometimes used intelligence provided by the German embassy in Rome in an attempt to confuse Allied troops. On July 8, 1943, the night before the invasion of Sicily. Zucca's broadcast told "the wonderful boys of the 504th Parachute Regiment" that "Col. Willis Mitchell's playboys the 61st Troop Carrier Group are going to carry you to certain death. We know where and when you are jumping and you will be wiped out."

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