#OTD My great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack was beheaded on Hitler’s direct order. Born in Milwaukee, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin & moved to Germany to pursue a PhD. As an American grad student in Berlin, she witnessed a rapid increase in Hitler's popularity. 1/12
In 1928 the Nazi party got less than 3% of the vote in a Reichstag election.
In 1930, it got 18%.
In 1932, it got 37%.
Mildred Harnack was there, watching the rapid deterioration of Germany's fragile democracy. 2/12
In 1930, it got 18%.
In 1932, it got 37%.
Mildred Harnack was there, watching the rapid deterioration of Germany's fragile democracy. 2/12
"Germany is going through such very dark hours,” Mildred Harnack wrote in a letter to her mother. “All feel the menace but many hide their heads in the sand.” 3/12
Mildred Harnack and her husband Arvid refused to hide their heads in the sand. A year before Hitler took power, they began holding secret meetings in their Berlin apartment. Mildred nicknamed their resistance group “the Circle.” 4/12
The Circle was diverse. Its members were Jews, Catholics, and atheists. Most were in their 20s and 30s. Over 40% were women. What united them was their conviction that Hitler must be stopped. 5/12
Mildred Harnack recruited Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, and collaborated in producing leaflets that denounced Hitler’s regime. Mildred and her husband Arvid also passed intelligence about Hitler’s strategies to the United States and the Soviet Union. 6/12
An American boy named Don Heath was Mildred Harnack’s courier between 1939-1941. His father was a diplomat who had a confidential arrangement with Henry Morgenthau Jr., George Messersmith & Sumner Welles to obtain intelligence from key sources in Berlin. 7/12
The Gestapo arrested Mildred Harnack on Sept 7, 1942 and gave her group a name: the Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra). Postwar testimonies and notes smuggled out of a Berlin women's prison describe the daily interrogations and torture that Mildred and others in the group endured. 8/12
Before her execution Mildred Harnack spent the last hours of her life in a prison cell translating poems by Goethe. The title of my book ALL THE FREQUENT TROUBLES OF OUR DAYS is a line from one of them. A prison chaplain smuggled out the book of poems under his robe. 9/12
On February 16, 1943, Mildred Harnack was strapped to a guillotine at Plötzensee Prison and beheaded. According to all available records, she was the only American in the leadership of the German resistance to Hitler. 10/12
In 1947, the New York Times published an article about Mildred Harnarck. Still, for over half a century, her story remained virtually unknown. 11/12
Please take a moment and honor my great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack. During this fraught time in the world, when authoritarianism is worryingly on the rise, her story is more topical and urgent than ever. May her courage be an inspiration to you.
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