Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra

Anybody read the book?


Amazon.com: Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra (9780195152401): Shareen Blair Brysac: Books

Mildred was born Mildred Fish in Milwaukee USA on September 16th 1902. In 1926, she married Arvid Harnack whom she met while studying literature at Wisconsin University. In 1929 she and her husband moved to Berlin where she was a lecturer at the university. They became friends with Martha Dodd and were often invited to receptions at the American Embassy where she met many influential Germans. When the war started, Arvid and Mildred supported the resistance movement against the Nazi regime through their friendship with Harro Schulze-Boysen and the spy ring known as "The Red Orchestra". On September 7th 1942, she was arrested and taken to Gestapo headquarters. At her trial in December 1942, she was sentenced to six years in prison for "helping to prepare high treason and espionage". On December 21st Hitler rejected the sentence and ordered another trial which took place in January 1943 and resulted in a death sentence. At 6.57 p.m. on February 16, 1943, Mildred Harnack was guillotined, becoming the only American woman to be executed inside the German Reich for resisting Adolph Hitler and the Nazis . (By September, 1943, all fifty one members of the 'Red Orchestra' had died, two by suicide, eight on the gallows and forty-one guillotined).