Mildred Harnack today is remembered as an American author and literary history, but
also as a woman who helped to resist the Nazi regime in Germany.
She moved following her marriage and then began a career as an academic, but she saw
the beginnings of Nazism and the couple moved to Berlin and then she became interested in
Soviet Communism.
However along with her husband Mildred became committed to the Soviet ideology, and from
1938 she began to resist Hitler and the third Reich.
The couple then came into contact with other members of anti-facist resistance and Mildred
Harnack became a resistance fighter of the Red Orchestra.
However she was later arrested, and she is remembered today as the only American woman
who was sentenced to death specifically by Hitler, as the Dictator of Nazi Germany ordered
her death.
Join us today as we look at, ‘The HORRIFIC execution of the American Woman Guillotined
By Hitler.’
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Mildred Fish was born in 1902 in Wisconsin, and she was a very talented student as a young
girl.
She learned to speak German and she studied at different universities and lectured also
in others.
She was keen on German literature, and she then met Arvid Harnack and after a brief affair
the pair were engaged and then married in August 1926.
She continued to teach literature in different colleges, but then in June 1929 she migrated
to Germany and lived with her husband’s family.
She received a grant to start working on her doctorate in Germany, and she was deemed to
have been an excellent lecturer who displayed tact during the Nazi Party’s increasing
incursions into university life.
But the couple then moved to Berlin, and Mildred then immersed herself in life in Berlin and
mixed with other Americans who had moved there.
But during their time in Berlin, Mildred Harnack witnessed the rise of Nazism, and she became
interested in communism and the Soviet Union, and she believed that they would help solve
the problems with poverty and unemployment which was plaguing Germany following the Great
Depression.
She and her husband ditched their capitalist ideas and her husband even created a group
of writers who met a once to discuss Soviet proposals for the economy.
But Mildred then lost her job as a lecturer at a Berlin University, but she never hid
her communist views during lectures and called upon her students to consider marxism saying
that it was a ‘practical solutions to the evils of the present,’ as in the rise of
Nazism.
The couple were forced to move house, but Mildred Fish Harnack was a popular lecturer
with her students.
By the time the Nazis seized control they were committed to the Soviet Union and communism.
She met Martha Dodd in June 1933 and Dodd became her closest friend, and she wrote,
‘The years of our acquaintance were the most significant of my life.
Our work, our experiences, in these courageous tragic years of fulfillment and disappointment
are closely interwoven.
Everything we thought about.
What we loved.
Hated.
What we fought for.
We shared with each other.
We, all of us, my husband were in the German underground from 1933 to 1943.
I'm the only one left.’
The two had the same outlook on literature, and they began to host a Saturday literary
salon where political ideas were expressed.
Many people attended and it was said of the salon that, ‘I was expecting a lively exchange
of views and engaging conversation that evening.
I only saw suffering and need, people who’s spirit was broken.’
The Nazis were throttling free speech and thought at this time, but in the mid 1930s
Mildred became a celebrated writer and her work was noticed.
She wrote critical analysis but this was no longer tolerated by the Nazis in Germany.
Mildred’s personality cha need, and she seemed to be frightened and cautious having
lived in the Nazi state for years.
However leading up to the Second World War, she became involved in Nazi resistance.
The Red orchestra was a pro soviet anti nazi resistance group that printed many leaflets
and posters aimed to bring about disobedience against the Nazis.
They wanted people to rise up, and the group began to consider new members.
Along with the Heath’s, the Harnacks would spend weekends together, and would exchange
intelligence in the countryside.
The harnalcks then were in contact with other resistance groups, and they were involved
in many different acts of nazi resistance.
She and her resistance group published an underground newsletter for the resistance,
and also fed economic information from the Nazis to the American and Soviet embassies
in Berlin.
They also following the German invasion of the Soviet Union transmitted military intelligence
to Moscow via the Radio, and the Gestapo found this out and they were hunting for them.
Soviet Agent Johann Wenzel was found transmitting messages and he was captured, but then he
revealed the members of the group and the Harnacks were arrested on the 7th September
1942.
They were in Lithuania and had attempted to flee.
Following her arrest she was transported every morning in a police car to the Gestapo Headquarters
where she was interrogated by Walter Habecker, a evil Nazi who had a black moustache like
Hitler’s.
He was fond of using the thumbscrews, calf clamps and other brutal torture instruments
that led to confessions.
But following this Mildred was brought back to Berlin where she was placed on trial.
Mildred’s husband was sentenced to death on the 19th December 1942, and he after a
four day trial was then sentenced to death.
He was quickly executed three days after the guilty verdict at Plotzensee Prison in Berlin.
He was executed by hanging, and a foot long rope was used for this, and this was a method
the Nazis used to prolong the suffering of the victim.
His final words in a letter to his wife were, ‘You are in my heart, my greatest wish is
that you are happy when you think of me.
I am when I think of you.’
He died believing Mildred would be locked up in prison.
But briefly Mildred was made a widow.
At her trial she was initially found guilty and was thens sentenced to six years in prison,
however Hitler himself refused to accept this and he thought the court was being too lenient.
Because of this he then ordered Mildred to have a brand new trial, and then she was given
the death sentence on the 16th January 1943.
Before the trial, the prosecutor stated, ‘I urgently warn the Harnack family not to undertake
anything whatsoever in favour of this woman, she no longer belongs to your family.’
She was then sent to Plotzensee Prison, and was held inside of the condemned cell there.
On the 16th February 1943 she was taken from her cell to the execution chamber in a courtyard
at Plotzensee.
Here stood a German guillotine known as a fallbeil and also a hanging beam where many
people could be hanged at the sometime.
It was here where Mildred’s husband was executed, but it was the guillotine which
was selected for Mildred Harnack to die on.
Her final words were ‘I loved German so much as well,’ and quickly she was strapped
to the wooden board by the executioner’s assistant.
Quickly she was slid under the blade and secured, and within seconds the level was pulled and
the blade fell, and Mildred Harnack’s head was taken clean off.
She was the only American woman executed on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler.
Following her execution her body was given to Humboldt University where it was dissected
for research.
After it was used, the remains were given to a friend of hers and they were buried inside
of Berlin’s Zehlendorf cemetery.
After the war, the United States government covered up from the public the story of Mildred
Harnack’s execution due to her communist sympathies.
They hid this during the Cold War, and counterintelligence at the time of the war believed that she deserved
her fate and punishment, and considered her execution justified.
But over time the sentiment toward Mildred has shifted and today she’s seen as a hero
and a woman who stood up for what she believed was right.
She could have easily used her American passport to flee Germany and to escape the Nazi persecution
but she decided to stay and fight and resist.
But today Mildred Harnack is remembered for being the only American woman executed on
the orders of Hitler.
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