First published 2021
Rebecca Donner reconstructs the extraordinary life of her great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack, a Milwaukee native who became the only American leader in the German resistance. At twenty-six, Harnack moved to Germany for doctoral studies and watched the Nazi party's rapid ascent. She transformed her Berlin apartment into a meeting place for political activists in 1932. Her small group expanded into Berlin's largest underground resistance network by 1940. Harnack recruited working-class Germans, facilitated Jewish escapes, organized sabotage operations, and helped write anti-Hitler leaflets distributed secretly throughout the city. When war erupted, she turned spy and transmitted classified intelligence to the Allies. The Gestapo captured her just before her planned escape to Sweden. A military tribunal sentenced her to six years imprisonment, but Hitler personally ordered her execution instead. She died by guillotine on February 16, 1943. Donner combines extensive archival research across four countries with newly discovered family documents to tell this nearly forgotten story, weaving together letters, diary entries, prison notes, survivor accounts, and declassified intelligence files into a gripping narrative of moral courage.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, world-war-ii, biography-memoir, activism, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: based-on-true-story, moral-courage
Setting: Germany, Berlin, Sweden, Milwaukee
Period: 1932, 1940, 1943
576 pages · Hardcover · Little, Brown and Company
Content warnings: death, violence