Mildred Fish-Harnack

Published Aug 4, 2021, 1:40 PM

Mildred Fish-Harnack was a woman from Wisconsin who found herself at the center of a resistance group in Germany working to undermine the Nazis. But her secrecy in this work enabled both Germany and the Soviet Union to twist her story into propaganda. 

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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm tra Phoebe Wilson. Hey. Fair warning you guys, this is not a particularly fun episode. Uh. It is, in fact, I'm fun. Uh. It is the story of Mildred fish Harnack, who was a woman from Wisconsin who found herself at the center of a resistance group working to undermine the Nazis in Germany as Hitler came to power and catalyzed World War Two. While it is not fun, it's an important story because it offers a glimpse into some of the ways that the historical record can get blurry, simply because in some cases there are people trying to do the right thing and having to cover their tracks, and as a consequence, their own life stories kind of get blurry enough that they can become tools of propaganda as a result. So that is the story that we are telling to day. Uh. Like I said, it's not a super upbeat one. So if you're in a place where a downer is gonna make you have a bad day, maybe save this one. It will still be here waiting for you. When you get back. So. Mildred was born Mildred Elizabeth Fish on September sixteenth, nineteen o two. Although her birth certificate lists heer's name is simply Maddie Fish. Her parents, William C. And Georgina Fish, had three other children. They were Harriet, Marian, and mar Beau, and they raised their family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Mildred went by Millie growing up, and because of the family lived in a city with a large German population, she learned to speak German. Yeah, she could also read and write it. And the family moved around quite a bit, and that was because William, who was an insurance agent, kind of struggled to keep up financially and he often couldn't make rents, so they would just pick up and move over time. His problems with money led William and Georgina to become a strange so he was not really living with the family for most of high school. Milly attended West Division High School, which has since changed names to Milwaukee High School of the Arts. Prior to her senior year, however, her father, William died and Georgina and the children moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland. Georgina had taken classes to learn things like shorthand and taking dictation, so she was able to secure a good job in Washington, d c. That enabled her to provide for the family on her own. Millie completed high school at Western High School in Baltimore, Maryland, attending in the nineteen eighteen to nineteen nineteen school year as a senior. And even though she only spent that one year in school in Maryland, Millie did not seem to have any problems with jumping into a variety of school activities. She played sports, both baseball and basketball. She acted in the senior play, and she also edited the school paper, which was right in line with her career goal of becoming a writer. Throughout her early years, she wrote poetry and she became skilled as a writer of both verse and prose. And when she wrapped up her whirlwind final year of high school, she attended First George Washington University, but she missed Wisconsin and so she transferred to the University of Wisconsin Madison to complete her degree, which she did in During her undergrad years, Mildred seems to have been the kind of person that you'd love to meet. She became part of a group known as the Friday Night Ers. This was a progressive circle of friends and intellectuals who met to socialize to discuss issues such as women's equality and labor rights. One of the other things Mildred did during college was to memorize the first book of the Iliad in Greek. She was able to recite the entire thing. This was something that her professors occasionally had her do for their classes after she graduated. It's one of those mind blowing things. To me. I can't imagine ever being able to do it. Uh. With her bachelor's degree in hand, Mildred continued into graduate studies also at the University of Wisconsin Madison, which she completed in nine. Her senior thesis was titled a Comparison of Chapman's and Pope's translations of the Iliad with the original and during that time in graduate school, she had also worked on the Wisconsin Literary Magazine as an editor, and she also taught English at the university, and it was while teaching that she met her future husband. The meat cute story for Mildred and Arvid Harnack goes like this. Harnack, who was from Germany and was studying in the US as a Rockefeller scholar, accidentally ended up in the wrong classroom in the wrong building. That classroom was where Mildred was teaching, and Arvid was immediately taken with her. When the class was over. According to the story, Arvid introduced himself and he and Mildred each apologized, he for his halting English and she for her rusty German. So they decided that they would study together so that they could each improve their fluency, and this very quickly blossomed into more of a date situation than study time. Arvid immediately wrote to his family that he had met someone special and he would continue to write to his mother about the dates that he and Mildred went on, and then on June n six, he wrote quote, I am very happy I've got engaged. The whole thing is actually very curious, because I can hardly speak English and Mildred knows no German. I made up my mind when I saw her for the second time. We got engaged yesterday. This engagement was pretty short, just two months. Mildred and Arvid were married on August seven, nine six. That was two days after Mildred completed her exam for her master's degree. Per Arvid's letter to his family quote, we celebrated the wedding on her brother's farm. A large part of the Fish family was gathered there. Mildred's mother is simple and yet very fine. We arrived at the farm at five p and Mildred and I left again at nine p. We were married on the farm by father Johnston, methodist of his couple of church. He made it short and painless. In a very progressive move for the time, Mildred hyphenated her last name to Fish Harnack rather than taking Arvid's last name. I love how kind of just direct his letters are. He manages to be both very clearly like into her and yet not super florid and romantic in his writing style. It's kind of adorable. So for the nine school year, Mildred taught English in Baltimore at Goucher College. Arvid's fellowship ended and he returned to Germany, initially by himself. Mildred joined him in nine and she fit right in with his family, who, like Mildred, valued education, and she became very close with Arvid's sisters. Mildred wanted to continue her studies to get a doctorate degree, and she did so in her new home country. The couple moved away from the Harnack home to Berlin in nine thirty, and she got a job at the university, teaching English language literature classes while also working towards her doctorate. That made her not only one of the first Americans ever to teach there, but it also made her a colleague of Albert Einstein, who was also on the faculty. Of course, if you're doing the math in terms of timeline, that decision to move to Germany at the end of the nineteen twenties meant that Mildred and Arvid were there as Hitler's rise to power was gaining momentum, and they were, of course troubled by it. Soon, their gatherings of friends to discuss intellectual matters evolved into a resistance group. Mildred, as a woman and a foreigner, lost her job. It also seems that part of the problem was that she was not aligned with the ruling Nazi party. She was able to find work after that, but it was all sort of piecemeal teaching, tutoring and translation work. None of it was particularly lucrative. But Mildred was an ardent lover of literature, so She continued to both translate German works into English and to share the works of US writers like Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe, who she met a one point with her German students. Arvid was an economist. In the fallout from the US market crash, he felt that capitalism was a troubled economic structure, and he became fascinated with Marxism and communism. He formed a study group that traveled to Moscow in ninety two. That was a moment that might have led to him being approached by Soviet agents about sharing information on what was happening in Germany, but this also meant that he had to become more and more secretive. As both paths of his double life widened. He rose through the ranks of the economics ministry, and soon he was actively using the knowledge that he gained there to help Germany's enemies. Both Mildred and Arvid also joined the Nazi Party. This was so Mildred could continue to find work and so Arvid could continue to work in the economics ministry and just learn as much as he could. They also both started working with a resistance group that fought the Nazi regime in a number of ways. First, they published a secret newsletter in Berlin to try to warn people about the dangers of Hitler's regime. If you listen to the episode in the archives about the White Rose by previous hosts, you know that printing a newsletter was inherently dangerous. Obtaining enough paper to print such things automatically aroused suspicions, so even this seemingly simple act took a great deal of stealth planning and smuggling of needed materials. Second, as we mentioned a moment ago, they started sending information to Germany's enemies, both the US and Soviet Union. By giving information they had to contacts at the embassies for those countries in Berlin. Mildred was close friends with Martha Dodd, the daughter of the US ambassador stationed in Berlin, and Arvin had professional connections to the embassies through his work. In a moment, we're going to talk about some of the other resistance efforts of Mildred and her husband, but first we will pause for a sponsor break. We mentioned before the break that both of the har Knacks joined the Nazi Party so that they could continue their work, but that also meant that they could continue to meet with their friends without arousing suspicion, and that meant they could keep planning their resistance strategies. Mildred, like her husband, used her work as part of their anti Nazi efforts. She actually started recruiting students to the cause, and she also used her translating work in the publishing industry, which required business trips around Europe, to make contacts in other countries who were sympathetic to Germans trying to fight their dictatorship from within. There is evidence that Mildred helped Jews escape from Germany, but exactly what she was doing to do this, or how she got anyone out, is a little bit unclear. It is highly possible that her personal connection to the US embassy probably greased the wheels to getting at least some people out with travel visas. And throughout all of this they continued to document Nazi violence and to write anti Hitler tracts, and they became part of the larger affiliation of loosely connected groups that got the umbrella nickname Red Orchestra. That name, to be clear, was not a name that they used, It was one that the Nazis assigned to them. It was wrote a cappelle in German, and that translates literally to red chapel or red band. The name arose because the Soviet code for a radio operator was a musician, and the transmitters were called music boxes. The Soviets had supplied radios to the resistance groups in Berlin. It's still a little bit unclear how much any of those radios actually got used. I there's one documentary that interviewed some researchers that said that like the effort had gone awry, like they didn't really know how to use them, but uh, this still kind of all got amalgamated into their name and in their work with the orchestra, they shared information about Germany's finances gained largely through Arvid's work. Information about very as companies and their contracts made their way to the US and Soviet intelligence agencies, so data regarding the allocation of assets could help predict Germany's movement. In nine thirty seven, Mildred and Arvid took a trip to the US. This was a work trip for Arvid. The US was not yet at war with Germany, and Mildred arranged a concurrent lecture tour with a topic titled the German relation to current American literature. This trip was also arranged because Mildred's mother, Georgina, was ill at the time. Arvid was willing to share information about German activities, but he was running into a problem. As a member of the Nazi Party. It was naturally assumed that he was a Nazi, and while the US wasn't in the war at this time, that didn't exactly make anyone in the US government feel especially comfortable trusting him. Additionally, both Mildred and her husband believed that they might have been followed by German spies, so they couldn't exactly reveal that their affiliation with the party was strictly for show. Arvid was known for his economic study of communism, so there was a whole second layer of distrust at play. Also in ninety seven, once they returned to Germany, there was a personnel change at the U. S Embassy. William Edward Dodd, whose daughter had been close with Mildred, stepped down from his position and he was replaced by Hugh R. Wilson. Mildred and Arvid became good friends with the embassy's new first Secretary, Donald R. Heath, as well as his family, and he understood that they were Nazi party in paperwork only as a ruse, and as tensions mounted in Berlin, Mildred started tutoring he son, Donald Jr. And it was through him that she and Arvid were able to pass information to the US. It wasn't only Arvid's work that provided intelligence. At one point Mildred was tutoring a German soldier who, as he came to trust her, became a little loose lipped on military matters. With this and the military spending information gained through Arvid's post, they were able to share critical information regarding Germany's rearmament, which was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles. In Berlin. They also disseminated information to other members of the resistance. Mildred illegally accessed in transcribed foreign radio broadcasts so others in the movement could know what was happening outside of Germany and how Hitler's regime was being seen beyond their borders. As part of their effort to keep a low profile. As their involvement with the resistance effort escalated, the Harnacks moved to a new home on the outskirts of the City, and in their work with the Rhetor Orchestra that Harnacks worked closely with Haro Schiltze Boizen It's a German Air Ministry intelligence officer and initially Arvid Harnack thought Schiltze Boizen was really too dangerous to work with, but he did have a history of anti Nazi work. His revolutionary views had gotten him arrested by the Essay when he was younger. He came to their attention running a leftist periodical called Gegner, which translates to Opponent. After being beaten severely and having swastikas carved into his legs, among other tortures which led to hospitalization, he was finally released through the influence of his socialite mother. His co editor, Henry er Lange, who was half Jewish, did not survive this encounter. Schiltza Voisen is often reported as saying, after this horrific event quote, I have put my revenge on ice. It was after that he enrolled in pilot school and joined the German military, again through his parents influence and apparently true to his word, because as he appeared the perfect soldier and officer, he was actually collecting intelligence and feeding it to the spy ring. He eventually earned a degree of trust from Harnack and Mildred. As the nineteen thirties came to a close, Arvid had grown increasingly worried for Mildred's safety because of her foreigner status. He bought her an open ticket to return to the US abort a steamship. She refused us to go, but kept the ticket with her at all times. Her belief was that she had work to do in Germany, and she also just didn't want to leave her husband's side. In the months leading up to June, the Red Orchestra warned Soviet agents repeatedly about the impending Operation Barbarossa that was Hitler's plan to invade the Soviet Union, but those warnings were not heated, and the initial attacks took the Soviet military by surprise from the top down in the structure. And for people that were involved in the Red Orchestra, who had really gone to great effort and endangered themselves and their families to share this intelligence with the Soviets, this whole thing was incredibly frustrating. Meanwhile, the Heaths had been recalled from the US embassy just before the bombing, of Pearl Harbor led to the US joining the war. The embassy in Berlin was empty and the network of informants that had once connected through it was broken. Ultimately, the Red Orchestra was compromised in the fall of ninety two biaus sloppy move on the part of the Soviets. They reached out to a contact in Brussels via radio and relayed the names and addresses of the Harnacks as well as other associates advising resistance in Brussels, that they should contact them in Berlin. That communication was intercepted by the Germans. The Nazis quickly moved to arrest all of the members, eventually taking hundreds into custody. Yeah, we're not going super deep into the Red Orchestra itself, but there were like it's usually laid out as like three pockets, and so the Berlin pocket was the one obviously that the Harnacks were part of. But they were moving to arrest huge groups of people kind of across the resistance efforts throughout Europe. Mildred and Arvid went to the Baltic coast, and there's been speculation that they may have intended to try to escape to Sweden, knowing that they had been compromised and were in danger, but if they were making an escape attempt that failed. They were instead arrested at the Gestapo at the cottage that they had rented in a seaside fishing town. Mildred was still carrying the ticket Arvid had bought her for passage to North America with the Transatlantic shipping company United States Lines. The Harnacks were taken to the Gestapo headquarters and interrogated by Nazi agents known for their use of torture. Mildred was placed in Charlottenburg Women's Prison, and she was interrogated every day. We're about to move into the Harnack's time after they were captured, but before we get into that, we're going to take a quick break and here from the sponsors that keep Stuffy miss in history class going. The Harnack's trials were swift, and they were not particularly interested in actually weighing the evidence. That was also true for other members of the Red Orchestra that had been captured. The Germans had long known that there had to be a spy ring with a branch operating in Berlin, and as Red Orchestra was un yield, they felt justified in pursuing the harshest possible penalties for that activity. Nazi judge Manfred Rhoder oversaw the trials. He was known as one of Hitler's blood judges, and he sought the steepest possible penalties. Were all involved in Red Orchestra, demanding death sentences for most. Arvid was found guilty of high treason and espionage and was sentenced to death, and his deep love for Mildred is evident in his last letter to her, which is dated December four. It opens with quote, my dear beloved heart, in the last few months, I found the strength to be inwardly calm and composed. And when I await that which is coming as calmly and composed, I have to thank above all the fact that I feel a strong attachment to all that is good and beautiful in this world, and that towards the whole earth. I have the feeling which sings out of the poet Whitman. As far as people come into the question, it has been the ones close to me, and especially you, who embodied these two feelings for me. Despite all the severity, I look back gladly on my life up to now, the bright outweighed the dark, and our marriage was, for the greatest part the reason for this. That letter continues on Arvid reminisces about moments in their life together, including the picnic where they got engaged, and also just conversations with Mildred that shaped the person he was. He tells her that the more that he thinks about it, the more good memories he recalls, and he encourages his wife to reminisce similarly about their marriage and their families to remember quote that the feelings of love merge in the world, and then he concluded with quote, 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, many many kisses. I hug you tight your A. Seven days later was his official sentencing, and he was executed on December twenty two by hanging at Plots and Z. It was a particularly brutal hanging. Mildred was not informed of her husband's death, but knowing that he had been sentenced, she wrote quote, it can be assumed that I am widowed. Arvid went to his death knowing that Mildred had been found guilty of aiding treasonous activities and sentenced to six years in prison. He had tried to see her one last time, but that request was denied. Still though he was confident that she could serve her sentence and then would one day be free. But what Arvid did not know, uh. And he also thought at this point that like things were falling apart enough in in the German military, that it was going to be over soon, and he kind of was very hopeful. But he didn't know that Hitler had called for Mildred to be retried, and while she was incarcerated, this once lively woman who was so full of passion for literature and just adoration for her husband, turn into a much different person. Her hair turned from blonde to white in a fairly short period of time. She started to exhibit behavior that is often described as bordering on madness. She had really withered away to skin and bone. She was very thin. She at one point is said to have attempted suicide by swallowing pins. But despite what was obviously just a time of understandably incredible stress and sorrow, she also during this time returned to one of her dearest loves, which is literature and In her final days, she worked on translating a book of poems by Gerta in her cell. Chaplin Harold post Chal visited her, and it's his account that describes her physical condition that we mentioned just a moment ago. It was through him that Mildred had Arvid's death confirmed, and that's how she knew how he had spent his last days and moments. The chaplain had also smuggled in some family photos and an orange from Arvid's sister. Mildred kissed her mother's photo and wrote on the back quote, the face of my mother expresses everything that I want to say at this moment. The space was with me all through these last months. Immediately before her execution by guillotine, Mildred's last words were, ich haba Deutschland. Also giliped my apologies from my bad German, but that translates to and I have loved Germany so much. She was murdered on February three at sixty seven pm. Mildred fish Harnack had the sad distinction of being the only American woman executed at Adolf Hitler's direct order. She was forty years old when she died, just as Mildred had been uncertain of Arvid's death. Her death was not confirmed to her family for several months. A news article ran in the Milwaukee Reader in May of ninety three under the headline Nazi's victim has kin here. The article was largely about Mildred's sister Marion, who is referred to only as Mrs Albert R. Carlson, and who contacted the paper after having seen another article about her sister suggesting that she was part of a Soviet plot. And the article, Marian says that she hadn't heard from Mildred since August of ninety two and that she's sure neither Mildred nor Arvid are Communists. She was trying to reach Mildred through the Red Cross during the period where Mildred's death wasn't known to her family. They wrote letters to Berlin hoping they could reach her, promising they would find the money to bring her home. After Mildred and Arvid had been executed, their story became confused and twisted because it was used in propaganda. In being tied to both the Soviets and the US and maintaining their cover as members of the Nazi Party, they had unfortunately created an easy opportunity for all other parties involved to write their story however they wished. In West Germany they were characterized as Soviet spies. In East Germany they were made into legendary heroes of the anti fa ashest Communist regime. The family did not receive word until September that Mildred was dead, when all of this was already being put into play. As the Cold War mounted, The Carnecks were labeled as Soviet sympathizers and spies by the Nazis who were working with the US, including Manfred Rhodor, who had sought the death penalty for both of them during their trials. Although many people sought to bring Rhodor to justice for his participation in war crimes, he was viewed as valuable as an informational asset because of the information he could provide regarding the Soviet Union. Uh he never faced any consequences for these actions. Nope. It also didn't matter that Arvid Harnack had been suspicious of Stalin. His story was rewritten to suit the Soviets, and both he and Mildred were issued posthumous medals by the Soviet Union. They also appeared on Soviet stamps, and an East Berlin High school was named after Mildred. In late nineteen forty seven, the University of Wisconsin Alumni magazine broke the story of Mildred's execution. This was big enough news that other papers reported on the alumni magazine getting the scoop. The Sheboygan Press ran the story under the headline state girl was beheaded by Hitler's personal edict. The story covers the details in pretty broad strokes. When it came out, the Alumni magazine was still a week away from shipping. It concludes with quote. The magazine reported it had learned most of the details of the executions from records of the U S. Office of Military Government. Other papers picked up the story, and soon Mildred's death was recounted and reported all over the US. Yeah, Urvid's death had been known since he had been sentenced to death, but that whole weird second trial situation UH meant that Mildred's just kind of got buried, And an investigation into Mildred's case had actually started in the US in ninety six under the oversight of the U. S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps. At the end of the year, the FBI also began an investigation into the matter, and the CIA also had files on Mildred and other members of the Red Orchestra, which were seated by lists that had appeared in Gestapo paperwork. When the CIA file was released in nineteen seventy six under the Freedom of Information Act, Mildred's entry was quite brief. It stated her year of birth, her attendance at the University at Wisconsin, and that she was quote in sympathy with her husband's devotion to communism. And while there was an early effort, also in ninety six to investigate whether Mildred had been denied due process, which would have been a war crime, it was determined that there had been enough evidence to convict her and sentenced her to death. The military's investigation was closed with a memo from a Lieutenant Colonel Ellis written on January fifty seven, which simply reads, quote, this case is classified special reference and should not have been referred for investigation. Ship withdraw case from Detachment D, and do not continue the investigation. It wasn't until the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was reunited that researchers and scholars were able to work together to uncover a fuller picture of Mildred's story. Since then, she's been honored in a number of ways, both in Germany and in Wisconsin, including with plaques marking pivotal locations in her life and streets being named after her. Yeah, there are a lot um that. So I didn't make a long list because then it would just be us listing streets. Uh. In Mildred was memorialized with a statue in Madison, Wisconsin, which was created by architect John derbro It was placed on October thirty one of that year, and the formal dedication took place on July twelve, nineteen September sixt Mildred's birthday is also recognized as Mildred Harnack Day in the state of Wisconsin. That is the sad story of Mildred fish Harneck Street. Heartbreaking. Why did I picket? I don't know. I just felt like crying today. I guess do you have some some less tearful listener mail? It actually is tearful, but it's so sweet and I wanted to make sure that I congratulated this person. Um. This is from our listener McKenna, who it actually says crying over Disney ads. Uh. Right so high to Holly and Tracy. Like most people, I've been looking for a reason to write that I should have just written to tell you how amazing you are, But that time has finally come. In April, I was listening to your classic on the Haunted Mansion. I had just graduated college in the middle of a pandemic and was accepted to the Disney College Program. I was a public health major and could tell the program was going to be suspended for a while, so listening to the episode was bitter sweet. Cut to almost a year and a half later, and the program is back on. I was painting and listening to your podcasts when your ad for Disney came on. I learned the day before that I would be working at Disney's Hollywood Studios. When you mentioned it in the ad, I started crying. Oh, this makes me so happy for her. I'm getting choked up. I felt like we had come full circle. Disney episode and it was canceled Disney commercial when it started again. I'm actually leaving in less than twenty four hours and listening to the podcast while I pack and finished some last minute projects to calm my nerves. Thank you for the countless hours of entertainment and for just being the best. Now, for the best part of the email, I have included a picture of my dogs and my sister on the fourth of July, the only day they're allowed on the couch. From left to right, Bentley, Skeeter, and Lincoln, who is our pandemic puppy, who also responds to Mandy Patinkin. Thank you again and stay healthy McKenna. McKenna, congratulations. I hope you have so much fun. I have a deep love for Hollywood Studios, even before it became the Star Wars Park, so I'm super excited for you. I hope this is amazing. I love how your selection of dogs hits all of the various cute flavors, Like you have the cutee leffy dog, you have the cute kind of like houndy, short hair, and then just a big what looks like a cuddle bunny of love. And I love that he responds to Mandy Patinkin. Um, I hope this is the most amazing experience for you, and I'm so happy that we're kind of a little part of of of how you will market in your life. So um, thank you for emailing us. Thank you for sharing that with us, and again, I'm so happy for you. If you would like to email us something we're celebrating, or just your thoughts on this episode or any other, you can do that at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us on social media as Missed in History. You can subscribe to the podcast on the i heeart radio app, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. 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