Mildred Harnack
Mildred Fish, the daughter of William C. Fish, a teacher, was born in Milwaukee, on 16th September 1902. She studied at George Washington University and the University of Wisconsin. In 1921 she began working as a film and drama critic of the Wisconsin State Journal. Mildred also contributed to the Wisconsin Literary Magazine. (1)
According to Anne Nelson: "Mildred had been obliged to earn her education, and counted on the moral support of a devoted mother. She developed an ardent interest in literature and languages. She memorized long passages of poetry in German and ancient Greek, and planned to make her mark as a writer and critic." (2)
Margret Boveri recalls in her book, Treason in the Twentieth Century (1963) that: "With her fine blonde hair, sternly brushed back at the temples, her clear, direct blue eyes with their level gaze, Mildredembodied for me the very prototype of the American Puritan." (3)
While at university Mildred developed left-wing political views. A fellow student, Sender Garlin, who later joined the Communist Party of the United States and became foreign correspondent for the Daily Worker, remembered her as at the meetings of the Social Science Club. "She was attractive and lively, more than animated. She was as we called it in those days, 'liberal minded' with a deep concern for social problems." (4)
Mildred met Arvid Harnack in Wisconsin soon after his arrival from Germany in 1926 on a Rockerfeller Foundation scholarship. A cousin Axel Harnack, commented: "Mildred had bright eyes and a luminous expression. Her features were framed by blonde sleek hair. Her warm personality made her liked wherever she went. The very least one can say about her is that she was one of nature's aristocrats... Her direct, open ways went perfectly with the extreme simplicity of her clothes and her general style of living." (5)
After a brief love affair, they were engaged on 6 June 1926, and married on 7 August 1926 by a Methodist minister on her brother's farm. Mildred now used the hyphenated "Fish-Harnack" as her married name. they were described as a "golden couple, tall blonde, and austere". (6)
Mildred and Arvid both became members of a group of radicals formed around Professor John R. Commons. They provided reasoned arguments for state unemployment insurance, workmen's compensation, a minimum wage, and a progressive income tax. The group supported the political ideas of Robert La Follette, who had been the Progressive Party candidate in the 1924 Presidendial Election. (7)
On 28 September 1928, Harnack returned to Germany as his fellowship had ended. As a student still working on his second doctorate, Arvid was unable to support a wife in Germany so Mildred accepted an offer to teach English at at Goucher College in Baltimore. Mildred was lonely without her husband. Writing to her mother-in-law she explained that it was important to be able to stand alone: A strong person makes a better comrade. We have become so much one person that when one of us is gone, the other feels a little broken and lost." (8)
In 1929 Mildred applied for a fellowship in Germany. In a reference written by Professor Raymond Havens she was described as an "unusual person: a mature, original thinker, unconventional and promising... She writes well and might, I think, produce books that would arouse considerable interest." Mildred was accepted and in June 1929 she moved to Germany to be with her husband. (9)
Arvid Harnack was awarded a doctorate of philosophy at Giessen University in 1930. By this time both Avid and Mildred had been attracted to the ideas of Karl Marx and were sympathetic to the developments of the Soviet Union. They did not join the German Communist Party (KPD), but they did establish the Society for the Study of the Soviet Planned Economy. In January 1933, Arvid and Mildred visited Moscow where they were introduced to Osip Piatnitsky, a senior figure in the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). Piatnitsky persuaded Arvid to be a Soviet agent. (10)
While they were away in the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler was appointed as Chancellor of Germany. On the surface the Harnacks accepted Hitler's rule and Arvid obtained a job in the foreign currency department of the Reich Ministry of Economics. To give further credence to his cover Harnack joined the Nazi Party in July 1937. Soon afterwards he was elected to the Herren Klub, an exclusive professional circle of prominent German manufacturers, aristocrats, bureaucrats and high-ranking officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force, many of whom became valuable sources of intelligence. (11)
Arvid Harnack quickly worked his way up to the rank of Oberregierungsrat (Senior Government Counsellor), which gave him access to all the documentation and reports pertaining to the foreign trade of the Third Reich. His reports became vitally important to the NKVD. In June 1938 it was reported that Harnack had sent them "Valuable documentary materials on the German currency and economy, secret summary tables of all Germany's investments abroad, the German foreign debt. Secret lists of goods liable to importation into Germany. Germany's secret trade agreements with Poland, Baltic countries, Persia and others. Valuable materials concerning the secret foreign service of the German Ministry of Propaganda." (12)
Harnack passed his reports to Greta Lorke, an employee of the Nazi Racio-Political Office, who acted as a "cut-out" between Harnack and the NKVD. Greta's contact on the Berlin end of the courier line was Johannes Sieg, who passed the reports on to a Communist cell in Leipzig which then relayed them to Moscow. Sieg was the courier for a number of other informers, including Karl Goerdeler and Wolf-Heinrich Helldorf. (13)
Outwardly the couple gave the impression of being loyal Nazis. Another Soviet agent reported back to Moscow: "She (Mildred) is bold, tall, with blue eyes, large figure, typically German-looking, although a lower-middle-class American, intelligent, sensitive, loyal, very much the German Frau, an intensely Nordic type and very useful. He (Arvid) comes from a good family, German theologian and philosophy background, middle-class, well-educated, of a well-to-do family. He is also blond, blue-eyed (wears glasses) of medium height, stocky and when last seen very Nordic looking. They were intensely cautious in their technique of making contact, diplomatic in the extreme with other people, giving every impression of being highly trained and disciplined. Both of them maintain good contracts with Nazi women and men. Arvid is not suspected and has an important post in the Ministry. I am sure that, unless I have been profoundly deceived, they are completely reliable and trusted people from our point of view." (14)
Primary Sources
(1) Meg Jones, Mildred Fish Harnack (21st September, 2016)
Mildred Harnack spent her last hours reading Walt Whitman. She knew exactly where and when and how she was going to die. I wonder what she was thinking in those last moments before she was beheaded at a prison near Berlin. All that's known of her final thoughts were the last words she spoke to a chaplain. She told him right before the guillotine blade fell – "and I have loved Germany so much."
Mildred Harnack is a World War II hero who didn't earn any medals and whose name seemed to be lost to history until recently. She was the only civilian American woman executed on direct orders of Adolf Hitler.
She grew up in Milwaukee and earned a degree at the University of Wisconsin in Madison where she met a German exchange student named Arvid Harnack. They got married at Picnic Point on Lake Mendota and moved to Germany in 1929.
Mildred and Arvid were Communists at a time when Communism was not yet considered evil. It was the 1930s and much of the world was mired in the Great Depression. Arvid was an economist in Germany's government. Mildred taught English literature and translated English language books into German. When Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power, Mildred and Arvid became alarmed and began to pass government secrets to the Soviet Union. They became part of what the Nazis called the Red Orchestra, a code name for the anti-Nazi resistance movement in Germany. Mildred translated Franklin Roosevelt's speeches into German as well as news from America, which was printed in leaflets quietly distributed as a way to bypass the Nazi-controlled press.
I think the saddest part of Mildred's fate is that all of the secrets passed to the Soviets fell on deaf ears. The Red Orchestra told Stalin that Germany would invade the Soviet Union but Stalin didn't believe it. And it was the incompetence of their Soviet spy handlers that led the capture of Mildred, Arvid and their friends. They were rounded up in the fall of 1942 and almost all were sentenced to die. Except Mildred. Initially she was sentenced to five years in prison because judges believed her lawyer's argument that she was merely a German hausfrau following her husband's orders. But Hitler intervened and ordered her to be retried with only one outcome – execution. Arvid was slowly strangled on a meathook. Two months later, it was Mildred's turn to die. This is going to sound strange but the Nazis actually considered it a favor to Mildred to kill her by guillotine, because it was a quick death.
After the war, the Red Orchestra became a silent footnote to history. Even though the Soviets were America's allies during World War II, they quickly became enemies as an Iron Curtain dropped across Europe. Instead of being hailed as patriots who tried to stop Hitler and end the war, Mildred, Arvid and the rest of the Red Orchestra were considered traitors because they were Communists. In the last decade or so, however, that's changed and Mildred Harnack has been featured in books and documentaries. In Wisconsin schools, Sept. 16 is celebrated as Mildred Harnack Day. It's her birthday.
(2) Russian Intelligence Service Archives: File 34118. (9th December, 1940)
She is bold, tall, with blue eyes, large figure, typically German-looking, although a lower-middle-class American, intelligent, sensitive, loyal, very much the German Frau, an intensely Nordic type and very useful. He comes from a good family, German theologian and philosophy background, middle-class, well-educated, of a well-to-do family. He is also blond, blue-eyed (wears glasses) of medium height, stocky and when last seen very Nordic looking. They were intensely cautious in their technique of making contact, diplomatic in the extreme with other people, giving every impression of being highly trained and disciplined. Both of them maintain good contracts with Nazi women and men. Arvid is not suspected and has an important post in the Ministry. I am sure that, unless I have been profoundly deceived, they are completely reliable and trusted people from our point of view.
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