May 20, 2026 • 10 mins
Mildred Harnack was an American literature professor living in Berlin when the Third Reich took control. Learn how she and her husband led a resistance ring that enraged Hitler in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/mildred-harnack.htm Find the book 'All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days' here: https://www.rebeccadonner.com/
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here.
There are some stories from history that are well reported
in their own times, to the point that they wind
up achieving legend status, more or less immediately in the
aftermath of the events. Other stories, for a variety of reasons,
(00:25):
may be no less dynamic, but subtle, unnoticed until something
brings them to the surface. Today, let's talk about Mildred Parnak,
a young woman from Wisconsin who wound up living in
Berlin during World War Two with her German husband, Arvid.
Mildred became the only American to serve as a leader
(00:45):
in the underground German resistance against Adolf Hitler. She paid
the ultimate price for her opposition. She was sentenced to
six years of hard labor for the crimes of treason
and espionage, but then Hitler personally ordered her her death
in nineteen forty three. Instead of being hailed as a
freedom fighter back home, Mildred and her compatriots were falsely
(01:08):
painted as Communist spies working for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Mildred's own family burned her letters for fear of being
labeled as Communist sympathizers. But now over eighty years after
her execution, Mildred's remarkable story is being told, thanks in
large part to her great great niece, one Rebecca Donner.
(01:31):
Donner is a writer who published an award winning biography
of Harnack in twenty twenty one, titled All the Frequent
Troubles of Our Days, for which she drew on remaining
family documents and conducted extensive archival research in four countries.
So how did a literature professor from Milwaukee come to
(01:51):
stand up to Hitler and the Third Reich. Mildred and
Arvid Harnack met and fell in love as graduate students
at the US University of Wisconsin in Madison. A week
after Mildred received her master's degree, she and Arvid married,
and in nineteen twenty nine they moved to Germany. Mildred,
then twenty six years old, pursued a pH d and
(02:14):
taught American literature at the University of Berlin, where Albert
Einstein was on the faculty. The young couple joined a
vibrant community of intellectuals, artists, and writers in cosmopolitan Berlin,
but the political situation in Germany soon began to deteriorate
as Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party
(02:34):
the Nazi Party consolidated more and more power in the
early nineteen thirties. Mildred had to make a choice. For
the article. This episode is based on How Stuff Works.
Spoke with Rebecca Donner. She said she could have boarded
a boat and gone back to the US, but Mildred
wanted to fight, to educate and to inspire people. As
(02:56):
an American, she felt very invested in this. The Harnacks
started holding meetings in their apartment. Once Hitler was named
Chancellor in nineteen thirty three and Germany slipped from a
parliamentary democracy into a fascist dictatorship, the meetings took on
a new urgency and the group took on a new name,
(03:18):
The Circle. Donner said they were social democrats and communists, anarchists, Jews, Catholics, Atheists,
and Protestants. What united the group was their opposition to Hitler.
Their aim was to undermine Nazi propaganda, so they wrote
pamphlets criticizing Hitler and urging Germans to join the resistance.
(03:42):
In Nazi Germany, any opposition to Hitler was violently suppressed,
and the media was tightly controlled. One of the primary
objectives of the Circle was simply to educate the German
public about what was really going on. At a time
when non German radio broadcasts were banned, Mildred translated radio
addresses by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt that criticized
(04:05):
the Nazi regime. This was dangerous work. Anyone caught with
an underground leaflet was likely to be thrown in prison
or incarcerated at concentration camp. But by the mid nineteen thirties,
Mildred and the other members of the Circle realized that
they needed to take even greater risks. Donner said fighting
(04:26):
a dictator with paper was a poor weapon. They changed
their strategy and decided to undermine the regime from within.
Arvid posed as a loyal Nazi and got a job
at the Ministry of Economics. He had connections to the
Soviet Union, which was a part of the Allied forces
along with the United States. He used his government position
(04:48):
to collect intel on Hitler's operation and secretly pass it
to the Soviet embassy in Berlin. Mildred did similar spy
work for the Americans. She tutored the son of an
American diplomat a young boy by the name of don
Heath at her apartment twice a week for two years.
Donner said at the end of each lesson should slip
(05:08):
a piece of paper into his knapsack, which had bring
back to his father at the embassy. Mildred and the
other members of the Circle used their connections at foreign
embassies to help Jewish people escape the regime. They even
discussed acts of sabotage against the German government. By nineteen
forty the Circle was probably the largest resistance group in Berlin,
(05:31):
and by nineteen forty two, more than one hundred members
were risking their lives to undermine the Nazis while constantly
watching their backs for the Gestapo Hitler's ruthless secret police.
Unbeknownst to the Harnacks and their resistance fighters, the Gestapo
was already closing in. German intelligence had intercepted messages sent
(05:51):
from the members of the Circle to the Soviet Union.
The Nazis had named their group the Red Orchestra, believing
the Circle was a Communist plot. In late August of
nineteen forty two, the Gestapo pounced. One of their close
friends was arrested and the Harnacks tried to flee the country,
but they were tracked down and captured in Nazi occupied Lithuania.
(06:15):
A carded in shackles to the basement prison of the
Gestapo headquarters. Mildred and Arvid were among one hundred and
nineteen members of the circle who would be tried as traders.
Several including Mildred, were tortured for information about the resistance
before their trial with a panel of Nazi judges. Mildred
was found guilty and sentenced two six years in a
(06:37):
hard labor camp. Arvid and several other members of the
circle were executed in December of nineteen forty two, but Hitler,
fuming after Germany's defeat at Stalingrad, wanted to send a
message to would be Communist conspirators. He personally ordered that
Mildred be executed as well. On February sixteenth of nineteen
(07:00):
forty three, the Nazis executed then forty year old Mildred
Harnack by guillotine. She is the only American to be
executed on direct orders from Hitler. At the close of
World War Two, as Allied investigators tracked down Nazi war criminals,
they learned about the fate of members of this so
called Red Orchestra. Investigators were repeatedly polled by captured Nazis
(07:25):
that Mildred and her conspirators were spies for Stalin. The
Harnacks and other members of the circle had indeed shared
intelligence with the Soviet Union, but the Harnacks had also
done the same for the Americans. Nevertheless, they were branded
as communists, not freedom fighters. Donner said Mildred's oldest sister
(07:47):
ordered everyone in the family to burn her letters after
she was executed. She was concerned the whole family would
be tainted by their radical sister. It wasn't until nineteen
ninety eight that the US Congress passed the Nazi War
Crimes Disclosure Act, which declassified reams of top secret documents
dating to World War II. It was then that Donner
(08:10):
discovered a long lost correspondence between an American intelligence officer
and his superior upon learning that Mildred had been executed.
Donner explained, the officer basically said, this is an American
hero and we should honor her. Also, this looks like
a war crimes case and we should pursue it. But
his superior wrote back and said that Mildred's execution was
(08:33):
justified and to bury the case. That's why we didn't
hear about this for over fifty years. Donner herself only
learned about her heroic great great aunt as a teenager,
when Donner's grandmother handed her a bundle of Mildred's surviving
letters and urged her to tell Mildred's story one day.
(08:54):
The title of that book, All the Frequent Troubles of
Our Days, comes from a Johann Wolfgang Bongota poem, one
of the last things that Mildred translated in prison. Donner
said that she's frequently asked if Mildred and Arvid gave
their lives in vain quote, my answer is always no. Yes,
it's a tragedy that Mildred and others lost their lives,
(09:16):
but they teach us about the importance of having the
courage of your convictions and fighting for what you believe in,
even if it's an unpopular position. In recognition of Mildred's
bravery and sacrifice, there is a school named after her
in Milwaukee. In Berlin, a school and a street also
bear her name. A While researching the book, Donner tracked
(09:39):
down Don Heath, who had once been Mildred's secret courier
in Berlin between the ages of eleven and thirteen. Then
eighty nine years old, Heath handed over a trove of
wartime documents, letters and diaries and sat down with Donner
for a lengthy interview, after which he said, Rebecca, now
I can die. Heath did die a month later. The
(10:05):
book is dedicated from Mildred and don Today's episode is
based on the article a Wisconsin woman led a German
resistance that enraged Hitler on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by
Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
(10:27):
Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here.
There are some stories from history that are well reported
in their own times, to the point that they wind
up achieving legend status, more or less immediately in the
aftermath of the events. Other stories, for a variety of reasons,
(00:25):
may be no less dynamic, but subtle, unnoticed until something
brings them to the surface. Today, let's talk about Mildred Parnak,
a young woman from Wisconsin who wound up living in
Berlin during World War Two with her German husband, Arvid.
Mildred became the only American to serve as a leader
(00:45):
in the underground German resistance against Adolf Hitler. She paid
the ultimate price for her opposition. She was sentenced to
six years of hard labor for the crimes of treason
and espionage, but then Hitler personally ordered her her death
in nineteen forty three. Instead of being hailed as a
freedom fighter back home, Mildred and her compatriots were falsely
(01:08):
painted as Communist spies working for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Mildred's own family burned her letters for fear of being
labeled as Communist sympathizers. But now over eighty years after
her execution, Mildred's remarkable story is being told, thanks in
large part to her great great niece, one Rebecca Donner.
(01:31):
Donner is a writer who published an award winning biography
of Harnack in twenty twenty one, titled All the Frequent
Troubles of Our Days, for which she drew on remaining
family documents and conducted extensive archival research in four countries.
So how did a literature professor from Milwaukee come to
(01:51):
stand up to Hitler and the Third Reich. Mildred and
Arvid Harnack met and fell in love as graduate students
at the US University of Wisconsin in Madison. A week
after Mildred received her master's degree, she and Arvid married,
and in nineteen twenty nine they moved to Germany. Mildred,
then twenty six years old, pursued a pH d and
(02:14):
taught American literature at the University of Berlin, where Albert
Einstein was on the faculty. The young couple joined a
vibrant community of intellectuals, artists, and writers in cosmopolitan Berlin,
but the political situation in Germany soon began to deteriorate
as Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party
(02:34):
the Nazi Party consolidated more and more power in the
early nineteen thirties. Mildred had to make a choice. For
the article. This episode is based on How Stuff Works.
Spoke with Rebecca Donner. She said she could have boarded
a boat and gone back to the US, but Mildred
wanted to fight, to educate and to inspire people. As
(02:56):
an American, she felt very invested in this. The Harnacks
started holding meetings in their apartment. Once Hitler was named
Chancellor in nineteen thirty three and Germany slipped from a
parliamentary democracy into a fascist dictatorship, the meetings took on
a new urgency and the group took on a new name,
(03:18):
The Circle. Donner said they were social democrats and communists, anarchists, Jews, Catholics, Atheists,
and Protestants. What united the group was their opposition to Hitler.
Their aim was to undermine Nazi propaganda, so they wrote
pamphlets criticizing Hitler and urging Germans to join the resistance.
(03:42):
In Nazi Germany, any opposition to Hitler was violently suppressed,
and the media was tightly controlled. One of the primary
objectives of the Circle was simply to educate the German
public about what was really going on. At a time
when non German radio broadcasts were banned, Mildred translated radio
addresses by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt that criticized
(04:05):
the Nazi regime. This was dangerous work. Anyone caught with
an underground leaflet was likely to be thrown in prison
or incarcerated at concentration camp. But by the mid nineteen thirties,
Mildred and the other members of the Circle realized that
they needed to take even greater risks. Donner said fighting
(04:26):
a dictator with paper was a poor weapon. They changed
their strategy and decided to undermine the regime from within.
Arvid posed as a loyal Nazi and got a job
at the Ministry of Economics. He had connections to the
Soviet Union, which was a part of the Allied forces
along with the United States. He used his government position
(04:48):
to collect intel on Hitler's operation and secretly pass it
to the Soviet embassy in Berlin. Mildred did similar spy
work for the Americans. She tutored the son of an
American diplomat a young boy by the name of don
Heath at her apartment twice a week for two years.
Donner said at the end of each lesson should slip
(05:08):
a piece of paper into his knapsack, which had bring
back to his father at the embassy. Mildred and the
other members of the Circle used their connections at foreign
embassies to help Jewish people escape the regime. They even
discussed acts of sabotage against the German government. By nineteen
forty the Circle was probably the largest resistance group in Berlin,
(05:31):
and by nineteen forty two, more than one hundred members
were risking their lives to undermine the Nazis while constantly
watching their backs for the Gestapo Hitler's ruthless secret police.
Unbeknownst to the Harnacks and their resistance fighters, the Gestapo
was already closing in. German intelligence had intercepted messages sent
(05:51):
from the members of the Circle to the Soviet Union.
The Nazis had named their group the Red Orchestra, believing
the Circle was a Communist plot. In late August of
nineteen forty two, the Gestapo pounced. One of their close
friends was arrested and the Harnacks tried to flee the country,
but they were tracked down and captured in Nazi occupied Lithuania.
(06:15):
A carded in shackles to the basement prison of the
Gestapo headquarters. Mildred and Arvid were among one hundred and
nineteen members of the circle who would be tried as traders.
Several including Mildred, were tortured for information about the resistance
before their trial with a panel of Nazi judges. Mildred
was found guilty and sentenced two six years in a
(06:37):
hard labor camp. Arvid and several other members of the
circle were executed in December of nineteen forty two, but Hitler,
fuming after Germany's defeat at Stalingrad, wanted to send a
message to would be Communist conspirators. He personally ordered that
Mildred be executed as well. On February sixteenth of nineteen
(07:00):
forty three, the Nazis executed then forty year old Mildred
Harnack by guillotine. She is the only American to be
executed on direct orders from Hitler. At the close of
World War Two, as Allied investigators tracked down Nazi war criminals,
they learned about the fate of members of this so
called Red Orchestra. Investigators were repeatedly polled by captured Nazis
(07:25):
that Mildred and her conspirators were spies for Stalin. The
Harnacks and other members of the circle had indeed shared
intelligence with the Soviet Union, but the Harnacks had also
done the same for the Americans. Nevertheless, they were branded
as communists, not freedom fighters. Donner said Mildred's oldest sister
(07:47):
ordered everyone in the family to burn her letters after
she was executed. She was concerned the whole family would
be tainted by their radical sister. It wasn't until nineteen
ninety eight that the US Congress passed the Nazi War
Crimes Disclosure Act, which declassified reams of top secret documents
dating to World War II. It was then that Donner
(08:10):
discovered a long lost correspondence between an American intelligence officer
and his superior upon learning that Mildred had been executed.
Donner explained, the officer basically said, this is an American
hero and we should honor her. Also, this looks like
a war crimes case and we should pursue it. But
his superior wrote back and said that Mildred's execution was
(08:33):
justified and to bury the case. That's why we didn't
hear about this for over fifty years. Donner herself only
learned about her heroic great great aunt as a teenager,
when Donner's grandmother handed her a bundle of Mildred's surviving
letters and urged her to tell Mildred's story one day.
(08:54):
The title of that book, All the Frequent Troubles of
Our Days, comes from a Johann Wolfgang Bongota poem, one
of the last things that Mildred translated in prison. Donner
said that she's frequently asked if Mildred and Arvid gave
their lives in vain quote, my answer is always no. Yes,
it's a tragedy that Mildred and others lost their lives,
(09:16):
but they teach us about the importance of having the
courage of your convictions and fighting for what you believe in,
even if it's an unpopular position. In recognition of Mildred's
bravery and sacrifice, there is a school named after her
in Milwaukee. In Berlin, a school and a street also
bear her name. A While researching the book, Donner tracked
(09:39):
down Don Heath, who had once been Mildred's secret courier
in Berlin between the ages of eleven and thirteen. Then
eighty nine years old, Heath handed over a trove of
wartime documents, letters and diaries and sat down with Donner
for a lengthy interview, after which he said, Rebecca, now
I can die. Heath did die a month later. The
(10:05):
book is dedicated from Mildred and don Today's episode is
based on the article a Wisconsin woman led a German
resistance that enraged Hitler on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by
Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
(10:27):
Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
BrainStuff News
Host
Lauren Vogelbaum
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