Mildred Fish Harnack (1902-1943)

DOSSIER:
Mildred Elizabeth Fish, daughter of William C. Fish and Georgina Hesketh, was born on 16 Sep 1902 in Milwaukee, WI. She married Arvid Harnack. She was executed in Germany on 16 Feb 1943.

CODE NAMES:
None Known

In 1929, she and her husband moved to Germany, where she worked on her doctorate at the University of Giessen. In 1930 she moved from Giessen to Berlin to be with her husband, and to study at the University of Berlin on a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She worked as an assistant lecturer and translator.

It was during her time in Berlin that she became interested in the Soviet Union and Communism, seeing them as a solution to poverty. In 1932, however, she was let go from her teaching position, as were many other women and foreigners. She toured the Soviet Union later that year with her husband and leading academics.

In 1933, she began teaching English literature at the Berliner Abendgymnasium (evening secondary school). She sometimes discussed economic and political ideas from the United States and the Soviet Union with her students. She also joined the National Socialist teachers’ organization, as required by law.

In 1937, Mildred visited the United States and went on a campus lecture tour whose theme was The German Relation to Current American Literature. Together with her husband Arvid, the writer Adam Kuckhoff and his wife Greta, Mildred brought together a discussion circle which debated political perspectives on the time after the National Socialists' expected downfall or overthrow. From these meetings arose what the Gestapo would call the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) resistance group.

In 1940–41, the group was in contact with Soviet agents, trying to thwart the forthcoming German attack upon the Soviet Union. Mildred even sent the Soviets information about the forthcoming Operation Barbarossa. Meanwhile, she was making contact with people who were against the Nazi régime, recruiting some for the resistance, and serving as go-between for her husband, other members of the Orchestra, and Soviet agents.

In July 1942, the Decryption Department of the Oberkommando des Heeres managed to decode the group's radio messages, and the Gestapo pounced. On September 7, Arvid and Mildred were arrested while on a weekend outing. At this time, Mildred had been teaching English at the Foreign Studies Department of the University of Berlin. 

Arvid Harnack was sentenced to death on December 19 after a four-day trial before the Reichskriegsgericht (Reich Military Tribunal) and was executed three days later at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. Mildred was initially given six years in prison, but Hitler refused to endorse the sentence and ordered a new trial, which ended with a sentence of death on 16 Jan 1943. She was beheaded on 16 Feb 1943. Her last words were purported to have been: "Ich habe Deutschland auch so geliebt" ("I loved Germany so much"). She was the only American woman executed on the orders of Adolf Hitler.

Following her execution, like her husband and colleagues, her body was released to Humboldt University anatomy professor Hermann Stieve to be dissected for his research into the effects of stress, such as awaiting execution, on the menstrual cycle. After he was through, he gave what was left to a friend of hers, who had the remains buried in Berlin's Zehlendorf Cemetery. She is the only member of the Red Orchestra whose burial site is known.