Resistance Women

Based on the true story of Mildred Fish Harnack, this historical novel follows four women whose lives intertwine in Nazi Berlin as they wage a clandestine struggle against Hitler's regime. The narrative spans from 1929 to 1946, told primarily through the perspectives of Mildred, an American scholar; Greta Lorke, a German graduate student; Sara Weitz, a young Jewish woman (a fictional composite inspired by real members of the resistance); and Martha Dodd, the daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Germany.

The novel opens in November 1942 with Mildred imprisoned in the Gestapo's basement cells at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, her health failing, her husband Arvid Harnack confined somewhere nearby. During her brief daily exercise walk, she whispers her name and cell number to a fellow prisoner, asking not to be forgotten. She reflects on the resistance cell the Nazis call the Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra), a network of ordinary people who risked everything to oppose the Third Reich.

The story returns to 1929, when Mildred, a graduate student from Wisconsin, arrives in Germany to reunite with Arvid, the German economist she married in 1926 at the University of Wisconsin. She meets his family in Jena, including his cousin Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran minister. The American stock market crash signals the catastrophe ahead. Greta, a German classmate from Wisconsin, also returns home without her doctorate and struggles to find work. At a theater congress, she begins a passionate affair with Adam Kuckhoff, a Berlin theater director, only to discover he is married and breaks things off.

By 1930, Sara enrolls in Mildred's American literature course at the University of Berlin. Her family watches with alarm as the National Socialists surge in elections and antisemitic riots erupt across Berlin. Mildred loses her university position when a Nazi-sympathizing department director deems her expendable, and she moves with Arvid to the working-class neighborhood of Neukölln.

Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933 accelerates the collapse. The Reichstag fire provides the pretext for suspending civil rights. Arvid fears arrest because of his founding of ARPLAN, a study group on Soviet economics, and his publisher destroys the printing plates of his book on the Soviet Union. The Enabling Act grants Hitler dictatorial powers, transforming Germany into a dictatorship. Greta, who had gone to London to work for her professor, returns at Adam's urging to fight fascism from within. Massive book burnings follow in May, and Mildred watches her former students feed banned works to the pyres.

In July 1933, Martha arrives in Berlin with her father, the new U.S. ambassador. Initially fascinated by what she perceives as the energy of the new regime, her illusions shatter when she witnesses a young German woman publicly brutalized by storm troopers for her relationship with a Jewish man. Martha and Mildred become close friends and collaborators on a book review column.

The resistance network takes shape gradually. Mildred uses her embassy contacts to help Jewish friends obtain visas. Greta and Adam produce antifascist pamphlets. Sara's brother Natan, fired under the Editors Law banning Jews from journalism, secretly continues writing under a pseudonym until he is arrested and sent to the Oranienburg concentration camp. Martha leverages her connection to Rudolf Diels, chief of the Gestapo, to improve Natan's conditions, and sustained pressure from Mildred's contacts eventually wins his release.

Arvid joins the Ministry of Economics in 1935, gaining access to intelligence about the Reich's military buildup. In 1936, he reluctantly joins the Nazi Party to maintain his cover, an act that so outrages Adam that Adam publicly boxes his ears. By 1937, Arvid begins passing economic intelligence to Alexander Hirschfeld, first secretary of the Soviet embassy, while Mildred cultivates a new American embassy contact, monetary attaché Donald Heath. Greta assists in producing an unabridged English translation of Mein Kampf, believing the uncensored text will expose Hitler's intentions, but the Ministry of Propaganda cancels the project. A carbon copy is eventually published in London.

Sara breaks off her engagement to her gentile fiancé Dieter after discovering he wears a swastika pin for business purposes. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws strip Jews of citizenship and ban intermarriage. Greta marries Adam in August 1937, and their son Ule is born in January 1938. Germany annexes Austria, and the Munich Agreement emboldens Hitler. Kristallnacht follows in November 1938, as Greta and Adam witness synagogues burning while firefighters stand idle.

Sara and Natan convince their parents to sell their home and secure two Swiss visas through Mildred. On Hitler's birthday in April 1939, the siblings trick their parents into using the visas by secretly packing their parents' clothes. Sara and Natan remain in Berlin. Germany's invasion of Poland in September triggers declarations of war from Britain and France.

In 1940, Greta engineers a merger between the Harnack network and that of Harro Schulze-Boysen, a Luftwaffe intelligence officer with access to military secrets. Together they provide detailed intelligence about Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's planned invasion of the Soviet Union, but when German troops cross the border on June 22, 1941, the Soviets are caught by surprise, having ignored every warning. During this period, Mildred becomes pregnant but miscarries due to stress and malnutrition. After Pearl Harbor brings the United States into the war, she becomes pregnant again but suffers an ectopic pregnancy, ending her ability to conceive.

Deportations of Berlin's Jews escalate. Sara serves as a resistance courier using false identity papers. In June 1942, Natan is seized in a mass roundup and killed at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Sara flees Berlin with help from Dieter, who arranges her passage to Switzerland.

In late August 1942, the Gestapo closes in. Greta is arrested at her apartment and entrusts Ule to the kindergarten teacher downstairs. Adam is captured in Prague. Mildred and Arvid are apprehended on the Baltic coast. Over 100 network members are arrested. The exposure traces to a Soviet radio transmission from Brussels containing resistance members' names, which the German Abwehr intercepted and decoded.

At trial before the Reich Court-Martial in December 1942, prosecutor Manfred Roeder demands death for all defendants. Arvid is sentenced to death; Mildred receives six years because her attorney argues she merely obeyed her husband. On December 22, Arvid is hanged at Plötzensee prison, along with Harro and others. Hitler refuses to accept Mildred's lighter sentence and orders a retrial. She is resentenced to death and executed by guillotine on February 16, 1943. Her reported last words: "And I have loved Germany so much."

Greta is also sentenced to death, but her sentence is secretly revoked after an appeal. Adam is hanged on August 5, 1943. Resentenced to 10 years, Greta endures forced labor until Russian soldiers liberate her in May 1945. She walks for days through war-ravaged Germany searching for Ule, who had been placed with a foster family in occupied Poland. In early 1946, American officers locate her son and bring him home. Greta files a brief at the Nuremberg trials accusing Roeder of crimes against humanity, but U.S. Army intelligence shields him in exchange for his help tracking Soviet spies, and he is never prosecuted. Greta resolves to watch over the orphaned children of her executed friends for the rest of her life.