“This is a work of nonfiction.” So begins Rebecca Donner’s remarkable “All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days,” and with good reason.
With a story so captivating, set in an unreal age, resulting in circumstances that observers at the time simply didn’t believe, the plain-spoken introductory statement suddenly seems quite necessary.
Donner is the great-great niece of Mildred Harnack, the Milwaukee-born and University of Wisconsin-educated academic who, with her German-born husband, led a surprisingly robust resistance movement in Nazi Germany through the 1930s and early ‘40s. The painstakingly researched “Troubles” paints a detailed picture to counter the prevailing narratives of German society under the Nazis that, over time, have begun to show cracks. Read “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s unflinching autobiographical account of the cold, systematic brutality of the Final Solution, and its shocking industrial scale leaves us little choice than to conclude widespread public complicity. Hans Fallada’s “Every Man Must Die Alone” helps move us forward, exposing the Nazis as gangsters and thugs that through Adolf Hitler’s ascent gained the keys to the notoriously efficient German bureaucracy that moved their twisted agenda into action. Stories of resistance are few, a void filled with assumptions of the enthusiastic embrace of Nazi methods and ideology by the populace. There’s a reason for this — opposing Hitler was risky business. Sophie and Hans Scholl and the White Rose stand as a prominent example — a sad account of starry-eyed college students whose naive visions of bringing down Hitler one leaflet at a time ended under the blade of the guillotine. The lesson they imparted was not a light one — any undertaking such as theirs carried severe consequences.
The West did not take too seriously the pleas of those anti-Nazi Germans who tried to enlighten it.
Allen Dulles
So it was for Mildred and Arvid Harnack, who, realizing early on the danger that Hitler posed to the nation and the world, began scrupulously cultivating a network of ordinary Germans to alert fellow citizens and, later, foreign governments of the plans in store. Donner’s chief success is framing a relatively straight historical narrative of dates and events through the eyes of Harnack and her cadre, making the book an essentially personal experience. We feel the fear, the opposing impulses of paranoia and trust, the desperation to seek out like-minded individuals to join the cause. We watch as Mildred’s warm, free-spirited nature gives way to “der Deutsche blick” (“the German look”), described by Donner as “before talking to anyone, she glances over her shoulder and then from side to side.”
For all the personal costs, the Harnacks steadily produced results, mostly in the form of intelligence gleaned within government channels. Esteemed family connections landed Arvid a post within the Ministry of Economics, where he was privy to financial maneuvers that signaled Hitler’s military buildup. Others within the Harnacks’ circle found similar access and similar intelligence to confirm that Germany was on the path to war. They took great pains — and risks — to share what they knew with governments in Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. But Britain under Neville Chamberlain was committed to a policy of appeasement and accommodation, while Franklin Roosevelt had to contend with a strong isolationist movement in the U.S. that, until Pearl Harbor, made involvement in a European conflict politically impossible. Joseph Stalin, meanwhile, cut his own deal with Hitler, signing a non-aggression pact that negated any of the concerning intelligence coming out of Germany. Even when it became increasingly clear that the Nazis were preparing to invade, the notoriously paranoid Stalin chose to reject the notion, instead executing underlings whose alarming reports called into question his decision to trust the one person he shouldn’t have — Adolf Hitler.
How discouraging it must’ve been for the Harnacks to see their efforts repeatedly dismissed. While the Soviet Union’s intelligence agencies recruited German dissidents as part of their espionage network, Donner notes that Allen Dulles, who became director of the CIA, later observed, “The West did not take too seriously the pleas of those anti-Nazi Germans who tried to enlighten it.” She also points out that in the immediate postwar reporting, “Readers of the New York Times and the Washington Post were probably surprised to learn that an active underground resistance in Germany had even existed.”
After sloppy communications by Soviet intelligence tipped off German authorities, the Harnacks and others were arrested in 1942. They were imprisoned, in some cases tortured and shuffled through mass show trials. Mildred Harnack, malnourished and sick with tuberculosis, was executed by guillotine on Feb. 16, 1943, but not before learning that her husband had been hanged. She spent her final days in immense grief.
The longstanding narrative of World War II as a triumph from without, a defeated German military succumbing to Allied forces from east, west and south, perhaps provides an enduring sense of satisfaction to the victor nations. They took on the full might of the Nazi war machine and crushed it. Meanwhile, the forces challenging Hitler from within, which included a nearly successful assassination attempt on the dictator, largely escape mention. Perhaps in her final hours Mildred Harnack wondered what it was all for. But her communications and those of her contemporaries, including those unearthed from declassified German, Russian and U.S. government files, remind us that, despite the assessment of many who should’ve known better, she and others like her existed. We know this because the historical record, astutely corrected by Rebecca Donner, tells us so.
popart 