Arvid and Mildred Fish-Harnack Arrested (1942)

Mon Sep 07, 1942

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Image: A photo of Arvid and Mildred Harnack

Mildred Elizabeth Fish-Harnack was an American literary historian, translator, and Resistance fighter in Nazi Germany. Her husband, Arvid Fish-Harnack, was a German jurist and Marxist economist.

Together, they formed a discussion circle which debated political perspectives on the time after the expected downfall of the National Socialists. From these meetings arose what the Gestapo called the “Red Orchestra” resistance group.

Beginning in 1940, the group was in contact with Soviet agents, trying to thwart the forthcoming German attack upon the Soviet Union. Fish-Harnack even sent the Soviets information about the forthcoming Operation Barbarossa.

The Gestapo broke the code of the group’s messages and, on this day in 1942, Arvid Harnack and Mildred Fish-Harnack were arrested while on a weekend outing. Arvid was executed that December and Mildred was executed February the following year.

Mildred’s last words were purported to have been: “Ich habe Deutschland auch so geliebt” (“I loved Germany so much as well”). Mildred is the only member of the Red Orchestra whose burial site is known, as well as the only American woman executed on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler.