Mildred Harnack

Mildred Elizabeth Harnack (née Fish; September 16, 1902 – February 16, 1943) was an American literary historian, translator, and member of the German resistance against the Nazi regime. After marrying Arvid Harnack, she moved to Germany in 1929, where she began her career as an academic. Mildred Harnack spent a year at the University of Jena and the University of Giessen working on her doctoral thesis. At Giessen, she witnessed the beginnings of Nazism. Mildred Harnack became an assistant lecturer in English and American literature at the University of Berlin in 1931. In 1932, Harnack and her husband Arvid began to resist Nazism. Harnack nicknamed the underground resistance group they established "the Circle." Mildred and Arvid became friends with Louise and Donald Heath, who was First Secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, and to whom Mildred and Arvid passed intelligence from Arvid's position at the Reich Economics Ministry. Between 1935 and 1940, the couple's group intersected with three other anti-fascist resistance groups. The most important of these was run by Luftwaffe lieutenant Harro Schulze-Boysen. Like numerous groups in other parts of the world, the undercover political factions led by Harnack and Schulze-Boysen later developed into an espionage network that collaborated with Soviet intelligence to defeat Hitler. This Berlin anti-fascist espionage group "the Circle" was later named the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) by the Abwehr. The couple were arrested in September 1942 and executed shortly after.