‘Don’t Forget Me When You Get Out’
The Tragic Story of Mildred Harnack-Fish — the only American Civilian Ever Executed by Adolf Hitler
Don’t let her delicate appearance deceive you, Mildred Harnack-Fish was a fighter. The bravest kind of fighter. Willing to face unbeatable odds and risk life itself to oppose the horrors she witnessed with the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Born in Milwaukee in 1902, Mildred Elizabeth Fish grew up far removed from the bloody entanglements of twentieth-century Europe. Graced with natural beauty and an exceptional intellect, she came to the University of Wisconsin in Madison intent on becoming a successful writer and linguist.
On that campus in 1926 she met a strong-willed graduate student from Germany named Arvid Harnack, and a fateful romance quickly followed.
The couple discovered shared passions for literature and nature — in particular the works of Goethe and Emerson, and day trips through the quiet hills and countryside surrounding Madison.
They also developed a mutual talent for bringing together likeminded thinkers, hosting weekly meetings of progressive artists and intellectuals in Mildred’s apartment to exchange ideas.
After finishing their graduate studies they were married, and in 1929 the couple moved to Harnack’s native Germany where Mildred started teaching English Literature at the University of Berlin and Arvid took a civil service job within the Ministry of Economics.
But by then dark forces were blowing across an inflation-ravaged Germany. With Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party’s rise to power in 1933 came a growing succession of torchlight parades, back-alley beatings of political opponents, and worse.
In the Nazi’s tempest world, the need for racial purity and defense of the state ran roughshod over the rights and safety of the individual.
Harkening back to their Madison days, the Harnacks organized their own clandestine meetings of citizens opposed to the Nazis, inevitably becoming part of a small but determined web of resisters throughout Germany.
With her husband’s approval, Mildred began surreptitiously translating and disseminating pamphlets and copies of speeches by Churchill and Roosevelt — speeches banned by the Nazis. Then she took her participation a step further by helping dissident Jewish intellectuals escape Germany.
Arvid, for his part, began reaching out to contacts he had within the Soviet Union — Germany’s arch-enemy. In time he was passing along to Moscow via coded radio messages valuable logistics and economic secrets of the Third Reich.
Not only were the Harnacks giving answer to their conscience by opposing Nazism, they were also hoping to help bring about the collapse of Hitler from within. In doing so they were now clearly putting their lives at risk.
Because soon enough the Gestapo was watching them.
With the commencement of World War Two the underground activity of the Harnacks increased, and so did the efforts of Nazi counter-intelligence. The Nazis even assigned their own code name to the Harnack circle: “The Red Orchestra.”
The fearful and deadly cat-and-mouse game between the Gestapo and the Red Orchestra went on day by day until September of 1942 when the arrests were made.
No formal indictments, no lawyers, no contact allowed with anybody. Just arrest, torture and forced confessions.
Along with other members of the Red Orchestra, Mildred — still an American citizen — was subjected to harsh interrogations. She wasn’t allowed visitors or mail for five months. Under such terrible conditions her once blond hair turned white and her once radiant face became gaunt and lifeless.
After a tortured confession of his collusion with the Soviets, Arvid was condemned to death by hanging. His sentence was carried out at Berlin’s Plötzensee Prison on December 22, 1942. Adding horror upon horror are some accounts saying Mildred was brought into the room and forced to watch as the executioner used a short rope to ensure her husband’s slow strangulation.
At last, some hope appeared when Mildred was sentenced by a Nazi tribunal to six years of hard labor for treason and espionage. Her life would be spared.
Such would have been the case were it not for the demands of one man that all sentences relating to members of the Red Orchestra be reviewed by him. When Adolf Hitler read the ruling on Mildred Harnack he went into a typical rage. No American woman who collaborated in any way with the Bolsheviks was going to get off that easy.
The message was unmistakably clear. Mildred was quickly retried and this time the tribunal gave a sentence of death. By guillotine.
She was executed on February 16, 1943.
Shortly after the war ended a woman named Marie Luise von Scheliha recounted her experiences as a prisoner of the Gestapo at Plötzensee. She recalled a peculiar incident when a fellow inmate, a thin, frail woman, came up to her during a brief exercise period and whispered, “Preserve yourself. I am here without a name so that no one can find me. I am in cell 25. Don’t forget me when you get out.” 1
Guards whisked the woman away before she could give her name.
Later, when shown her photograph von Scheliha positively identified the inmate who spoke to her. It was Mildred Fish-Harnack.
1 Shareen Blair Brysac, Resisting Hitler — Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra (Oxford University Press, 2000), 342.
