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SELECTED AS A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK A SUNDAY TIMES BEST
PAPERBACK OF 2022 Born and raised in America, Mildred Harnack was
twenty-six and living in Germany when she witnessed the meteoric
rise of the Nazi party. She began holding secret meetings in her
apartment, forming a small band of political activists set on
helping Jews escape, denouncing Hitler and calling for revolution.
When the Second World War began, she became a spy, couriering
top-secret intelligence to the Allies. In this astonishing work of
non-fiction, Harnack's great-great-niece Rebecca Donner draws on
extensive archival research, fusing elements of biography,
political thriller and scholarly detective story to tell a
powerful, epic tale of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history.
SELECTED AS A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK Born and raised in
America, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD
programme in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi
party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment
- a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into
the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited
Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of
sabotage and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler
and called for revolution. When the first shots of the Second World
War were fired she became a spy, couriering top-secret intelligence
to the Allies. On the eve of her escape to Sweden, she was ambushed
by the Gestapo. During a hastily convened trial at the
Reichskriegsgericht - the Reich Court-Martial - a panel of five
judges sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler
overruled the decision and ordered her execution. On 16 February
1943, she was strapped to a guillotine and beheaded. Harnack's
great-great-niece Rebecca Donner draws on extensive archival
research and newly discovered documents in her family archives in
this astonishing work of nonfiction. Fusing elements of biography,
political thriller and scholarly detective story, Donner
brilliantly interweaves letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out
of a Berlin prison, survivors' testimony, and a trove of
declassified intelligence documents into a powerful, epic story,
reconstructing the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly
erased by history.
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