Rebecca donner. Shes referred to by the baltimore sun of her marketable woman of or the burr concludes the graphic novel as well as essays reviews an article that appeared in a variety of publications including the near times the believer and gannett. The recipient of the fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for biography Rebecca Donner she appeared tonight with her new book all the frequent troubles of our days the true story of the american woman at the heart of the german resistance to hitler. In it she explores the remarkable life and brutal death of her great great aunt Mildred Harnack one of germanys most successful and the only identify person to be a leader in the german one review the book reads combining the scholarship and sparkling narrative Rebecca Donner all the frequent troubles of our days brings to life the essential role played by Mildred Harnack in germanys homegrown she talks about the cruelly oppressive system that reminds us of what can happen when amidst economics to insecurity and socio cultural change and embrace his demagoguery over democracy. It was written by Tonight Interviewer David clay a professor at the end the university of san francisco senior fellow at the institute of European Studies at Uc Berkeley and now they are 10 books including so lets get to it. Thank you both so much for being here and the floor is yours. Thank you so much. I will say a little bit about rebecca. I wrote them down all be darned if im not going to say them. After which i will pose some questions to rebecca about the book. She will respond and we will go back and forth on those questions and once we are done than that we can have q a and if thats okay with you. Better be because thats what we are doing. Rebecca is really a triple threat which i find very impressive. Shes in active Journalist And Novelist and a good one and shes an historian so is a triple threat she has written books and one that was already mentioned a terrific novel about the seedy section of l. A. In the mid1980s and burnout a graphic novel about ecoterrorism. Talk about a wide range, shes got it in the study we are talking about tonight entitled all the frequent troubles of our days which takes us deep into domestic resistance to the murderous regime of adolf in the 1930s and early 40s. A book that was just recently published Tuesday Subject of our discussion this evening and i dont need to remind them because many of you know this book has been praised upon its release. There are two in the new york times alone to fantastic reviews and one august 3 if im not mistaken and another august 633 have not read those reviews, do so because it will inspire you to read the book or its awesome. From my own perspective on germany and im also a story in on the resistance and ive written a couple of books about that but from my perspective there are several aspects of this book over bachas that really stand out and make it special. One you have heard mention of, it has an unusual personal dimension to it because the central figure in it Mildred Harnack was the great, great aunt of Rebecca Donner so you have this personal connection which you dont typically get in books of this sort. Mildred harnack was an american woman from wisconsin who moved to berlin and had just married r. D. Hard knock who is a brilliant intellectual from an illustrious german family. They met in wisconsin and got married in 1929 and then they move to berlin. It was a difficult time to move to that city but thats what they did. They get caught up immediately and the rise of Adolf Hitler and the nazis. Then i get caught up in the essence of the book in a nationally embryonic opposition to hitlers rapidly established dictatorship so the first thing is this connection that she has with mildred which gives a special addition to which you otherwise wouldnt get and the Opposition Group in which Mildred Harnack became active and a leader indeed is another note of singularity in my view anyway. A group of largely civilian and hitler has gained the most attention from the story and the group that is gained the most attention has been a military and military intelligence. Thats where 80 of the attention of historians has gone not so much to the civilians so its very important to have this emphasis on that aspect. Its more broad than the military opposition. Everybody knows about the military intelligence people. But much less so is the civilian component which is the focus really up this book. Another issue is shes a woman and its noteworthy that she was by no means the only female to become active in the resistance or to sacrifice her life in that cause. There were others to be sure. The female component of germanys domestic antinazi opposition like the civilian dimension has more personalization and thats where this book comes into play. It really puts a personal face on extremely important female component of Germanys Resistance to nazi as him. We have lots and lots of biographies on french resisters that the german not so much. Thats important in this book in my view it again as an historian of the resistance. Mildred harnack will be of special interest to american leaders in this book and you keep in mind that the same state that gave us senator Joe Mccarthy also gave us Mildred Harnack so that american connection is important and theres an american quality to Mildred Harnacks life. Its an american story. A final note of specialness and is very significant that i want to mention is the way in which the story is told by Rebecca Donner. Remember she is an accomplished novelist and without sacrificing one iota of scholarly Decision And Rigor written as a novelist feels for atmospherics Contingencies Drama and the mysteries. Its a great read in addition to the great contribution while understanding how we can become entrenched and how difficult it is to stand up to them once they have become in other words this is the timely book and i dont need to remind you folks of that. It shouldnt necessarily be written in connection with whats happened in this country but Thats Part of the Story And Youve got to look at it. I hope you keep that in mind. With that background with rebecca and about the book shes written i want to give her a chance to talk about her own book rather than me having blabbering on about it. Id like to pose a question to her starting with this one. Can you rebecca describe a little bit of Berlin Theme in which Mildred Harnack and her husband found themselves when they arrived in the country . Ive written a book about berlin as well. I have read it. Thank you david for this introduction. Its a real honor to be speaking with you tonight about might look. And mildred enrolled in a ph. D. Program at the university and 50 of the students there were with the Nazi Fraternity and she was just really astonished. It was not the germany that she expected to arrive in. Neither was it has to be remembered that the nazi party in 1928 the year before they arrived got 2 of the vote in the elections and in 1930, 18 . The margins were much smaller and of course in 193237 so there was a rapid increase in the Meter Arc Rise in the popularity of the nazi party and mildred Bore Witness to this. In her letter her mother she spoke about this and she spoke about how she was delighted to be in a ph. D. Program to be taken seriously as a scholar and her dissertation and must be remembered that Mildred Harnack came from impoverished circumstances in milwaukee. Her mother was the suffragettes with a 10th Grade Education who taught herself shorthand in order to make and made. Her father was consistently unemployed butcher. You get the picture. Mildred didnt have any mentors and here she is now getting her ph. D. Those early letters of 1929 in 1932 shes delivering lectures and shes going to concerts. Shes taking Ann Coulter up or lan and so there is a sense of her being enraptured with that. Its foreign to her. I say in my book the only play she had seen was presented on the varnished planks of her high School Gymnasium and I Cant remember exactly what i said but it was that idea. And now shes taking in all the cultures that berlin has to offer. During that era there was a whole lot of it and at that point it was you could practice freedom of religion and demonstrate in the streets. There were 90 daily newspapers alone which is astonishing to me to consider. I just try to look at this array of newspapers that people were reading and she wrote about the letters. The letters which my grandmother gave me when i was 15. Theres also tremendous strife and she wrote about these encounters, strikes that were happening with incredible poverty. She was deeply moved by the struggles of germans who were unemployed but were clearly having. She would see lines of people begging for food in the gap between the rich and poor it was quite pronounced. Many passages to her mother and her letter, she spoke about the necessity to do something about this. One of the chapters is entitled to muster something about this now. A quote from a letter she wrote from her mother. And, she also felt obligated, and this a foreign country to take it upon herself to try to do something about it. This was now her transition into the underground assistance. That must be important to remember it was probably even harder than in the u. S. Because germany was so dependent on u. S. Capitol. Once that dried up, there was utter hopelessness almost. Much more rapidly so this was a desperate situation. So youve got mildred there, and she begins to get involved a little bit in underground activities. [inaudible] tell us a little bit more about how that happened, who it was she tried to work with and all of that . An interesting introduction into this world that ultimately her life and her death. Yes. Well, she was teaching at the university of bourbon she was teaching american literature and lecturing. She was rather forthright, she also had an eye out for recruits, she would invite students who she felt would be receptive to joining kind of at that point it was a thing, come over to my apartment lets have a chat about the political situation. Or she would start out by saying would you like you to loan you a book and lets talk about this book. And then would have incremental steps in this way and assessed up the persons of political views and activities to an anti fascist movement. Again hitler became chancellor, was appointed chancellor. So she was from the university of berlin. She quickly got a position at a nice school for adults working class of germans who would not gotten their degree. As the first school of its kind and berlin. It was started by a german man whod gotten the idea after he lived in the United States and visited in the early 20s and reported this idea back. Here is where mildred find a pool of recruits. These were working class of germans who are very much being targeted by the nazi party with propaganda. And she also started a club she called it an english club. Really it was also a way of a basically bringing in people, academics and people at the u. S. Embassy, Professor Smith came in and spoke. It was a way of bringing again, ideas to germans these workingclass germans that was outside of what they were hearing or the propaganda they were hearing. It was before, germany was still parliamentary. Then hitler became Chancellor And Everything changed. And i mean overnight. We saw very rapidly germinate progress from a parliamentary democracy to a fascist dictatorship. She stepped up her efforts to recruit but she had to be a lot more careful because if she recruited the wrong person she could be turned over to the gestapo. It sounds rather mild. Really in a dictatorship theyre denouncing hitler of the nazi party. He will be sent to a Concentration Camp and thats exactly what happened to two of the recruits. They were let out than the camera right back into the group and kept going. You get a sense of commitment of the people in this group. It is a diverse group. There are jews in the group, catholics in the group, they were factory workers, they were professors, they were students, they were artists, they were office workers, there were social democrats so they were covid in their hearts at least called themselves this. And 40 were women. Over the course of eight years , it was a scrappy group there was no can actual organization even use the Word Leader im uncomfortable seeing a leader because we envisioned a hierarchical structure. This was by design, a lot of times this was in a postwar testimony, he was a survivor he spoke that they did not know which of his real names a lot of the time. As we approach the second World War in the beginning everyone was still just figuring it out. But as they started to think about it became apparent that hitler was not going away. Initially there was a Perception Germany is not going to stand for this. Nobody takes them seriously the conservative party thought they could manipulate him and control him. Sounds familiar. [laughter] i know. I dont have to draw the parallels know they are there. Right there. Then towards the mid 30s they started realizing, we have to change our strategies. Thats around the time, i did not finish my last thought this was over eight years intersected with at least three other underground resistance groups forming an interlocking chain. Around this time roughly may be at 39 40, hard to say when, when the group began to or members of the group are getting recruited the men were getting recruited to fight, other members were getting again arrested so they thought they had to be much more careful about avoiding arrest. Nobody knew each others first names and the idea was you have these small cells of one person got arrested and if you were tortured and that happened and you broke you would only know two other people and you would know the persons real name. So going back in 1935 thats about the time they change their strategy. This is when they realized hitler as a fascist dictator they expose them too much to arrest and so this is when husband got a position at the ministry of economics in order to have access to Topsecret Information about Hitlers Topsecret strategies. He discovered that despite what hitler is telling the World And Germany hitler was preparing for war. And it pass this information to the soviets. And then he also compasses affect not quite as wellknown was they also, they shared the information with americans themselves. They got into spying as well but that was not the original intention was it . No. Bring to the attention of germans what was happening and try to get them to stand up for something. Its hard for us to realized today just how risky this was in that environment. In 1939 you could get executed listening to a foreign radio broadcast. Thats right. Is an act of treason. Broadcast, putting up posters, distributing leaflets that happened to the white rose they were doing similar things. And of course it was actually deadly it took incredible bravery and there was a risk. You have an organization like that it is inevitable there will be penetration. Is able to avoid himself. You do get into arrests including. [inaudible] the arrest of mildred q tells a little bit about that and how that transpired the rest of it . And then we can track what prison and so forth after words. Guest absolutely. I also want to point out you brought up the white rose. [inaudible] was in that. Connections per. Yes right. I encountered the underground was connected there were i imagine a wedding that connected them. That was advantageous it was good in the sense they had connections but it could have expose them to further arrest. They get arrested and tell us what happens about how she gets arrested. Basically, i got several members during the war they became desperate to try to help hitlers enemies. Their acts of espionage and after the contracts and berlin was transferred to santiago in 1941, their only other option was to pass all this intelligence to the soviets, which they did he really did not want to be a Spy Approach she was very insistent shes an anti fascist who says im not a spy, im not going to accept the money and im not going to take orders from a control officer. Some of the memos that i have read have been declassified and released, his control officers would bemoan the fact they could not be ordered around. [inaudible] [laughter] exactly. He had great intel basically and the lieutenant in the loop to offer. He had knowledge of missions and incredibly specific information is very advantageous for stalin to know about. The problem was stalin did not believe any of it. Not any of it. So at this point he was so paranoid people were trying to stab him in the back. One of the documents include in my book is the report that included the intelligence presented at the compilation of their memos. And other sources as well. Stalin scrolled across the top of it actually wont say it, but it was something profane. [laughter] [laughter] that is stalin. [laughter] something about. [inaudible] and a russian historian i was working with said no this is profane even for stalin, what he wrote. That is in the book i have a scan of that page. But anyway, so the russians were trying to give to the Berlin Group now, regular transmitters so they could basically send the information to moscow center. They were poorly trained i go into much more detail in the book but there were two or three transmitters. Two of them broke, they had to take them to be fixed for this is again during the war so transporting these things would be cumbersome machines. And again if you get caught with one of these things, that is it. And then they had to train certain members, a german man, workingclass in his early 20s. I was very hastily trained by soviet agents to send message by this Radio Transmitter using morse code. He had been working at a factory so that was his Day Job and after ten hours he would go home and work with this machine. Therefore if the Gestapo Cup the signal he could be arrested. Tremendous highstakes here. The german intelligence getting the airways trying to pick up messages, they caught a message. And then they spent a year trying to decode it and they succeeded. There is a huge team of the finest decoders and mathematicians who were assigned to the job. And after a year they cracked the code. Ill just sort of make this as brief as possible its a lot more complicated than that. Essentially they cracked the code and the gestapo comes. The first person was arrested Carl Schultz and then his wife found out about this, spread the word, hopped on a trade and tried to escape and she was arrested. The same person who arrested her also wet in pursuit of mildred and arvid. By this point mildred and arvid had fled germany. They were in that Point Nazi occupied lithuania. They were planning to escape by all available evidence, they were trying to escape to sweden. They met up with a couple and they have the insurance of having a holiday. This is boldly reported in other books they just say they were having a holiday, mildred and arvid decided to go to a nazi occupied lithuania to soak up the sun and Thats House depicted in other books but thats wrong they were escaping. We have an Eyewitness Account of what exactly happened the morning it they were arrested but he was a historian and wrote an article about seven pages along with Minute Detail including dialogue. It reads like a novel, dialogue between the gestapo agents in between arvid, mildred and so forth but actually mildred does not speak. So Ed Month reports whats happened to gestapo agents arrive at the door. Arvid is outside and they surround him. Everyone in the house can see what is going on. They are not sure, who are these men . They are in plain clothes and they look official but no badges. And they walk in and one says according to egmont in this article, these men are with immigration they want to see my papers. And right then everyone knew these were gestapo. So egmont tried to detain them. Have some breakfast, have some Coffee And Egmont studies cap try to close arvid to Whisper Something in his ear or receive a message maybe hed say something to him about what to do next. Every time he got close the gestapo would come in between. And so that was the day of their arrest, it was morning. I should also point out an Ss Officer drove 500 miles because he personally wanted to arrest them. And they were taken to gestapo headquarters third in the Basement Prison there. And then over the course of three and a half months i have in my book i feature there gestapo mugshots you can see some of the members of this group, to my knowledge the only book in the English Language that features this array of gestapo mugshots. There is one Outofprint Book Person in germany decades ago that has all of them. Sometimes you see one or two but not the whole array. They gestapo arrested 119 members men and women. Then they were interrogated over the course of three and half months. This continued this is 1942 it continued until 1943. But regarding mildred, she got the gestapo mugshots, she was fingerprinted and then put into solitary confinement. That is the arrest and then all of them were interrogated, cultured a lot of them including mildred, they were preparing for eight top Secret Mass Treason trial it was a bogus trial there was no justice, they wanted the appearance of justice. And a great number of them were executed as a result of that. We went mildred originally, as you point out in the book, originally after trial she was given a sentence of six years imprisonment or as her husband , arvid was executed, was hanged. She was given a Prison Sentence at least she is going to get out of this but then what happens . What happens after that . Whats so one on the people in the room reported later found out he was about to be executed but he was beaming when he heard mildreds sentence. You also have to remember he had relatives close,. [inaudible] and, all of them were executed. So we wonder how much arvid knew, and his family we have no idea. But in any case there is at least he hoped she would survive. If every plot failed and mildred sent to a Prison Camp and six years at the end of six years should be gone and that was his hope. And then two days later hitler found out about the verdict in her sentence and he ordered a reversal. Yes he was irate. He had people he thought were his friends. Yes. He was livid. And its interesting. Had no idea there were academics. Aristocrats. According to this officer who was interviewed after the war all the more irate that people like arvid and mildred and the others too. He might be suspected himself . These were the people in the same social group. Exactly. Basically mildred was rushed through a second trial and she was found guilty and given the death sentence. She was beheaded. Guillotine . Thats the way it was done for the most part was guillotine. Headed shopping is more humane than hanging. It was definitely humane. [laughter] after she was beheaded,. [inaudible] shes not the only woman beheaded the others were hanged or shot. The womens bodies were delivered to the head of the Data Meat at the university of berlin. Hed worked out a special arrangement with the director of the prison to ship the womens bodies so he could dissect them and investigate the acute stress on the female reproductive system. And he kept a list and i have a copy of the list again but. Thats one of the spectacular things in this book. You flush out all of this the various pieces of it its unbelievably celebrated and disturbing great. We need to see the physical evidence. Let me just say another question here, the book is filled with pictures, documents, mugshots here and photographs there, this book is written different and away, its written present tense for one thing. It includes right in the text all of these little pieces of documentation. Which i think its fantastic by the way i think it is great. What led you to was that your novel background they got you into this . What makes you sam going to do this this way as opposed to the more traditional way in which any of those documents would have an appendix. She was aware is doing something unconventional and it may not be acceptable. So i validate my authority. We always worry about that legible English People think you are not serious. Occupation is the key. [laughter] [laughter] then you bring in pictures. I started with the observation there already was a biography a Cradletograve Biography she might characterize it of mildred already resisting hitler that was published several decades ago. Two decades ago. So i thought that has already been done. I need to have a fresh approach. That is Observation Number one. Observation number two as i started researching an archives i was fascinated by the documents themselves. I love getting my hands on the documents, and to feel the history. I started thinking it is so distant. And then when i began thinking about how topical it is i felt unless president ial election i have been researching it before that but this is when i really began in earnest to write the manuscript because i felt like it was important for people to see the history is relevant. It is important to see how fragile a democracy can be and how important it is in the story of these resistors i was well aware it was steeped in mythology and select thought how do i make it more relevant and more immediate . I could say a lot more about this but we want to take questions. Its how i came to decide and interweave these documents are people not see the power of the around ten minutes. [laughter] we will get to as many as we can. Its been personal. Theres a question here. Was there any sexism within the movement . One of the survivors wrote a memoir and spoke about in the early days a separate limit so the men could have their group and the women could have their little group and she was outraged. Eventually, they merged. She was at the ministry of economics then. But that is one example for the messages that were sent to the moscow center. Gifted as a graphic designer and made them so miniature they were the size of a Postage Stamp I cant even imagine. But a photograph so they could contain a small amount so that it is easily distributed. They were doing well. A. Taking does your Book Talk about other female resistance fighters such as Virginia Hall and people like that . What i talk about in this book i took of the german resistance. I focus on the german resistance, yes. Some of these youve gotten into a bit. Do the americans rejected the reject theinformation for the gt the atrocities and i guess im sort of having a larger question about you know, the american reaction to the arrest and imprisonment and execution what was americas role at this time of the identity . Those in the resistance and german resistance who did the documented occasions in the german resistance. They told them about the resistance and they were treated with extreme skepticism. They didnt want to believe or didnt believe and there was a quotation from anthony saying is there any evidence of the resistance. They just didnt believe that it existed. So a little bit about this. About what happens when the americans and the birds capture. Its astonishing. The american intelligence was on the verge of indicting the chief prosecutor responsible for this whole trial and in fact was one of the people responsible. They swooped in and gave him a Code Name and decided to use them as the source to inform them about soviet espionage. So a couple of other nazis who personally presided over her torture and gave him the name and a job as a Textile Manager at a factory. And again also the captors into thinking that he had a knowledge on the verge of toppling their democracy. The man was indicted and tried him as a criminal. And they go on to describe and discredit the legacy as being somehow connected to communism. There was a letter that her execution was justified. So in an american woman that was fighting at the nazi regime and the american officials who say that it was justified was astonishing to me that it does so well and that is the legacy. I think this runs very counter to our cinematic notions of the postwar and people getting justice. There was a man set up to run the german intelligence who was a nazi of the first order. A. Im going to dovetail a couple of these questions. People are probably reacting like i did, showing the Mug Shot and how much information if any is uncovered with a wonderful array or im sorry what archives did you look for and i guess the big question is how would you feel about this research. You will see the archives in berlin and the connection she was pregnant and gave birth and grew up to run so he devoted his life and gave access to a lot of documents including those that were passed between mildred and other women in the prison that wrote about her. Those were some of my most astonishing discoveries. This is how they communicated it. Are there any central mysteries . The older sister who was my greatgrandmother urged the family and published an article saying on the direct orders and im paraphrasing that headline but eluded it to her being involved and already at this time communism was being attached and obviously in a way that made her sister afraid that she would suffer this and her husband would see so when you speak of those gaps they are there at that level to the last letter in 1942, but there are some that she sent the family that were destroyed. They just so happened that they were not discovered until after my greatgrandmother told everybody to burn everything and luckily there were some letters saved and this is how i was able to get a lot of information so there were gaps there and in the letters themselves. She knew that her letters were being sent off the sensors so she couldnt sing everything she wanted to but you have to kind of read between the lines and a sort of guess what she is meaning. Over the declassification a lot of documents and what i was requesting i got sent back files that were redacted i have to send a second request and then i succeeded in getting some of these documents declassified but some of them still are classified so these are just some examples of the evidence we dont have or thats being hidden and we have been given a glimpse of some of these bios in the early 90s historians were convinced and are under lock and key. I wrote to the russian embassy and basically begging them to share a little shred of something and they did send me something. They sent me a photograph that blew my mind. I think of julian barnes. I guess as the last question, and you are sort of segueing it its in one form or another something that is fascinating about this work in history that was your personal connection to it and while i imagine most of the people had gone to the great hereafter and their just rewards and whatnot. Theres questions about how did you find out about it, but has her family said. Can you talk about the personal nature of this within your family . Sure. I would be happy to. My mother when i was about 16yearsold gave me the letters and knew that i wanted to be a writer. She said you need to tell the story one day and i felt an obligation to do so. And then there was a kind of mystery that i felt she had passed away in a hit and run boating accident. They are questions that i hadnt been able to ask and she had told me enough and had given me the letter so i started thinking of it as a kind of scholarly detective story. It was a mystery of mildred. I felt like i was gathering information slowly about her and asking family members what you remember. I was at the residency and when i found out he was still alive i took a plane straight out to california and interviewed him at length. She was probably the last person alive that had firsthand knowledge of the espionage and had participated in it and that for me was the personal link. He looked into my eyes and said i remember mildred and you are family. I think that experience moved me so profoundly and if you were asking about my personal connection to the story i felt my grandmothers letters and then my Interview And Everything in between but those were the focal points for me that spurred me on and provided a tremendous sense of urgency to tell the story. And also the final thing that i will say is the letter that she gave to her cellmate and said please try to get us back to the family of this precious thing. He wrote this letter that was just a gorgeous testament of love and commitment. Gertrude was transferred to the Concentration Camp and managed to survive and kept this letter with her and basically in 1962 finally tracked down the mother and said i would like you to have this and so this is why we have this letter today. One other thing, this is how i will end it. That was an act of terrorism and with her at the Concentration Camp taking the promise that she would give them back to the family. The chaplain found her in the margins with translations and the title of my book so hence the very long title. I felt that it really summarizes the themes of the book. I Cant Think of a better way to end actually. And what a terrific talk it was. I posted a link to the chat. Thank you so much for joining us. The author of this book stories of hope mostly. I want to ask you a question ive never asked an author before. What was i reading . You were reading a collection of my essays and it was sort of an amalgamation of the work that i did in the City College and new york so those were awardwinning short stories