On the eve of her escape to Sweden, she was ambushed by the Gestapo. When the first shots of the Second World War were fired, she became a spy, couriering top-secret intelligence to the Allies. Her coconspirators circulated through Berlin under the cover of night, slipping the leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms, phone booths. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. 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. In this “stunning literary achievement,” Donner chronicles the extraordinary life and brutal death of her great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack, the American leader of one of the largest underground resistance groups in Germany during WWII-“a page-turner story of espionage, love and betrayal” (Kai Bird, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography)īorn and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. Time Magazine 100 Must-Read Books of 2021Ī Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of the YearĪ New York Public Library Book of the Week Wall Street Journal 10 Best Books of 2021 Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Awardįinalist for the Los Angeles Times Book AwardĪ New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceĪ New York Times Critics' Top Pick of 2021
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
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