“Fish-Harnack's life raises a number of questions, and the answers provided in Shareen Blair Brysac's superb biography illuminate important aspects of both German and American history of the period. First, how did she come to be involved in the resistance group? The author paints an exceptionally sensitive portrait of the personal and intellectual development of a young woman, shaped by religious and literary influences in her Milwaukee childhood and teenage years in Washington, DC, and then, above all, by her student years at the University of Wisconsin. ...

The story of Mildred's last hours in prison is unbearably poignant. Broken by illness and ill-treatment, she spent the time writing out Whitman's elegy on the death of Lincoln and translating some lines of her beloved Goethe. Her last words to the prison chaplain were: "And I have loved Germany so much." This is a beautifully written, enthralling and moving book.”

-—Jeremy D. Noakes, The Times Literary Supplement

“How [Mildred Harnack] got from middle America to Berlin in the 1930's is the fascinating story Brysac tells in Resisting Hitler.”

--Charles Slazberg, The New York Times Book Review

“[Brysac's] well-researched, fair-minded and moving account of the Harnacks and their fate should go a long way toward restoring the reputations of these idealistic and heroic resisters.”

--Los Angeles Times

“Resisting Hitler is one of the best researched books on the Second World War that I have ever read. The author a distinguished American journalist has visited no fewer than 46 archives and made superb use of recently declassified documents from the KGB, CIA, FBI and Nazi intelligence services.

By tracking down eyewitnesses to these terrible events, Shareen Brysac has added greatly to our knowledge of anti-Nazi resistance in Germany.

Mildred Harnack may have worked for Stalin, but she was a genuine American heroine, and this splendid book proves that she finally deserves to be acknowledged as such.”

--Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday

“Brysac's aim is not to provide a biography in the usual sense but to share tantalizing insights into the espionage efforts of Mildred Fish-Hamack, the only American woman executed in Nazi Germany under Hitler's personal orders as an underground conspirator and co-leader, with her German husband, Arvid Harnack, of the leftist resistance group the Nazis dubbed the Red Orchestra... . Using Mildred's own letters and those from the daughter of FDR's ambassador, a friend in Berlin, as well as the recollections of survivors who knew her, newspaper articles and intelligence documents from Germany, Russia and the U.S., Brysac (co-author with Karl E. Meyer of Tournament of Shadows), concedes that her book is filled with inconsistencies and contradictions (a by-product of memories more than half a century old), but she offers a gripping narrative... . Brysac presents a compelling tale of anti-Nazi resistance along with a colorful and vivid portrait of Fish-Harnack.”

--Publishers Weekly

“By detailing the life of Fish-Harnack, whose guillotining in 1943 made her the only American woman executed for treason during World War II, Brysac is able to put a very human face on these troubled times. With a supporting cast of Fish-Harnack's friends such as Martha Dodd, Brysac has developed a scholarly analysis of this forgotten group. Containing a lengthy bibliography, notes section, and index, this work is recommended for academic libraries.”

 

--The Library Journal

“Flowing out of exhaustive archival research, including various recently declassified intelligence files, this account provides a balanced historical appraisal of an American woman executed by the Hitler regime, whose motives for espionage were regarded warily by all in whose files her fate was recorded: the Russians, Americans, and Germans. Mildred Harnack assisted her husband, a wartime German economics official, in spying for the Soviet espionage ring in Berlin called The Red Orchestra. Legendary in the war's cloak-and-dagger literature, members of Die Rote Kapelle died for no immediate advantage to the anti-Nazi cause, for their reports predicting the German invasion of the USSR, accurate as they turned out to be, were dismissed by Stalin as disinformation. And after the war, amid the cold war, the crimson tincture of Die Rote Kapelle colored views of Marxist anti-Nazis such as Mildred Harnack, views that separated her from the pantheon of resisters, such as the Bonhoeffers. Brysac has ably reconstructed, on their own terms, the lives of intellect and action led, and lost, by Mildred and her husband, Arvid.”

--Booklist

“Brysac does a good job recreating the literary and academic atmosphere of 1920's Berlin and stresses the influence of neighboring Russia on the German capital's political climate.... A sensitive and in-depth portrait of two 'good Germans' who have remained unrecognized for over half a century.”

--KirkusReviews

“The work under review here is not a reflex to the present German memorial hype in regard to the sixtieth anniversary of July 20, 1944. It already appeared in the United States some years ago and is now available in German translation and accessible to German readers. Surprisingly, this book is barely mentioned in German reviews and press references. It seems as if current new German publications or new editions of older works are attracting the entire attention of the media and the book sellers. This is regrettable, because Shareen Blair Brysac's biography of Mildred Harnack and the "Red Orchestra" (dubbed "Rote Kapelle" by the Nazis) certainly not only deserves major attention in the professional world but also wide readership. ...

Brysac bases her biography on important sources regarding the resistance, as well as on the accounts of persons she interviewed who had known Mildred Harnack personally, and on family letters. Beyond that, recently declassified intelligence files from the CIA, FBI, and KGB shed a new light upon these resistance activities and provide informative evidence about the valuation and judgement of the "Red Orchestra" and its members after 1945. These sources give Brysac a solid basis for developing an exciting and very personal life story understandably sympathetic to the tragic fate of the young American woman. ...

Brysac's biography of Mildred Harnack is a convincing example of non-academic historiography, which unfortunately is often discredited and put down by the scientific community as "popular." This much is true: this book tells history in its best sense and, due to its strong literary style and great descriptive power, has the potential to change attitudes, clearly exceeding the range of many specialized scientific monographs.” more...

--Andreas Heusler, H-Net

"Shareen Blair Brysac erzählt jetzt erstmals ausführlich das außerordentliche Leben der Mildred Fish-Harnack. Ausgehend von den Berliner Kulturkreisen, in denen die von Harnacks seit 1930 verkehrten, wird eindringlich die Logistik und Arbeit im Widerstand geschildert. Gegenüber zahlreichen anderen Untersuchungen setzt Brysac entscheidend neue Akzente. Gestützt auf Archivmaterialien und Unterlagen des CIA und KGB zeigt sie, wie einseitig das im Kalten Krieg verbreitete Bild vom Spionagering der Sowjetunion war. Die von Harnacks hätten keineswegs nur den Russen, sondern auch den Amerikanern gedient.

Ihren erbitterten Kampf gegen Hitler bezahlten sie mit dem Leben. Die 1946 angestrengte Untersuchung dieses Kriegsverbrechens wurde im Zeichen des Antikommunismus niedergeschlagen: Für den amerikanischen Geheimdienst, der nach dem Krieg ehemalige Nazis für sich gewann, waren die Kooperationen der von Harnacks mit dem neuen Gegner im Osten schwerwiegender als ihr antifaschistischer Kampf. FBI und CIA ermittelten noch Jahre nach ihrer Hinrichtung gegen sie als einstige Kommunisten. Der ehemalige amerikanische Botschafter in Deutschland, Donald Heath, der damals viele wertvolle Informationen des im Reichswirtschaftsministerium tätigen Arvid von Harnack nach Washington übermittelte, musste seine Freunde nach dem Krieg weit gehend verleugnen. Das Buch erschließt also nicht nur eingehender als je zuvor das Schicksal einer führenden Widerstandskämpferin, sondern arbeitet zugleich ein dunkles Kapitel der amerikanischen Nachkriegsgeschichte auf."

     --Alexander Kosenina, Die Welt