All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days

The true story of the extraordinary life and brutal death of Mildred Harnack, the American leader of one of the largest underground resistance groups in Germany, who was executed on Hitler's direct order—uncovered by her great-great-niece in this riveting, deeply researched account.
Born 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. 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 working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler's regime and called for revolution. Her coconspirators circulated through Berlin under the cover of night, slipping the leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms, phone booths. When the...