Mildred was taken to a cell, larger than the one in theHausgefängnis, cleaner, above ground, but although it was fitted with two folding beds, she was alone. Later that afternoon, she was interviewed by the matron, given instructions, and warned about the penalties for disruptive behavior.
In the days that followed, Mildred learned that Oberin Anne Weider was strict, but not sadistic. Nor was she a Nazi, but a former Social Democrat and social worker who had been forced to accept the position by the Reich Ministry of Justice. She granted Mildred permission to write to her mother-in-law, and when Mutti Clara and Falk replied with a package containing letters, food, and vitamins, Mildred was allowed to keep them.
In mid-December, Oberin Weider summoned her to her office and gravely informed her that the trail of the Rote Kapelle would begin in two days.
“Rote Kapelle?” Mildred echoed, bewildered.
“Your resistance cell. That is what you are called, the Red Orchestra.” Before Mildred could inquire about the origin of the name, the matron said that the case had been assigned to the Reich Court-Martial, the highest court of the Wehrmacht judicial system.
“Court-martial?” Mildred shook her head, confused. “I have never been in the military.”
“But other defendants you will be tried with are,” Oberin Weider replied. “Harro Schulze-Boysen. Horst Heilmann. Herbert Gollnow.”
Dismayed, Mildred nodded, certain this could not bode well for her case.
Early on the morning of Tuesday, December 15, she was taken from her cell and loaded into the back of a police van. Minutes later, Libertas was helped inside with surprising deference; she cried out at the sight of Mildred and flung herself into her arms. Soon thereafter another woman joined them: Erika von Brockdorff, who had assisted Hans Coppi with his radio operations.
“Have either of you met with a lawyer?” Erika asked as the van started up.
Mildred and Libertas shook their heads. “I don’t know if I even have a lawyer,” said Mildred.
“Oh, we’ll have lawyers, all right,” replied Erika. “Principled men who like to tilt at windmills. They won’t be allowed to read our complete files or tell us what charges we’re facing, but they’ll do the best they can.”
The van jolted along for a few minutes, but there were no windows, so Mildred had no idea where they were until the van halted, the door opened, and Elizabeth Schumacher was thrust inside. She was being held at the Alexanderplatz prison with Greta, Sophie Sieg, and several others Mildred knew, she told them after they embraced one another. “Has anyone seen Hilde Coppi?” she asked.
“I saw her at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8, but that was in late September,” said Mildred, clutching her seat as the van lurched into gear.
“She’s at Charlottenburg, or at least she was,” said Libertas, raising her voice to be heard over the rumble of the engine. “She gave birth to a son in late November.”
“How is she? How is the child?” Elizabeth asked, but Libertas did not know.
Soon the van stopped again, and this time eight men were roughly shoved into the back of the van—among them Harro, Hans Coppi, Kurt Schumacher, and Arvid, gaunt and pale, his eyes shadowed, his expression calm but haggard.
“Arvid,” Mildred cried. “I’m here!”
Their eyes met, and as the doors slammed shut and the van started up, he made his way to her side and they fell into each other’s arms, their hearts full of joy and remorse. To see Arvid again after so long a separation was wonderful, but to be reunited here, on their way to an uncertain fate—Mildred could barely endure it.
They spoke quickly, in hushed voices, not knowing how soon they would be parted again. They professed their love and bravely assured each other that they were fine despite all appearances to the contrary.
“My sister Inge persuaded Dr. Schwarz to represent us,” Arvid said, clasping her hands in his. “Falk has met with him, and he has a strategy. You must let me take the blame for everything.”
“Arvid, no.”
“Yes,Liebling.” He lifted one of her hands and laid it against his cheek. “It’s the only way one of us might survive. Do this for me.”
She murmured protests, but he only smiled, wistful and loving, and when the van halted moments later, he pressed a folded sheet of paper into her hands and urged her to conceal it. Quickly she tucked it down the front of her dress, hoping she would not be searched.
Mildred, Arvid, and the other prisoners exited the truck in a cobblestone courtyard and were escorted under armed guard into the Reichskriegsgericht building, a four-story courthouse spanning the entire length of the block. Outside the courtroom, Mildred glimpsed a sign in passing: “Secret Trial: Public Not Permitted.” Heart pounding, she stayed close to Arvid as they passed through the entrance between two soldiers standing at attention with fixed bayonets. Inside, more soldiers stood guard at the windows and doors, motionless but menacing. The spectators’ gallery was empty, as was the jury box. Mildred’s attention was drawn to a U-shaped table with seven tall chairs on a dais on the far side of the room. The two seats on either end were occupied, one by a stenographer, the other by a handsome dark-haired man in the uniform of a Luftwaffe colonel. Preternaturally calm as he arranged papers on the table before him, he glanced up and smiled faintly when the defendants entered.
“Hitler’sBluthund,” Hans Coppi muttered, and Mildred felt a chill. The man was Manfred Roeder, a prosecutor known for his cynicism, brutality, and ruthlessness.
The defendants were led to twelve chairs facing the judge’s table, separated from the witness stand by a wooden railing. They had only just seated themselves when the five judges entered the courtroom. Everyone but the defendants snapped out a crispHitlergruss.
Mildred expected the trial to unfold like the mass trials she had observed with Clara Leiser and Greta years before, but this was a military court, and the pretense of impartiality had been stripped away. She felt increasingly disheartened and afraid as she realized that none of the rights granted to defendants in an American courtroom existed here. As the prosecuting attorney, Roeder directed the proceedings, and he had already submitted to the chamber an indictment for each defendant as well as a report of the evidence. Dr. Schwarz and Dr. Behse, the defense attorneys, were not permitted to examine the evidence, nor were they allowed to consult or advise their clients. There would be no witnesses called for the defense, and when the defendants were questioned, they could respond with only a simple yes or no.
After those dire revelations came another that flooded Mildred with anguish and frustration: the official account of how their resistance network had been discovered. Their downfall had not come about due to Harro’s recklessness, or Mildred’s recruitment efforts, or Arvid’s refusal to abandon resistance work in favor of gathering intelligence, or Greta’s determination to help her Jewish friends. Instead they had been brought down by Soviet carelessness, a series of mistakes that had led the Gestapo right to them like a branching path of falling dominoes.
In August 1941, when Moscow had radioed the disastrously imprudent message with their names and addresses to Kent at his station in Brussels, the Germans had intercepted the transmission, just as Mildred and her friends had feared. Although the Abwehr had been unable to decipher the code, they had been alerted to the presence of a Soviet intelligence outpost somewhere in the region and had monitored the airwaves vigilantly thereafter. Three months later, upon returning to Brussels from Berlin, Kent had radioed Harro’s lengthy, detailed reports to Moscow, broadcasting for hours at a time, seven nights in a row, ignoring every safety protocol in order to get the crucial intelligence to Moscow as swiftly as possible. Nazi counterintelligence operatives had easily homed in on the conspicuous signal, had recorded the coded messages, and within a month had traced the broadcast back to its source: the lair of the Rote Kapelle, Red Orchestra, named for the illicit “music” they had broadcast to enemies of the Reich.
