In December 1941, a year earlier almost to the day, Abwehr agents had raided the Brussels outpost, seizing compromising materials and capturing a young Polish cipherer, Sophie Poznanska, as well as the Belgian housekeeper. Poznanska had committed suicide in prison rather than betray her comrades, but the terrified housekeeper had given her interrogators the titles of three books that she had often seen on Poznanska’s desk. On May 17, the Abwehr had found a copy ofDer Kurier aus Spanienin a used bookstore, and by the middle of July they had decoded Moscow’s incautious transmission. The Abwehr had immediately placed the Harnacks, the Kuckhoffs, and the Schulze-Boysens under surveillance, watching and waiting, monitoring visitors, mail, and phone calls, patiently observing the suspects and gathering evidence in hopes of capturing the entire network. Eventually they had pounced.
By the time the first day of hearings was over, Mildred felt exhausted, heartsick, utterly lost, and the trial had only just begun. Parting from Arvid was sheer anguish, but at least she knew she would see him again in the morning.
Until then, she had his letter, which she read as soon as she returned to the lonely solitude of her cell.
My most beloved heart,
If in the last months I have found the strength to be inwardly calm and composed, and if I face what is to come with calm composure, it is due above all to the fact that I feel a strong attachment to the good and beautiful things in this world, and that toward the whole earth I have the feeling that inspires the song of the poet Whitman. As far as people are concerned, it has been those close to me, and especially you, who have embodied these feelings for me.
Despite all the hardships, I am happy to look back on my life so far. The light outweighed the dark, and our marriage was the greatest reason for this. Last night, I let my thoughts roam through many of the most wonderful moments of our marriage, and the more I thought about them, the more I recalled. It was as if I were looking into a starry sky, in which the number of stars increases the more meticulously one looks. Do you still remember Picnic Point, when we became engaged? I sang for joy early the next morning at the club. And before that: our first serious conversation at the restaurant on State Street? That conversation became my guiding star, and has remained so. In the sixteen years that followed, how often we lay our heads on each other’s shoulders at night when life had made us weary, either yours on mine or mine on yours, and then everything was fine again. I have done this in my thoughts over the past several weeks and will do the same in those to come. I have also thought regularly of you and all my loved ones at eight o’clock each morning and nine o’clock each night. They all think of both of us at the very same time. Do it as well; then we shall know that our feelings of love are flowing between all of us.
The strain of our work meant that our lives were not easy, and there was no small risk of being overwhelmed, but even so, we remained very much alive as people. This became clear to me during our time on the Grossglockner, and again this year, as we watched the great elk emerge in front of us as we walked through the forest by the sea.
You are in my heart, and you shall always be within it! My dearest wish is for you to be happy when you think of me. I am when I think of you.
Many, many kisses! I am holding you close.
Your A.
For five days, the defendants were subjected to Roeder’s belligerent and bombastic questioning. Mildred tried not to flinch as he harangued her, and she struggled to remain calm when he repeatedly interrupted her. When Dr. Schwarz argued that she was innocent of wrongdoing because like any good German wife she had simply obeyed her husband’s instructions, Roeder barked out a derisive laugh. To Mildred’s astonishment, several of the judges reacted with frowns or reproving looks, which they concealed so quickly that she was afraid she had imagined them. But for the first time since she had entered the courtroom, she felt a flicker of hope, even though she was deeply afraid of what Dr. Schwarz’s legal strategy might mean for Arvid.
As the trial unfolded, she endured questioning with as much serene composure as she could muster, and she silently cheered on her companions when they remained dignified, eloquent, and calm in the face of Roeder’s verbal assaults. Only once did she feel truly hopeless, when Libertas broke down on the stand and began shouting that she was innocent, that Harro was to blame for everything, that she wanted a divorce. Harro endured it unflinchingly, but Mildred was sure his wife’s desperate rebuke had wounded him.
After several grueling days the prosecution rested its case, and on December 19, the verdicts were delivered. For the crimes of preparation for high treason, war treason, undermining military strength, aiding the enemy, and espionage, the court sentenced Arvid, Harro, Libertas, Kurt Schumacher, Elizabeth Schumacher, Hans Coppi, Kurt Schulze, John Graudenz, and Horst Heilmann to death. Herbert Gollnow received the death penalty for disobedience in the field and for disclosing state secrets to the enemy. Erika von Brockdorff was sentenced to ten years at hard labor for keeping a radio that was used to contact the Soviets.
Lastly, the judges declared that they concurred with Dr. Schwarz that Mildred had acted more from loyalty to her husband than from her own political motives. Despite her exceptional understanding of German literature, as a foreigner, she could not possibly comprehend the implications of disloyalty to the Reich. Therefore, she was sentenced not as a conspirator, but as an accessory to espionage, for which she received six years hard labor.
When Mildred’s sentence was read aloud, Arvid smiled at her, his face radiant with joy. He would die, but she would live.
“This is an outrage,” Roeder exploded, bolting to his feet. “I demand twelve death sentences! The Führer ordered me to cauterize this sore. He will never approve this decision!”
The judges made no reply, but rose and withdrew to their chambers. Quickly the twelve defendants embraced one another before the guards could pull them apart. Mildred clung to Arvid, resting her head on his chest and choking out sobs, but although Arvid’s eyes shone with unshed tears, he could not stop smiling. She knew that he had never dared hope that his own life would be spared, but his beloved wife would live, and that was enough. He could go to his own death at peace with his fate knowing that Mildred would survive him, and that one day she would be free.
On December 20, the day after her trial concluded, Mildred woke to the sound of her cell door opening to find that another prisoner had been assigned to the vacant bunk. She did not know the young woman who entered her cell carrying her few possessions wrapped in a thin blanket, but she recognized her at once, for they had exchanged glances in the prison yard. As soon as the guard closed the cell door, Mildred’s new cellmate set down her bundle and the two women fell into each other’s arms as if they were long-lost friends.
Her name was Gertrud, and she was a Communist and a member of the resistance awaiting transport to Ravensbrück, a women’s concentration camp in northern Germany. Mildred suspected Gertrud had been assigned to her cell to discourage her from making a second suicide attempt, but that was an unnecessary precaution. She had no intention of taking her own life when it meant the world to her beloved Arvid that she should keep it. Also, as the green police van had taken them away from the courthouse, Arvid had held her hands tightly and had assured her that in the German judicial system, several weeks elapsed between sentencing and execution, and his family had undoubtedly already begun filing the paperwork for his appeal. How could she willingly depart this world while Arvid remained in it?
Mildred and Gertrud passed the miserable days talking about their lives, about the loved ones they missed and the places they longed to see again, about why they had joined the resistance. They were not permitted books, so they sang and recited poetry to each other. With her precious stub of a pencil, Mildred wrote down from memory some of Goethe’s poems for Gertrud to take with her to Ravensbrück.
Gertrud’s companionship made the bleak hours more bearable, but every day Mildred sank deeper into despair. She received no mail, no more packages from Arvid’s family, and she confided to Gertrud that she brooded anxiously over how she would endure six years at hard labor.
She begged the director, the guards, anyone who would listen for news of Arvid. She humbly implored Oberin Weider to allow her to see Arvid for Christmas, but the matron told her, not without pity, that it was impossible. Christmas came and went with nothing to mark the holy season except for a few wistful carols echoing down the prison corridors. She wrote a long, loving letter to Arvid, and others to his family and her own back in America, but she had little hope that they would be posted.
The New Year began, cold and bleak, but Mildred stoked her courage by reminding herself that Arvid’s family was working fervently on his appeal. Now that the holidays were over and all the bureaucrats had gone back to work, the Harnacks might make swift progress and save his life.
In early January, when the matron summoned Mildred to her office, her spirits rose. Perhaps this was the good news she had been hoping for since that day in late December when they had thought their fates were sealed. But as soon as she stood before Oberin Weider’s desk and saw the grim sympathy in her eyes, she knew she must steel herself for yet another devastating blow.
And yet it staggered her when it fell.
Although Adolf Hitler had signed the document confirming the death sentences of Arvid, Harro, and the others, he had refused to confirm the judgments against her and Erika von Brockdorff.
Within a fortnight they would face a new trial in a different chamber of the Reichskriegsgericht. This time, the Führer would surely get the verdict he demanded.
Chapter Sixty
January–February 1943
Greta
