“Ich habe Deutschland auch so geliebt”
“And I have loved Germany so much.”
Those were the last words of Mildred Fish-Harnack before the blade of the guillotine fell.
She was sentenced to six years of hard labor for the crimes of treason and espionage but that wasn’t enough for Adolf Hitler. Fish-Harnack became the only American civilian to be executed on the direct order of Hitler.
Her story has gotten somewhat lost in the vast horrors of the Third Reich. The punishment continued long after her death. In the Cold War years after World War II, Fish-Harnack’s name and legacy were not honored in the U.S., because she and her husband were believed to have been connected with Communism. But the smearing of her name and the burying of her story has become part of why she’s being recognized today.
By Käri Knutson. Read the full version.