80 years ago today a Milwaukee Woman Was Beheaded on the Hitler's Direct Orders - The Life of Mildred Harnack

Born in Milwaukee, and a graduate of West Division High School (now Milwaukee High School of the Arts) and UW-Madison, Mildred Harnack was 26 when she moved to Germany to pursue a PhD.

As an American grad student in Berlin, she saw Germany swiftly descend into a fascist dictatorship. She and her husband Arvid began holding secret meetings in their apartment. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and wrote leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution.

The Gestapo arrested her on Sept 7, 1942 and postwar testimony attests to the daily interrogation and torture she endured.

Mildred and 75 of her German co conspirators were tried before the highest military court in Nazi Germany. A panel of judges sentenced her to six years in prison but Hitler personally overruled the decision and ordered her execution

On February 16, 1943 at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin, she was strapped to a guillotine and beheaded. As far as is known, she was the sole American in the leadership of the German resistance during WWII.

May she continue to RIP