Narrator: February 16, 1943. Plötzensee Prison, Berlin. A woman is presented with a questionnaire. It asks for her parents' names, her profession—lecturer and translator—and her income at the time of her crime: 100 Reichsmark a month. It asks if she ever attended a school for the mentally retarded. The questions are bureaucratic, chillingly mundane. But this is no ordinary administrative form. It is the final processing of a life about to be extinguished on the direct order of Adolf Hitler. The woman was Mildred Harnack, an American, and her "crime" was leading one of the largest underground resistance groups in Berlin.

Rebecca Donner’s gripping work, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, unearths the true story of her great-great-aunt, piecing together a hidden history of espionage, courage, and sacrifice. It reveals how an ordinary American woman found herself at the heart of the German resistance, and why her extraordinary story was deliberately buried for decades.

Narrator: In the early 1930s, as the Nazi party's influence grew, many in Germany failed to grasp the true nature of the threat. The book illustrates a society plagued by economic despair, where Hitler’s promises found fertile ground. Yet, many intellectuals and commentators dismissed him and his followers as clowns or criminals, believing their illogical and hateful rhetoric could never seize control of a modern nation. This widespread denial is a central theme. Mildred Harnack, then a lecturer at the University of Berlin, saw the danger clearly. Her lectures on American literature, which explored themes of social injustice and poverty, were implicitly critical of the rising fascist tide. For this, her contract was not renewed.

The narrative details the bloody confrontation in Alexanderplatz, where unemployed workers were bludgeoned by police, and the Reichstag fire of 1933. Hitler masterfully exploited the fire, blaming Communists to create a climate of national emergency. He pressured President Hindenburg to sign a decree that suspended civil liberties, effectively dismantling the Weimar Constitution overnight. This wasn't a violent coup in the traditional sense; it was a "legal" revolution, built on fear, propaganda, and the catastrophic misjudgment of those who believed they could control him.

Narrator: In the face of this rising tyranny, small pockets of opposition began to form. In 1932, Mildred and her German husband, Arvid, began holding secret meetings in their Berlin apartment. This was the origin of what Mildred nicknamed "the Circle," a discussion group that grew into a formidable resistance network. Donner shows how the group was a mosaic of German society: students, factory workers, writers, and professors, all united by their opposition to the Third Reich.

Recruitment was a perilous art. The Circle had to identify trustworthy allies in a city teeming with Gestapo informants. They developed sly techniques, sometimes pretending to be Nazi sympathizers to gauge a person's true political leanings. One of Mildred’s first key recruits was Greta Lorke, who was initially skeptical, believing most young Germans were either "Nazis or snobs." Mildred challenged her, urging her to visit the Berlin Adult Education Center (BAG) where Mildred taught. Witnessing the impoverished, desperate conditions of the working-class students, Greta’s perspective shifted entirely. She soon joined Mildred in the Tiergarten park, using history lessons as a guise to discuss the threat of fascism and persuade others to join their cause.

Narrator: Participation in the resistance demanded immense personal sacrifice and moral compromise. The book vividly portrays the constant state of fear and paranoia. Members of the Circle had to lie to their families, invent excuses for their absences, and live with the gnawing suspicion that any acquaintance could be an informant. To sustain their activities, they became thieves and forgers. They stole paper and typewriter ribbons and forged ration cards and exit papers to help Jews and other targeted individuals escape Germany.

This personal cost is powerfully illustrated in Arvid Harnack's story. A brilliant scholar whose work on Soviet political theory was deemed politically unreliable, Arvid was unable to secure an academic position. After the Gestapo raided the apartment of his dissertation advisor, a terrified Arvid made a painful decision. He burned his own book, page by page, in his coal stove and went to the publisher to destroy the printing plates. It was an act of intellectual self-immolation, a sacrifice of his life's work to protect himself and his network. This pressure also strained his marriage to Mildred, who became the sole breadwinner, leading to periods of intense conflict and frustration born from the oppressive circumstances.

Narrator: The resistance was not just an internal German affair. The narrative introduces an unlikely secret agent: an eleven-year-old American boy named Don Heath. Don’s father worked at the U.S. embassy and was part of a nascent intelligence organization sending confidential reports back to Washington. To move sensitive information through the city, he enlisted his own son as a courier.

Don’s "lessons" with Mildred were the perfect cover. He would travel across Berlin, taking different routes each time to avoid being followed, a lesson he learned by thinking of the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood." He would arrive at Mildred’s apartment, where they would discuss books. But at the end of each session, Mildred would slip a folded piece of paper into his knapsack. Don was a ghost, an innocent-looking American boy moving unnoticed through a city on high alert. His story reveals the unconventional and international dimensions of the anti-Nazi effort, where even children were drawn into the high-stakes world of espionage, carrying intelligence that could influence the course of the war.

Narrator: Ultimately, the Circle's luck ran out. In 1942, the Gestapo uncovered the network, arresting Mildred, Arvid, and their co-conspirators. Mildred was subjected to a show trial where, despite being tortured, she revealed nothing. The court initially sentenced her to six years of hard labor, a verdict that infuriated Hitler. He personally intervened, demanding a new trial that would deliver a death sentence. On February 16, 1943, she was executed by guillotine.

After the war, her story took another tragic turn. In 1946, the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) began investigating her case, with one official noting her actions were "laudable." But the investigation was abruptly shut down. A terse memo ordered the case to be classified as "secret/restricted" and withdrawn. For decades, Mildred Harnack’s heroism was buried, a casualty of Cold War politics and the reluctance to acknowledge collaboration with Soviet-linked networks, even against a common enemy like the Nazis. Her story remained largely unknown until the fall of the Berlin Wall, when archives in East Germany and Russia were finally opened, allowing her full, courageous story to be told.

Narrator: All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days is a powerful testament to the courage of ordinary people in extraordinary times. Its most vital takeaway is that resistance is not a monolithic act but a spectrum of defiance, from distributing leaflets and forging papers to the simple, profound act of refusing to surrender one's conscience. The book forces us to confront the uncomfortable truth that history is often shaped not only by what is remembered but also by what is deliberately forgotten.

By unearthing Mildred Harnack’s story, Rebecca Donner does more than just honor a forgotten hero. She challenges us to consider how many other stories of courage remain buried and asks a vital question: In the face of rising tyranny, what does it truly mean to fight back, and what are we willing to risk for what we believe?