Hitler's ... guillotine?

Of all the atrocities committed by the Nazis, who knew that they beheaded people ... by guillotine?

 

YNet News:

The Jewish Museum Milwaukee is hosting an exhibit about the only American woman executed on direct orders of Adolf Hitler.

Mildred Fish Harnack, a Milwaukee native, taught literature in Madison and then at several German universities following a 1929 move to Germany.

She and her husband Arvid Harnack worked in opposition to the Nazis as a member of the resistance group known as the "Red Orchestra," a code name assigned by the Gestapo.

They were arrested in the fall of 1942. Arvid Harnack was executed, and though she was originally imprisoned, Hitler himself intervened and sent her to the guillotine in February 1943.

The exhibit includes a rubbing of the floor of the room in which she was imprisoned and later beheaded. It will run through November 27.

 

"Red Orchestra" is now the name of a series of computer games :/

 

More about the resistance group at Wikipedia:

Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group

The Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group in Berlin was formed by Harro Schulze-Boysen, a Luftwaffe staff officer, his wife Libertas, Arvid Harnack, a lawyer and economist, his American wife Mildred, and a number of sympathetic friends and acquaintances.

Schulze-Boysen had been active in opposition to the Nazis before Hitler took power, but then joined the Luftwaffe for "cover". In private he continued to meet with other anti-Nazis, including Libertas, whom he married in 1936.

Harnack also had a circle of anti-Nazi associates. He joined the NSDAP in 1937 for "cover". In 1939, the two groups made contact, and began to work together.

The combined group ran the gamut of German society, comprising

Communists,

political conservatives,

Jews,

devout Catholics,

and atheists.

Their ages ran from 16 to 86, and about 40% were women.

Among its leading members were theatrical producer Adam Kuckhoff and his wife Greta, pianist Helmut Roloff, secretary Ilse Stöbe, diplomat Rudolf von Scheliha, author Günther Weisenborn, potter Cato Bontjes van Beek, Horst Heilmann (an officer in the Cipher Section of OKH), and photojournalist John Graudenz (who had been expelled from the USSR for reporting on the Soviet famine of 1932–1933)....

.... For the remainder of 1941, the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group gave most of its intelligence to the United States, through the American embassy's monetary attaché, Donald Heath.

However, these efforts to inform other governments about Nazi atrocities and war plans were only a small part of their resistance effort. Their primary activity was the distribution of leaflets, to incite civil disobedience and cause the Nazis to worry about subversion. They also printed and pasted up anti-Nazi stickers in large numbers, and they helped people in danger from the Nazis to escape the country via an Underground Railroad-like network.

The network began to unravel in 1942. The OKH Cipher Section decoded some of Trepper's radio traffic, and on 30 July 1942 the Gestapo arrested radio operator Johann Wenzel. Horst Heilmann tried to warn Schulze-Boysen, but the warning was not in time. Schulze-Boysen was arrested on 30 August, and Harnack on 3 September. The rest of the group was arrested within a few weeks, and many were executed.

 

More:

 

Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra

 

 

 

Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

World War II is replete with stories of small groups -- the Red Orchestra, the Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, the many partisan fighters in occupied countries -- who went up against Nazi power and, for their pains, were utterly wiped out. Stories like this make one appreciate all the more the miracle of one small group that prevailed against Nazi power -- although a vast number of its members died in the effort. I'm referring to the thousand or so young RAF pilots -- many of them still in their late teens -- who took on the vastly larger Luftwaffe in 1940's Battle of Britain -- and beat them to a standstill, thereby preventing the Nazi invasion of England and, without any doubt, saving the cause of human liberty. These are the men of whom Churchill -- correctly -- said: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Unquestionably, small groups of people who go up against massive and ruthless military power almost always fail. But not always.