PBS Wisconsin Documentaries

>> Talk to me a little bit about the importance of Madison, and the ideals that were formed here by the group that went the Berlin resistance. >> In the 1920s, Greta Lorke, and I'll call her Greta Kuckhoff because that's the married name she was known by, came to Madison, Wisconsin. She was originally going to go to Columbia University, where I teach but it was too expensive, so she came to Madison, and it changed her life. Here is where she met Arvid Harnack, and his wife who was from Wisconsin, Mildred Fish. The environment here was effervescent with social change. I think that all of them were of a progressive mindset. They were studying economics, sociology, and literature, which was also important. So here is where they found this burgeoning interest in feminism, in social welfare programs, in public educations, in the role of trade unions in society, so not only did they go to classes on these subjects, their social life rotated around conversation sessions with professors working in the field. They went to Ford factories to look at assembly lines in action. It literally changed their ways of thinking and changed their lives. >> How unique was it that the University of the Wisconsin had three members of the underground resistance in Berlin? >> The University of Wisconsin in Madison played an absolutely unique role in creating the intellectual outlook of this group. Arvid and Mildred Harnack, Greta Kuckhoff, all had a formation here where they looked at not only social movements, such as feminism, and trade unionism, and public education, and public welfare, but they also really valued freedom of expression. When Greta Kuckhoff came to Madison, the first thing she noticed, was that she was a woman and she could speak her mind, and the professors here were actually interested in what she thought. Now Germany had something of a hidebound tradition in this regard, and a woman was kind of supposed to sit in the back and not say anything. So here, they were given the freedom of thought, and freedom of expression, and the sense that ideas and progress mattered. They go into this incredibly confining environment of Nazi Germany, and almost burst the seams and have to create a parallel existence in Berlin, where within their own living rooms they could live the Wisconsin life. >> Many Germans today who, when this group is mentioned, they consider them traitors even though they might not, in this day and age, agree with what Hitler was doing but they indirectly blame this group for the deaths of young German soldiers. >> You know, I think that the reaction of equating resistance activity with treason is a problem that societies need to keep coming back to, because we know that unjust wars exist. We know that dictatorships exist. So for me, that is the universal quality of this story, not that this group offers perfect answers, but in some ways they offer perfect questions. You wake up in the morning, your Jewish neighbor is being persecuted for no reason. Do you sit back, because the government told you to, or do you take illegal action to help somebody and risk your own family's safety? Risk that feeling of moving from your own safe zone, your own comfort zone into the area of being at traitor, breaking the law, falling outside the norm of your society. For me, this was the question that the Harnacks met every day and tried to answer. They answered it imperfectly, and I don't think anyone could look at what they did and say, "Oh, they were perfectly rational and correct in everything that they did." But that said, their incredible sense of conscience in taking on the tough questions in a period where very few people did, needs to be recognized and honored. >> Do you think the fall-out continues after the Cold War? >> I began working on my book around 2000, and over the last decade I've seen the story evolve. As re-unification in Germany happened, it's now possible to sit down with archives and documents that are newly opened and piece together what happened, what this group actually did, and how the record was censored and falsified. So once you get the story and can present the story, I think that the story is coming together in a new way and in a healing way. I was just invited to Kiel to commemorate the 100th birthday of one of the members of the group, Harro Schulze-Boysen. I was told that for years, he was regarded as a figure of shame, because he was a traitor. And on this occasion, we came together and said, "What did he do? He denounced the Nazi's. He documented war crimes. He helped Jews. And the mayor of the town came and said, "Our town wants to honor this man." So this is in a West German city that was a submarine base in the Nazi period. So I think that the thinking is coming around, and it's also connecting to a new spirit that I see in Germany. Germany is not the militaristic country of the past. It is a country that is looking at diplomacy, looking at economic development as a way to reach out to the world. And if they can recuperate this story they can make it part of the new Germany, rather than the old embattled, divided Germany of the past. >> How unusual was it that women played such an important role in a resistance organization? >> The Red Orchestra was quite unusual in terms of the participation of women. The Nazi values were about as contrary to Wisconsin feminism as you can get. Here were Mildred and Greta, who were professional women, educated women, ready to go out and change the world, and work hard. They get to the Nazi period, and they're told "Go back to the kitchen, put on the apron and have lots of nice Nazi babies." And they just wouldn't. They kept working. They kept thinking. They kept writing. They were very much about respecting other women, and reaching out and mentoring younger women as teachers. Mildred and Greta were very invested in helping their Jewish friends. And at a certain point, Arvid Harnack criticized that, and he said, "You're becoming too conspicuous, and if we're going to end the war earlier, then we have to be inconspicuous and concentrate on the intelligence work, because it's going to be more effective." Now this is the crises of conscience of the ages. Do you try to be systematic in what you're doing, or do you help people one by one by one? And I don't think there's a right answer. >> Do you think that Mildred understood the dangers? >> Mildred Fish absolutely understood the dangers. One of the most pathos-ridden elements of this story is what happened to her psychologically. She was quite energetic and happy in Germany when she first went. Her letters are just effervescent. As the Nazi regime took hold, and she and her husband got more involved in resistance circles, she developed nervous ailments and became ill. I don't think-- She was afraid, but she wasn't a coward. She was just being realistic. And she was seeing people around her, who were friends, who were being sent to concentration camps. So she absolutely knew what the risks were, not only for herself, but everybody she was in contact with. If you're going to recruit somebody for this activity, you may be signing their death sentence, too. So the moral weight of that is tremendous. >> What would have life been like in Berlin for Mildred during the Nazi era? >> The Harnacks wouldn't even have a telephone in their home, because they were so afraid of being bugged. They went from this very aggressive outreach in trying to recruit lots and lots of people, to having to be more suspicious of people. Of course, this ran totally countered to Mildred's open, generous nature. She didn't like living like this. By the end in the very heightened period after 1941, they were almost prisoners within their own lives, totally restricted, conspiratorial and living in constant fear of detection. >> What can women today take from this story of Mildred Harnack? >> I think Mildred Harnack offers a lot of inspiration to today's young women. For me, here was a woman who managed to combine her role as a very devoted wife, but also an intellectual partner with her husband, but also could live out her life as somebody who is involved in civic action. She made these decisions, there were times when she could have come back to the U.S. and stayed with her family. And she chose to go back to Germany and be engaged. She chose to reach out to suffering people and help them, not because anyone was paying her, but because it was conforming to her values. And she was somebody who was serious about her scholarship, and I would love to see her literary essays translated into English. She should be recognized intellectually as well. But she brought these values of scholarship and wove them into her life. >> What would you like the people of Wisconsin to remember about Mildred Harnack? >> I think the people of Wisconsin should go back and look at the actions of this marvelous woman, who maintained the values she absorbed at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She was a free thinker, she thought for herself. The Nazis told her to think one thing, she disregarded that. She held on to her values of kindness, and humanity, and her lack of prejudice. If you were Jewish and you were her friend before the Nazis, you were even more her friend under the Nazis. Those are values that we desperately need in the modern world. I think that they should also go back and look at her writing and her incredible love of American Literature, and the way she wanted to be a kind of missionary for American Literature in Europe. She had this incredible sense that she wanted to share American culture and specifically Midwestern culture with the old German academic establishment. There is so much to recuperate in this woman's history, and to celebrate as a Midwesterner, an American, and a Wisconsinite.