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>> When I was nine years old, my father was assigned to Germany in the dual role of First Secretary and Monetary Attach. And he developed friendships with Arvid Harnack in the Ministry of Economics, whom he hoped to recruit as a source of information. And Mrs. Harnack, who was both a German citizen and an American citizen, met my mother at the American Women's Club, and we developed a relationship. When the war broke out, Mother and I fled with other American wives and children to Norway. They all went to the States. We came back to Germany when it looked like it was safe to do so. And my father went to Mrs. Harnack and said, "We need a teacher for Don, somebody who's trustworthy and who knows how to speak in our house, because the house is bugged." >> And what did she tell you in those times, when she was your tutor? What did she say to you about Wisconsin? >> She told me about when Arvid took her out on the boat on the lake and proposed to her, and how he went on a trip to study an American labor union, and she went with him dressed in a man's hat, slacks and a man's shirt. And they hitchhiked their way around the Midwest and out to Colorado, and actually attended one of the meetings of the International Workers, the IWW, an old leftish labor union. She talked to me about her experiences as a teacher and a student. My father needed to have more communication with the Harnacks. We couldn't be seen with them too much, so I became Mrs. Harnack's student in American Literature. And twice a week, from December of 1939, to about March of '41, I would go back and forth with messages from the Harnacks to my father, messages from my father to the Harnacks. I was a courier, but I was also really studying. She was a brilliant teacher. She, incidentally, was teaching night classes at Germany's top university in Berlin, classes which German Army Officers used to attend in civilian clothing, just to be able to hear about American Literature. >> And what did you have to do as a courier? >> As a courier, well, I was carrying messages from my mother, and food, because both Arvid Harnack and Mrs. Harnack were very ethereal people, and they didn't worry about whether they ate three meals a day or not. And so, we had food from Denmark and Italy that could be explained if they got caught with it. And so, I would bring food to them, medicines, and also, occasionally she would ask us for medicines for someone else. >> How would you describe Arvid? >> Arvid was a very, very controlling man. In other words, he could control other men. He was a brilliant arguer, and he had all his facts. In order to meet with Arvid and Mildred, my mother and father and I would go out on weekends into the countryside. And they would meet us at some set agreed upon point. My father and Arvid would walk along, arguing. I can remember walking in the great swampland known as the Spreewald, where the Germans beat the Romans, way back years ago. And my father, arguing with Arvid over Arvid's pro-Russian attitudes, and so on. And Arvid just was really a major debater when he went to college in Germany. And he had one of these sword striped scars on his face, from being a real tough guy; but he was brilliant. >> How would you describe Mildred? >> Mildred was intellectually quite brilliant, but she was subservient to her husband. So when he said we're going to think this way, and we're going to think like Communists, she became that way mentally. She never joined the Communist party. He was never a member of the Communist party. But see, he decided early in the game that he would become a Nazi in order to penetrate the German government. And so, he was famous in the Economics Ministry as being a hard Nazi. Secretly, he was meeting with Soviet Intelligence Officers and providing information to them. >> What kind of wife and cook? >> She cooked when she had to. They went out a lot, just so she wouldn't have to cook. They were far too busy, both of them, in their clandestine work and in their regular work, she as a teacher, he as a Ministry official, to really be able to live normal home lives. And this one of the reasons that I was bringing food to them. Mainly, I would bring butter and meat. Meats that you could get in Germany, and stuff like that. >> Would you describe the Harnack's apartment? >> There was a giant porcelain stove the Germans had. They ran from the floor to the ceiling. They had little pockets in them, where you could put a glass of wine or something to heat it up. And you put your coal or wood in the stoves. It was white, and it was brilliant looking. And then there was a corner where she had her desk, so it was her area of a big living room. And then he had his own little private room. And I didn't walk around a lot in there. But we had difficulty in that apartment, because although Arvid had friends who were technicians come in and check to see if there was any bugging, and they didn't find anything, we had-- Learning about American Literature from Mildred in a situation where we worried about saying something that we shouldn't say, made it a little difficult. She kept the place neat, and she bought arty little brass statues and things, one of which she gave to my mother. But she really just didn't have time. She was a very slim woman. Well, you could see she wasn't feeding herself enough. >> How good friends were your father and Arvid? >> I would say that among the men that my father and mother met in their lives, Arvid would probably rank as number one. As Arvid's brother, Falk, who used to walk with us on some of these walks that we would take in clandestinity, Falk-- My father came with military government. He was a senior military government official, and he sought out Falk in his apartment. Falk had escaped from the German Army to the Greek guerillas, and stayed with them until the Germans were defeated. And father walked in, father had no idea what had happened to Mildred and Arvid. They had been executed and tortured before they died. And Falk explained it all and as Falk wrote and it was published in a book, my father suddenly waved his hand and walked out into yard and then wept. My whole memory of my life with my parents, I can't think of times when we didn't talk about Mildred and Arvid. They were just our best friends. It was a terrible blow. >> Where did your father and Arvid meet? >> They could meet openly, because Arvid was promoted to a very high level in the Ministry of Economics and was responsible for countries like the United States, and so on, so they could meet at the Adlon Hotel on Unter den Linden Street, quite openly, knowing that they were being watched. We met outside of Berlin, mainly at pre-designated places, where we would drive to someplace and then walk ten miles and meet them. They would come and maybe we would stay overnight in the same inn. Places we met included the Spreewald, the famous forest where the Romans beat the Germans, because it was a very complex place to walk through, and we weren't apt to meet a lot of people there. Another place was an ancient convent, the ruins of an ancient convent, which was kind of hard to get to. Another was a place where the major canal was lifted up in the air by very complex machinery, and ships would come into the locks. The locks would close and then the whole thing would be lifted up to another level, and was surrounded by forests, and we met there. >> Could you describe the kind of information that Arvid supplied your father? >> Well, he supplied information on plans of the Germany Economics Ministry and the German government, plans that they had, both in supporting military futures and in trade with other countries. Some of which were pro-Nazi, or were part of the Axis. This information was passed then back to the United States. We had an usual situation. President Roosevelt and Secretary of the Treasury were both worried that Hitler would do something that would precipitate another Wall street. So they were more interested in my father's reports on economic matters of that nature, than they were on what Hitler was doing to the Jews, or what he planned to do to the Russians. >> What was your father's reaction to the fact that Arvid was also supplying information to the Soviets? >> Well, this is the way Arvid brought it up, and you hear this a lot when Russians are trying to talk you over to them. Arvid said he was a bridge between-- he could be a bridge between Russia and the United States, because he loved both. The United States he loved as a country, and Russia he believed was on the right track in general in Socialism. That used to shock me 'cause even then as a dumb little boy, I knew the difference between Socialism and Communism. So they would argue about this, Arvid kept trying to say, "You'll see Donald, when all this is over, I will be-- I and my friends here in the underground, we will be taking over, and you'll find that I'm very valuable to the United States because, the Russians are with me." >> Was your father worried about the information he was giving to the Soviets? >> No, Arvid made it pretty clear that it was military intelligence. The unfortunate thing was the Russians, they dropped people into Germany with transmitters, but they had lousy transmitters, so when Arvid and his people were reporting military intelligence to the Russians, the Russians weren't getting it. The few things that did get through, Stalin who was paranoid, wouldn't believe it. He said, "Ah, they're just pulling a game with us." >> In 1937, Arvid signed the state department guest book. >> Yes. >> Can you tell us that story? >> Yeah, Arvid, when he signed the State Department guest book, having no other people that he could talk to, decided to risk it, and put down that he would like to be of assistance to the U.S. government to whatever extent they needed him. >> So he actually wrote that in the guest book? >> Yes, he did. Yes, he did. That's a shame, because there was man right there in the embassy. We had a thing in those days called a Coordination Department, which is one of the predecessors of the CIA. My father was a member of it. If the Coordination Department man who later was Ambassador Bunker in Vietnam, if he had known there was a man downstairs volunteering services

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he would have raced down. But later on, they saw this thing and they said, "Well who the hell was this guy?" It was too late. >> Could the United States have intervened on Mildred's behalf after she was arrested? >> Hitler viewed Mildred as a threat. Any American was a threat. Therefore, she was unlike the other prisoners at the Charlottenberg Prison where she was kept. She wasn't allowed contact with anybody. She wasn't allowed to exercise with the other prisoners, and so on. He had very strong opinions about her, the danger she represented. He was paranoid about that, and so there's no chance that, I mean we would have, President Roosevelt would've have to say, "We promise not to go to war with you if you let her loose," something like that. No, Hitler never would have let her loose. He was furious about her. >> Did she ever talk to you about being scared or fearful, of what might happen to her? >> Yes. She would talk to me when I would come to meetings. She'd say, "How did you come here?" I'd say, well I took the underground to Breitenbachplatz, then I walked to Nollendorfplatz, went into the American Church for a while, looked out the windows to see if anybody was following, then I came down and I bought some peanuts from the guy down the street in front of your place, and had a chat with him. And he told me that he wasn't selling any peanuts, so there was nobody around. And then I came up with these peanuts. And she would always ask me, "How did you get here? What did you do?" and so on, yeah. And I would assure her that I was very, very careful. >> So did you know then--? >> I told her I was very frightened of the Germans. I hated Hitler. I mean, I used to sit in the opera house with my father, and Hitler was two boxes up, two rows above us in the presidential thing, and the two of us would just sit like this, and we would concentrate our powerful brains to make him suddenly stop breathing. I'm not kidding you. We really did that. My father loved it.

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>> How would you like Mildred and Arvid to be remembered? >> I would like them to be remembered by the German people as examples of the roughly 200 Germans in their organization who were Communists, Christian Democrats, Mormons, God knows what, who were primarily devoted to overthrowing the most dangerous man in the world.