Honoring Mildred Fish Harnack

Wisconsin born and educated, resistance fighter during World War II with the Red Orchestra Movement.

PART I. 1902 – 1929: Wisconsin, U.S.A.

PART II. 1929 – 1943: Germany

PART III. 1943 – Present

For more information about the life of Mildred Fish Harnack, consult the following resources:

1. Mildred Fish Harnack collection hosted by the UW Digital Collections Center.
2. Wisconsin’s Nazi Resistance: The Mildred Fish Harnack Story produced by Wisconsin Public Television.
3. Brysac, Shareen Blair.  Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.  Resisting Hitler focuses on Mildred Fish Harnack’s and her husband’s resistance to the Nazis.
4. Nelson, Anne. Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler. New York: Random House, 2000. Red Orchestra examines the circle of friends who resisted Adolf Hitler. It chronicles the lives of Greta Kuckhoff and Mildred Fish-Harnack. Both women were University of Wisconsin students.
5. The cultural center of Jewish life in Milwaukee, the Jewish Museum Milwaukee has a traveling exhibit Mildred Fish Harnack: The Story of a Wisconsin Woman’s Resistance.

Exhibit originally prepared by Jenifer Ihde for the University Archives (2001).