Red Orchestra (10 page)

In May 1932, Mildred Harnack's job became an early casualty. She was a gifted and popular teacher, but the American studies division of the university had been taken over by a prominent Nazi.
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He received reports of Mildred's liberal leanings and passion for Russian literature, and terminated her contract.

The next blow came the following month, when the Harnacks were obliged to move. Mildred wrote her mother that, unfortunately, “the people with whom we live are National Socialists.” She and Arvid found a new place on the border between the neighborhoods of Kreuzberg and Neukölln, both working-class neighborhoods and political tinderboxes. Mildred was pleased with their new quarters; they were sunny and comfortable, near the open spaces of parks and the Tempelhof airfield.
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The Harnacks were ready to take a break from Germany's turbulence. In August, Soviet economist Sergei Bessonov invited the twenty-three members of Arvid's group to take a three-week study tour of the Soviet Union. Mildred had her heart set on going, but she had found a new teaching position at a night school and the ARPLAN trip conflicted with her schedule. She decided to go separately, booking her own trip to Leningrad and Moscow a few weeks ahead of the group.
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Mildred and Arvid each received a “Potemkin Village” tour, rooted in the long-standing Russian tradition of showing outsiders a white-washed version of their actual conditions.
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The Soviets devoted great effort to such tours in an attempt to build support for their country in the West. The Harnacks were shown that food was plentiful, and were shielded from the vast numbers of the population who were suffering from a devastating famine. As Arvid was shepherded around model factories and public works, he was impressed by their scale and efficiency, while Mildred eagerly learned of Soviet reforms for women such as birth control and maternity leave.

It has been alleged that Arvid was contacted by Soviet intelligence while he was on the study tour, but this is not confirmed by his own records.
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Whatever the case, Arvid met with a range of Soviet officials, but paid his own way and continued to function as an academic. He took systematic notes on large-scale economic projects and wrote them up as a book upon his return in September. The manuscript was accepted by Rowohlt, a major publisher in Berlin.

On their return, Mildred and Arvid were quickly swept back into Berlin's political drama. It was still possible to hope that the November elections could lead the country back to normalcy. The Nazi Party's electoral support had peaked the previous July. In November they lost two million votes and thirty-four seats in the Reichstag, while the Social Democrats held steady and the Communists made gains.
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But these numbers left out the wild card of coalition politics. Hinden-burg had been reelected president, but Adolf Hitler, whose eroding minority party still had the largest number of seats in the Reichstag, demanded that Hindenburg appoint him chancellor. Hindenburg's conservative advisers urged him to agree, in hopes that the Nazis would help them consolidate their power.

It was a hard sell. Hindenburg didn't see Hitler as chancellor material, and continued to dismiss him as “the little Bohemian corporal.” He tried to stall, but his advisers prevailed. On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg, beaten down by the conflict and fearing a disintegration into civil war, appointed Adolf Hitler to be Germany's chancellor. General Erich Ludendorff, a conservative politician and Hindenburg's former chief of staff, took his old commanding officer to task:

Joseph Goebbels immediately organized a torchlit parade through the heart of Berlin, long considered enemy territory. There were similar
marches all over the country, met by Communist demonstrations against the new government. Fighting broke out. Within a few days, the Communist newspaper
Rote Fahne
was banned and copies confiscated. Storm troopers attacked Communists and trade unionists in their offices and homes, and the attacks were soon extended to Social Democrats.
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The previous year Hindenburg's administration had purged Social Democrats from the Berlin police force. Now the police stood by while Social Democrats and Communists were beaten and killed.

Yet another round of national elections was scheduled for early March. By mid-February the Nazi brownshirts had begun to attack members of the Catholic Center Party in addition to Communists and Social Democrats. Center Party newspapers were banned for criticizing the government.

On February 20, several dozen of Germany's wealthiest individuals gathered at the home of Nazi minister Hermann Göring. These were the men who controlled iron mines, steelworks, and munitions factories— all of which had labored at a disadvantage under Versailles restrictions and trade union demands.

Adolf Hitler, the featured speaker, assured the businessmen that he had their interests at heart. “Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy,” he told them. He promised to eliminate the Marxists and rebuild the army, whether or not his party won in March. “Now we stand before the last election. … Regardless of the outcome, there will be no retreat, even if the next election does not bring about a decision.”
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Göring told his guests that it was a good time for them to make a contribution to the cause.

Göring purged the police force of unsympathetic officers and replaced them with Nazi recruits. On February 24 his police raided the abandoned Communist headquarters at the Karl Liebknecht Haus. (Much of the Communist leadership had already fled the country or gone underground.) Göring's forces confiscated piles of political leaflets, but they were still unable to produce evidence that a leftist uprising had been planned.

Then another opportunity arose. On the evening of February 27, a massive fire was set at the Reichstag, and within hours the symbol of German democracy was a charred ruin. The police quickly arrested an
unemployed Dutch laborer named Marinus van der Lubbe and accused him of committing arson under Communist orders. Rumors instantly spread that the Nazis had set the fire themselves.
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Hitler had been enjoying a quiet evening with the Goebbels family. When they heard the news of the fire, the two men rushed to the scene. They joined Göring and Rudolf Diels, head of the Prussian political police, on a balcony to survey the damage. Years later, Diels recalled the event:

The police interrogation indicated that van der Lubbe had acted alone, but the evidence was irrelevant. Within hours the police pulled lists of Communists from their files. Four thousand Communists and Social Democrats were arrested, including Reichstag deputies whose office gave them legal immunity.
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The next day Hitler and the Nazi ministers convinced Hindenburg to sign a decree that suspended all constitutional guarantees of civil liberties, placing restrictions “on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association.”

A final round of elections was scheduled for March 5. Now the Nazis enjoyed full control of the state radio, and extensive government resources and private financing for their campaign. Opposition rallies and newspapers were banned, and politicians faced arrest, beatings, or death if they dared to appear in public.

Remarkably, the majority of Germans still voted against the Nazis.
The party's share of the vote rose to forty-four percent, but even combined with the National Party, this was not enough to guarantee control. The Nazis now turned to a new piece of legislation called the Enabling Act, which would allow the chancellor to create laws without the approval of the Reichstag or the president. This constitutional amendment required a two-thirds quorum and two-thirds of the votes of those pres ent. The Nazis guaranteed this outcome by eliminating the eighty-one seats of the Communist deputies, brutalizing the Social Democrats, and leaning hard on the Catholic Center Party.

A week later, an eviscerated Reichstag overwhelmingly voted to render itself obsolete. Hitler and the Nazi Party were now in full control of the executive and the legislative branches of government. The judiciary was not expected to present any obstacles. On March 3, Göring had promised a crowd in Frankfurt that “my measures will not be crippled by any judicial thinking … I don't have to worry about justice; my mission is only to destroy and exterminate, nothing more!”
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In short, there were no remaining democratic institutions capable of reversing the new national condition. Through a long, tragic series of conspiracies, blunders, and lies, the Germans had bartered away their freedoms and allowed their feeble democracy to collapse into dictatorship.

Now, at the very moment Mildred Harnack had the most to tell, her letters to her mother became more circumspect. It was a frightening time—all around her, friends, neighbors, and colleagues were being fired, beaten, or arrested. Any communication that was sent by mail fell under Nazi scrutiny. Mildred wrote to her mother, taking stock of their situation. Neither spouse was a Communist Party member. She hoped that their interest in the Soviet Union would escape notice. “Our curious ideas are not known here,” she wrote nervously.

“We are not active politically. We are safe, very well, and happy. Who would bother himself about two students sitting off in a corner and thinking thoughts about the future of the world? So don't feel any worry about us at all. And best keep still. If any one asks you about us, we are not interested in the world from a political but from a scientific standpoint. That's all you need to say.”
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In reality, of course, they were highly vulnerable. A number of
Arvid's cousins had been openly critical of the Nazis' rise to power, including Social Democrat official Ernst von Harnack and the Bonhoeffer brothers, Dietrich and Klaus. Professor Friedrich Lenz, the president of Arvid's Soviet study group, was purged from the university in Giessen for “political unreliability.”

Mildred trusted her mother to read between the lines. On May 2, 1933, she wrote urging her mother to visit while it was still possible.

The day before, the Nazis had staged an enormous May Day parade right across the street from Mildred's apartment. For generations, May Day had been a celebration of solidarity for the German trade unions. But this year was different. Over a million people were jammed into the Tempelhof airfield, and the marchers were regimented into a configuration of twelve giant squares, with Nazi banners flying overhead.
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Mildred described the event for her mother in detail, trying to signal the dangers ahead.

Mildred's diction had changed. She was still the literature professor who loved honesty and clarity of expression, still the Wisconsin liberal who loathed militarism and the Ku Klux Klan. But from now on she would contort her language into code for the benefit of Nazi censors, trusting her mother to know when she meant the opposite of what she said. “How beautiful it was!” she wrote archly.

The same day Mildred wrote those lines, the Nazis made a coordinated assault on the offices of every Social Democratic trade union in Germany. Their publications were closed down and their funds were seized. Union leaders were taken into the “protective custody” of concentration camps—or killed.
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Now the Nazis had full control of the chancellorship and the cabinet, the Reichstag, and the state radio. The two most effective opposition parties were smashed, and those that remained were bullied into submission. The Nazis controlled the police forces, and began their assault on the courts.

Some Germans still hoped that these brazen moves were the answer to their country's slide into chaos. Others, like the Harnacks, had the opposite impression. They saw fewer and fewer institutions that could impede Germany's march toward war. It was, as Mildred noted, a “serious thing—serious as death.”