All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days

The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler

By: Rebecca Donner

Narrated by: Rebecca Donner

The INSTANT New York Times Bestseller

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography

Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award

Winner of the Chautauqua Prize

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award

Finalist for the Plutarch Award

A New York Times Notable Book of 2021

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

A New York Times Critics' Top Pick of 2021

Wall Street Journal 10 Best Books of 2021

Time Magazine 100 Must-Read Books of 2021

Publishers Weekly Top Ten Books of 2021

An Economist Best Book of the Year

A New York Post Best Book of the Year

A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of the Year

Oprah Daily Best New Books of August

A New York Public Library Book of the Week

In this “stunning literary achievement,” Donner chronicles the extraordinary life and brutal death of her great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack, the American leader of one of the largest underground resistance groups in Germany during WWII—“a page-turner story of espionage, love and betrayal” (Kai Bird, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography)

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. Her coconspirators circulated through Berlin under the cover of night, slipping the leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms, phone booths. When the first shots of the Second World War were fired, she became a spy, couriering top-secret intelligence to the Allies. On the eve of her escape to Sweden, she was ambushed by the Gestapo. At a Nazi military court, a panel of five judges sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler overruled the decision and ordered her execution. On February 16, 1943, she was strapped to a guillotine and beheaded.

Historians identify Mildred Harnack as the only American in the leadership of the German resistance, yet her remarkable story has remained almost unknown until now.

Harnack’s great-great-niece Rebecca Donner draws on her extensive archival research in Germany, Russia, England, and the U.S. as well as newly uncovered documents in her family archive to produce this astonishing work of narrative nonfiction. Fusing elements of biography, real-life political thriller, and scholarly detective story, Donner brilliantly interweaves letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, survivors’ testimony, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into a powerful, epic story, reconstructing the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history.

©2021 Rebecca Donner (P)2021 Little, Brown & Company

Critic reviews

"Extraordinarily intimate.... Wilder and more expansive than a standard-issue biography…a real-life thriller with a cruel ending - not to mention an account of Hitler’s ascent from attention-seeking buffoon to genocidal Führer.” (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times)

“A powerful book…. Ms. Donner’s use of the present tense increases the feeling of inevitability as she unfolds her story to its horrific conclusion.... A nonfiction narrative with the pace of a political thriller, it’s imbued with suspense and dread…a deeply affecting biography, meticulously researched and illustrated…. Ms. Donner evocatively brings to life the giddy feeling of freedom under the Weimar regime in Berlin and how swiftly it eroded. Her account of the decline of liberties is harrowing.” (Moira Hodgson, Wall Street Journal)

"A tour de force of investigation…. The story unfolds in fragments…but as the pieces cohere, the couple’s story becomes gripping…. The abiding impression is of virtuous, extraordinarily brave people caught up in tragic horror.” (The Economist)

Stunning, brilliant!

Donner has done a superb job as an author and narrator of this excellent book. Going beyond the life of Mildred Harnock and her coconspirators, the events leading up to the Nazi regime are relayed in chilling detail.

The insight into life and feelings during this time

An incredible book. I found myself gripped by its description of life and the mood during Germany at this time. I was so impressed by the writing (and performance by the author, Rebecca Donnie). She brings a n

Interesting. Authors should not read books.

This is more of an "historical novel" than it is non-fiction. Author took great liberties with assumed settings and behaviors.
Perfect example of why an author should NOT read his/her own book. Often very over-dramatic in her reading.
Still a very interesting story.

Well researched and fascinating story

The performance, for my taste, is too breathless and emphatic, which is totally unnecessary as the story speaks for itself.

It was, in my opinion, a poor choice and I almost turned it off within the first few minutes but then got used to it and tolerated it. Her German pronunciation was, on the other hand, excellent.

One of the best books I’ve read

This book is unbelievably good. So captivating and well researched, with a genuine and exhaustive picture of Nazi Germany. Learning about Mildred’s life was inspiring and important—it feels like a way to connect and honor a hero both lost and disregarded until this point. All I can say is, thank you, Rebecca, for sharing this story with us.

wonderful

This is a wonderful book. it is thoroughly researched and well written. it is a captivating story that is nonfiction but interesting than many novels.

heartbreaking...

I have read and listened to many World War II biographies, autobiographies, history books and novels. I had never heard this or any of what the German underground people were trying to do.

A Bit Breathy!

The author is such a good JA re-writer that I was surprised this was somewhat shallow. I did not appreciate or relate to the reader’s imitation of the different voices. Either have guys read the make parts or just read them. The female version of the male voices was silly. Sorry! Spoiled it for me!!

Worth the credit

Some odd stylistic writing tics which might read better then they do as narration. Last 1/3 the best. Certainly an interesting story but not the swashbuckling story that A Woman of No Importance was but another contribution to WWII historiography. Overall I would recommend.

A highly effective reading by the author herself

i’m glad I listened to this on audiobook rather than reading it in print, as I think the author (unlike most authors who attempt to read their own work) added a powerful sense of urgency, even suspense, to the narrative. (Well, she does repeatedly mispronounce William Shirer’s name, but in every other respect she is a brilliant reader; I think she sounded best at 1.1 speed.) She's also an extraordinarily good writer, telling her complicated, harrowing tale with great concision, always seeming to choose exactly the right word.

It is, as some here have noted, a complicated, fragmentary tale with lots of gaps, often relying on rather scanty evidence and often focusing on people other than the central figure, Mildred Harnack, or on major historical events. And — also as noted — one doesn’t come away with much sense of what Mildred herself was like, as we frequently glimpse her only through other people’s memories.

It’s even somewhat hard to say just what good she actually did, aside from recruiting people to her circle of resisters. Sometimes those in the circle printed and distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, often via random mailings, or engaged in “poster action,” pasting anti-Nazi posters over Nazi ones. These were brave, highly dangerous activities that could — and perhaps ultimately did — get one killed, yet in hindsight they seem as useless and futile as the things resisters in other nations risked their lives doing. (The daring deeds of the French resistance, for example, accomplished little, compared to all the innocent lives the Germans took in reprisal.) In retrospect I suppose the most useful service Mildred rendered, really, was to aid her husband, a government employee, in his spying for Moscow. How ironic that all the evidence he, and many others, gathered of Hitler’s secret plans to invade the USSR went for naught because Stalin — a monster as great as Hitler — chose not to believe it.

P.S. This book somewhat complements another excellent audiobook, Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts,” with which it has considerable overlap. (Clearly some of the same sources were used, and even a few of the same quotes.) However, here Mildred’s friend Martha Dodd emerges as a frivolous, self-centered ninny, whereas she’s a touch more sympathetic in Larson’s book. In Donner’s account, Martha never learns that her Russian lover is married; in Larson’s version, Boris tells Martha the truth and even introduces her to his daughter. Larson has Thomas Wolfe reflect — at least briefly — on the pervasive fear he noticed in Germany; Donner’s book suggests that he was supremely self-interested and oblivious to what was going on. (It also quotes a cruelly dismissive journal entry Wolfe wrote about Martha, something Larson leaves out.) Finally, Larson’s book adds gruesome details to the death by hanging of Mildred’s husband — though perhaps Donner’s account is distressing enough without it.