Shareen Blair Brysac – författare

"Resisting Hitler" is a biography of the only American woman to have been executed for treason against Germany during World War II. Mildred Harnack was born in Wiscinsin but moved to Germany with her husband in 1929 where she taught American literature. Both Mildred and her husband, Arvid (a professor of philosophy and a native of Gemany), socialised with the intellectual elite of Berlin. Appalled by the rise of Hitler, they joined with others to resist fascism by any means they could. Brysac's exhaustive reasearch has found evidence to support the theory that both Mildred and Arvid gave classified information on Germany to both the Soviets and the US in an effort to sabotage the Nazis. Before and during the war, the Harnacks were founding and leading members of the Red Orchestra, an important covert intelligence group that transmitted messages of resistence with the use of contraband radios. In 1942, Hitler personally ordered their execution.That the heroic efforts of Mildred Harnack's life have not been chronicled before now is due to the immediate post-war anti-Communist sentiment in both the US and Western Europe. "Resisting Hitler" is the only book to draw on intelligence files from three countries to profile its subject: KGB files from Russia; Stasi miltary intelligence files from Germany; CIA and FBI files from the US. The examination of these and many other documents relevant to the case in East and West Germany, including the testimony of Harnack's prosecutors, only became possible after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This book also provides a look at the operational procedures of the NKVD, leading up to the invasion by Germany of the soviet Union in 1941. Up to 1993, when the KGB files of the Harnack group became available, the only information about it came from Gestapo sources. In addition, it was never known by espionage scholars that the Red Orchestra maintained close contacts with US diplomats during the years 1933-41

Resisting Hitler is a biography of the only American woman to have been executed for treason against Germany during World War II. Mildred Harnack was born in Wisconsin but moved to Germany with her husband in 1929 where she taught American literature. Both Mildred and her husband, Arvid (a professor of philosophy and a native of Gemany), socialised with the intellectual elite of Berlin. Appalled by the rise of Hitler, they joined with others to resist fascism by any means they could. Brysac's exhaustive reasearch has found evidence to support the theory that both Mildred and Arvid gave classified information on Germany to both the Soviets and the US in an effort to sabotage the Nazis. Before and during the war, the Harnacks were founding and leading members of the Red Orchestra, an important covert intelligence group that transmitted messages of resistance with the use of contraband radios. In 1942, Hitler personally ordered their execution.That the heroic efforts of Mildred Harnack's life have not been chronicled before now is due to the immediate post-war anti-Communist sentiment in both the US and Western Europe. Resisting Hitler is the only book to draw on intelligence files from three countries to profile its subject: KGB files from Russia; Stasi miltary intelligence files from Germany; CIA and FBI files from the US. The examination of these and many other documents relevant to the case in East and West Germany, including the testimony of Harnack's prosecutors, only became possible after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This book also provides a look at the operational procedures of the NKVD, leading up to the invasion by Germany of the soviet Union in 1941. Up to 1993, when the KGB files of the Harnack group became available, the only information about it came from Gestapo sources. In addition, it was never known by espionage scholars that the Red Orchestra maintained close contacts with US diplomats during the years 1933-41.

This gripping and heartbreaking narrative is the first full account of an American woman who gave her life in the struggle against the Nazi regime. As members of a key resistance group, Mildred Harnack and her husband, Arvid, assisted in the escape of German Jews and political dissidents, and for years provided vital economic and military intelligence to both Washington and Moscow. But in 1942, following a Soviet blunder, the Gestapo arrested, tortured, and tried some four score members of the Harnacks'' group, which the Nazis dubbed the Red Orchestra. Mildred Fish-Harnack was guillotined in Berlin on February 16, 1943, on the personal instruction of Adolf Hitler--she was the only American woman to be executed as an underground conspirator during World War II. Yet as the war ended and the Cold War began, her courage, idealism, and self-sacrifice went largely unacknowledged in America and the democratic West, and were distorted and sanitized in the Communist East. Only now, with the opening of long-sealed archives from Germany, the KGB, the CIA, and the FBI, can the full story be told. In this superbly told life of an unjustly forgotten woman, Shareen Blair Brysac depicts the human side of a controversial resistance group that for too long has been portrayed as merely a Soviet espionage network.

This gripping and heartbreaking narrative is the first full account of an American woman who gave her life in the struggle against the Nazi regime. As members of a key resistance group, Mildred Harnack and her husband, Arvid, assisted in the escape of German Jews and political dissidents, and for years provided vital economic and military intelligence to both Washington and Moscow. But in 1942, following a Soviet blunder, the Gestapo arrested, tortured, and tried some four score members of the Harnacks'' group, which the Nazis dubbed the Red Orchestra. Mildred Fish-Harnack was guillotined in Berlin on February 16, 1943, on the personal instruction of Adolf Hitler--she was the only American woman to be executed as an underground conspirator during World War II. Yet as the war ended and the Cold War began, her courage, idealism, and self-sacrifice went largely unacknowledged in America and the democratic West, and were distorted and sanitized in the Communist East. Only now, with the opening of long-sealed archives from Germany, the KGB, the CIA, and the FBI, can the full story be told. In this superbly told life of an unjustly forgotten woman, Shareen Blair Brysac depicts the human side of a controversial resistance group that for too long has been portrayed as merely a Soviet espionage network.

Kingmakers is the gripping story of how the modern Middle East came to be, as told through the lives of the Britons and Americans who shaped it. Some are famous (Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell); others infamous (Harry St. John Philby, father of Kim); some forgotten (Sir Mark Sykes, Israel’s godfather, and A. T. Wilson, the territorial creator of Iraq). All helped enthrone rulers in a region whose very name is an Anglo-American invention. The aim of this engrossing character-driven narrative is to restore to life the colorful figures who gave us the Middle East in which Americans are enmeshed today.