terms would they avert their own destruction. He openly taunted Winston Churchill, who had replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, for presuming to fight on when the most likely outcome was the complete annihilation of their empire.
Mildred saw no reason why any sensible person would believe anything Hitler said. Even as he spoke of peace, German bombers flew over England and fighters strafed British ships at sea. Hitler’s peace would be an untenable détente that would leave him in control over formerly sovereign nations, the conquerer of Europe. It would mean the enslavement of millions and the deaths of millions more.
Great Britain had not yet responded to Hitler’s dubious peace offer when Arvid’s younger brother Falk visited them from Munich, where he was involved with the student resistance movement. He had brought along a heavy wooden crate, and when he pried off the lid, Mildred gasped to see a wonderful assortment of fresh vegetables—greens, tomatoes, summer squash, cabbages, peppers—that Mutti Harnack had grown in her garden at the sanatorium.
“Mutti said to tell you that these vegetables are for you and her grandchild,” Falk told Mildred, smiling. “She admires your generosity to the less fortunate, but you’re under strict orders to eat more than you give away.”
“I agree with our mother,” said Arvid, putting an arm around Mildred’s shoulders as he peered into the crate. “You need to eat more.”
“We all need to eat more,” she pointed out, having already made up her mind to divide up the bounty with Sara and Natan. She did not change her mind even after Falk unpacked the crate and she discovered that it contained fewer vegetables than she had assumed, because beneath them Falk had concealed a wonderful, dangerous gift: a powerful shortwave radio.
When the brothers set up the device away from the windows and walls adjoining other apartments, and the BBC came in as clearly as if it were broadcast from Wilhelmstrasse, Mildred impulsively kissed Falk on the cheek to thank him. “Now it will be so much easier to tune in to foreign broadcasts,” she said. “It will help our group’s work and our morale to get news we can trust, untainted by the Ministry of Propaganda.”
“Be careful on the streets never to reveal how much you know,” Falk cautioned. “Goebbels is waging his own private war against radio crime. A single slip of the tongue could betray you to an informant.”
Mildred knew her brother-in-law did not exaggerate. Earlier that spring, a friend in the American press corps had told her of an incident the Nazi censors had forbidden him to include in his radio broadcast. The Luftwaffe had informed the mother of a German pilot that her son’s plane had been shot down over France and that he was missing and presumed dead. A few days later, unbeknownst to the grieving mother, her son’s name was included in a weekly BBC broadcast listing the names of Germans recently captured by the British. The next day, the mother received eight letters from friends and acquaintances assuring her that her son was alive but held prisoner in England. No doubt the mother rejoiced, but soon thereafter she reported all eight friends to the SS, and they were promptly arrested for listening to foreign radio broadcasts.
“Prime Minister Churchill delivered this speech to the House of Commons in June after the Dunkirk evacuation.” Reaching into a pocket concealed in the lining of his suit jacket, Falk took out a few sheets of folded paper and handed them to Mildred. “It wasn’t recorded, but afterward the BBC read portions of it over the air. I thought you might want to translate it for one of your newsletters, in case anyone doubts the British resolve.”
Unfolding the pages, Mildred seated herself and read the transcript, which began with Mr. Churchill’s vivid, harrowing account of the battles in France and Belgium that had culminated in the British and French retreat and evacuation at Dunkirk. She was not surprised to discover a very different version of events from the Nazis’ official account. More than 335,000 troops had been safely brought to England, where they were preparing to defend their island home. “We shall go on to the end,” Churchill had vowed. “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we