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

On February 8, 1937, a team of men at Bruchsal Prison dismantled the Mannhardt guillotine, distributed the parts into an assortment of wooden crates, and loaded them onto a truck bound for Berlin. The truck trundled northeast. It passed the Rhine River, where Mildred loved to swim when the weather was warm. It passed Jena, where Mildred spent her first year in Germany, sequestering herself for hours in the university library to research her dissertation. It passed the Thuringian Forest and the Harz Mountains, where Mildred hiked with Arvid on Sundays, their rucksacks stuffed with sandwiches and books.