Book Review: 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

 

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 

Hardcover, 576 pages

Published August 2021 by Little, Brown and Company

 

I generally don’t write long reviews for non-fiction/research books. But this book deserves a brighter look. It was one I had not heard of and got on an impulse while looking at the new releases at the library. I am assuming that Rebecca Donner who is telling the story of her great aunt Mildred had this piece of family lore around her during her whole life. I am also supposing as the events of the Trump years and slow march towards a Christian-right wing coup in America was attempted she thought it was time.

It is clear in doing the research for the book that the parallels to our slow creep towards authoritarianism as waged by the orange asshole were probably pretty clear. Don’t get me wrong Donner never says that. She doesn’t have to. It is super obvious.   

I will give you a personal example. You see when I was reading this was the same week that the draft document about the supreme court overturning Roe V Wade came out. I got to the chapter in this book where the Nazis slowly made abortion illegal to make sure there were plenty of Nazi babies for the Reich. During the early years the newspapers wrote off Hitler as a buffoon, a moron much like most of us wrote off Trump. The slow creep of more and more people taking the guy seriously just sounded familiar.

It is not a one-to-one comparison but it is scary. Donner’s great aunt Mildred was an American born and raised in Milwaukee. She met and married a fellow grad student at the university from Germany and she was excited to return with him and study for her Ph.D. in Europe.

By 1932 he was an organizer in the underground resistance to Hitler and the rising Nazi party. This book doesn’t have a Hollywood ending. Mildred ended up beheaded on Hitler’s order. She and her husband smuggled information to the allies and the Russians. Continued to resist even after capture. What makes this book special is not just the details of their lives.

Plenty of Germans did resist Hitler and their names have been lost to history. They gave their lives trying to fight the bastards and most are completely forgotten.  I think this is a great history book, big thumbs up from me.