Traudl Junge

Gertraud "Traudl" Junge (

Traudl Humps began working for Hitler in December 1942. She was the youngest of his private secretaries.[4] "I was 22 and I didn't know anything about politics; it didn't interest me," Junge said decades later, adding that she felt great guilt for "liking the greatest criminal ever to have lived".

She said: "I admit, I was fascinated by Adolf Hitler. He was a pleasant boss and a fatherly friend. I deliberately ignored all the warning voices inside me and enjoyed the time by his side, almost until the bitter end. It wasn't what he said, but the way he said things and how he did things."^[5]

Encouraged by Hitler, in June 1943, Traudl married

In 1945, Junge was with Hitler in Berlin. During Hitler's last days in Berlin, he would regularly eat lunch with his secretaries Junge and Gerda Christian.^[8] After the war, Junge recalled Gerda asking Hitler if he would leave Berlin. This was firmly rejected by Hitler.^[9] Both women recalled that Hitler in conversation made it clear that his body must not fall into the hands of the Soviets. He would shoot himself.^[9] Junge typed Hitler's last private and political will and testament in the Führerbunker the day before his suicide.^[10] Junge later wrote that while she was playing with the Goebbels children on 30 April, "Suddenly [...] there is the sound of a shot, so loud, so close, that we all fall silent. It echoes on through all the rooms. 'That was a bull's-eye,' cried Helmut [Goebbels] with no idea how right he is. The Führer is dead now."

On 1 May, Junge left the Führerbunker with a group led by

Although Junge had reached the Elbe, she was unable to reach the western Allied lines, and so she went back to Berlin. Getting there about a month after she had left, she had hoped to take a train to the west when they began running again. On 9 July, after living there for about a week under the alias Gerda Alt, she was arrested by two civilian members of the Soviet military administration and was kept in Berlin for interrogation. While in prison, she heard harrowing tales from her Soviet guards about what the German military had done to members of their families in the Soviet Union and came to realise that much of what she thought she knew about the war in the east was only what the Nazi propaganda ministry had told the German people, and that the treatment meted out to Germans by the Soviets was a response to what the Germans had done in the Soviet Union.^[12]

Junge was held in multiple jails, where she was often interrogated about her role in Hitler's entourage and the events surrounding Hitler's suicide. By December 1945, she had been released from prison but was restricted to the Soviet sector of Berlin. On New Year's Eve 1945, she was admitted to a hospital in the British sector for

In 1989, Junge's manuscript about her life throughout the war was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons (New York) as part of the book Voices from the Bunker by Pierre Galante and Eugene Silianoff. Also in that year, she was interviewed in the BBC documentary The Fatal Attraction of Adolf Hitler, in which she discussed at length her impressions of Hitler and the final days with him in the Führerbunker. In 1991, she appeared in the documentary series Hitler's Henchmen produced by German television channel ZDF. The 2002 release of her memoirs Until the Final Hour, co-written with author Melissa Müller, describing the time she worked for Hitler, brought media coverage.^{[citation needed]} She was also interviewed for the 2002 documentary film Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, which drew much attention.^{[citation needed]}

Junge died from cancer in Munich on 10 February 2002 at the age of 81,^[15] reportedly having said shortly before her death, "Now that I've let go of my story, I can let go of my life." She is buried at Nordfriedhof München.

Further attention came two years later,^[

. Excerpts from her interviews are seen at the beginning and at the end of the film. At the end of the film, she states:

Of course, the horrors, of which I heard in connection of the Nuremberg trials; the fate of the 6 million Jews, their killing and those of many others who represented different races and creeds, shocked me greatly, but, at that time, I could not see any connection between these things and my own past. I was only happy that I had not personally been guilty of these things and that I had not been aware of the scale of these things. However, one day, I walked past a plaque on the Franz-Joseph Straße (in Munich), on the wall in memory of Sophie Scholl. I could see that she had been born the same year as I, and that she had been executed the same year I entered into Hitler's service. And, at that moment, I really realised that it was no excuse that I had been so young. I could perhaps have tried to find out about things.

See also

• Christa Schroeder
• Erna Flegel
• Johanna Wolf

References

Citations

1. ^ Compare: Taylor, Charles (31 January 2003). "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary".
   Salon
   . Retrieved 14 March 2016. [...] she worked as an editor and science journalist, living in a one-room apartment in suburban Munich from the '50s onward.
2. ISBN 0753817926
   .
3. ^ "Traudl Junge". The Daily Telegraph. 14 February 2002. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
4. ^ Hooper, John (14 February 2002). "Obituary:Traudl Junge". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
5. ^ "Hitler's final witness". BBC. 4 February 2002. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
6. ^ Hamilton 1984, p. 155.
7. ^ Galante & Silianoff 1989, pp. 39, 124–125.
8. ^ Joachimsthaler 1999, pp. 131, 169, 170.
9. ^ ^{a b} Joachimsthaler 1999, pp. 169, 170.
10. ^ Beevor 2002, pp. 343.
11. ^ Beevor 2002, pp. 382, 383, 388, 389.
12. ^ Junge, pp. 219–222
13. ^ Junge, pp. 223–230
14. ^ "Hitler's secretary lived in Australia". The Age. 6 August 2005. Retrieved 1 July 2016.
15. ^ Hooper, obituary

General sources

• Beevor, Antony (2002). Berlin: The Downfall 1945. Viking-Penguin Books.
  ISBN 978-0-670-03041-5
  .
• Childs, David (18 February 2002). "Obituary". The Independent.
• Galante, Pierre; Silianoff, Eugene (1989). Voices from the Bunker. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
  ISBN 978-0-3991-3404-3
  .
• Hamilton, Charles (1984). Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich. Vol. 1. R. James Bender Publishing.
  ISBN 0-912138-27-0
  .
• Hooper, John (14 February 2002). "Traudl Junge obituary". The Guardian.
• ISBN 978-1-86019-902-8
  .
• Junge, Traudl; Müller, Melissa (editor). Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary, Arcade Publishing, 2004.
  ISBN 978-1-55970-728-2
  .

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Traudl Junge.

• Traudl Junge at Find a Grave
• Traudl Junge at
  IMDb
• "The Line". A comic that juxtaposes Traudl Junge with Sophie Scholl
• "Witness: The Death of Hitler" Interview in BBC Radio's oral history series "Witness". Speaking in English, Traudl Junge recalls her memories of working with Hitler, and of events in the bunker at the time of his death.