Traudl Junge
Traudl Junge (16 March, 1920 – 10 February, 2002), born Gertraud Humps, was Adolf Hitler's youngest personal private secretary, from December 1942 to April 1945.
Early life
Gertraud "Traudl" Humps was born in Munich (Bavaria), the daughter of a master brewer and lieutenant in the Reserve Army, Max Humps and his wife Hildegard (née Zottmann). She had a sister, Inge, born in 1923. As a teenager she thought of becoming a ballerina. In November 1942 Junge was hired as a private secretary to Adolf Hitler.
Working for Hitler
"I was 22 and I didn't know anything about politics, it didn't interest me," Junge said decades later, also saying 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."
At Hitler's encouragement, in June 1943 Junge married SS-officer Hans Hermann Junge (1914 – 1944), who died in combat. She worked at Hitler's side in Berlin, the Berghof in Berchtesgaden, in East Prussia and lastly back in Berlin.
Junge claimed Hitler and his inner circle almost never mentioned Jews, a statement which some historians reject, attributing it to a kind of "self-induced amnesia". She said Hitler did not like cut flowers because he did not want to be (in his words) "surrounded by corpses," and said he spent much of the time during his final days staring blankly and saying little.
Berlin, 1945
In 1945, Junge was with Hitler in Berlin. She typed Hitler's last private and political will and testament in the Führerbunker a day and a half before his suicide. Junge wrote that while 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 direct hit,' 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 SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke. Also included in the group were Hitler's personal pilot, Hans Baur, the chief of his bodyguard, Hans Rattenhuber, secretary Gerda Christian, secretary Else Krüger, Hitler's dietician, Constanze Manziarly, and Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenck. On the morning of 2 May, Soviet troops discovered remnants of the group hiding in a cellar off the Schönhauser Allee. [1]
Post-war
The movie Der Untergang, which has been widely cited for its historical accuracy, depicts Junge being saved by a boy with whom she walks through Russian lines but this is a fictional (and metaphorical) dramatic device invented for the film's ending. In truth, Junge was captured with the rest of her party and raped repeatedly by Russian soldiers, as were many other German women during the fall of Berlin in 1945. She was subsequently held for a year as the "personal prisoner" of a Russian major.[2][3] At least one author asserts that Junge suffered a fractured skull while resisting a gang rape[4] but she does not mention such a rape or injury in her autobiography. After spending time in a Russian prison camp Junge returned to Germany to work as a secretary and later, a sub-editor.
Following the war Junge was not widely known outside the academic and intelligence communities. Other than appearing in the television documentary The World at War (1974) she lived a life of relative obscurity. This included two brief periods of residence in Australia, where Junge's younger sister still lives.[5]
She returned to the public eye with the release of an autobiography, Until the Final Hour (2002) (written with author Melissa Müller), which described the time she worked for Hitler. She was also interviewed for the 2002 documentary film Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary. This suddenly brought her much attention and for a few days she was accorded something approaching global celebrity when, aged 81, she died in a Munich hospital.
Her book was used as a source for the movie Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004), much of which is told from her perspective. Excerpts from Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary were also used in Der Untergang
Traudl Junge died of cancer in Munich on February 10, 2002.[6] Shortly before her death she is reported to have said, "Now that I've let go of my story, I can let go of my life."
Quotes
We should listen to the voice of conscience. It does not take nearly as much courage as one might think to admit to our mistakes and learn from them. Human beings are in this world to learn and to change themselves in learning.
Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me,[7] and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out.
See also
- Third Reich
- Downfall (Der Untergang, a film based in part on Junge's experiences in the Führerbunker)
- Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary
- Erna Flegel
Notes and references
- ^ Beevor, Antony. Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, 2002, ISBN 0-670-88695-5, page 288
- ^ The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared For Stalin From The Interrogations of Hitler's Personal Aides, New York, 2005, ISBN 1-58648-366-8
- ^ The Bunker, James Preston O'Donnell, Da Capo Press, 2001, ISBN 0306809583 page 293
- ^ The Bunker, James Preston O'Donnell, Da Capo Press, 2001, ISBN 0306809583 page 293
- ^ "Hitler's secretary lived in Australia", The Age, 2005-08-06, retrieved 2007-07-06
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - ^ Traudl Junge obituary in the Guardian
- ^ Traudl Junge was born in March 1920, Scholl in May 1921. See "Sophie Scholl (Biografie) 1921 - 1943" by Dieter Wunderlich, retrieved 12 January 2007
- Junge, Traudl, Until the Final Hour, (English edition) London, 2002, ISBN 0-297-84720-1
- Hirschbiegel, Oliver (Director), Downfall, (DVD) 2005, www.momentumpictures.co.uk
External links
- Traudl Junge obituary in the Guardian
- Traudl Junge at Find-A-Grave
- Traudl Junge at IMDb
- Illustrated summary and discussion of Blind Spot by a college student in 2006