Traudl Junge - Hitler's Last Secretary - A Firsthand Account of Life with Hitler [aka Until the Final Hour]

Sometimes the train stopped briefly at a station. Then the news officers were hard at work on the phone lines, making important connections. Now and then the valet or one of the Wehrmacht adjutants came in with a message. The Führer never forgot that Blondi would need to go out, and would tell Linge to take the dog out of the train next time it stopped. Hitler called everyone simply by his surname, without any title. He would say, for instance: ‘Linge, take Blondi out.’ And then, after a while, he asked: ‘What’s the time, Bormann?’ It was about one-thirty in the morning. He asked Schaub again what time we would reach Munich next day, and rang for his valet. The conversation was over, and it looked as if we were to disperse. Linge had to go and find out if there were any reports of air raids, and when he came back to say there weren’t Hitler rose, shook hands with everyone and withdrew.

Suddenly I wasn’t tired any more. The coffee had woken me up. We all went back to our compartments, but stopped in the dining car to smoke a quick cigarette, and I sat for a while with Hewel and Lorenz. Then I went to bed and slept until the sound of footsteps hurrying up and down the corridor woke me. When I raised the blackout blinds I saw the sun shining on snow-covered trees. We were going to reach Munich about twelve noon.

It was nine o’clock now. I quickly dressed and went to have breakfast. People were talking about the Berghof and Eva Braun. She was to join the train in Munich and travel on to the Berghof with us. Of course I was tremendously interested in her and her relationship with Hitler. Junge, with whom I was getting on very well◦– I liked his company◦– told me she was mistress of the Berghof, and tacitly accepted as such by all the guests there. I should be prepared, he said, for the fact that the Berghof was the Führer’s private house, and we must all consider ourselves his guests and would be eating with him. However, ‘all’ meant quite a small circle; the rest of the staff would be staying in the buildings near and around the Berghof, and the Reich Chancellery and Wehrmacht leadership departments were quartered in Berchtesgaden.

First, however, we were to spend a day in Munich. I could hardly bear to sit still any more. We were approaching our journey’s end, and I was looking forward so much to seeing my family again. I hadn’t been home for six months. At last we steamed into Munich Central station, and the train came to a halt without a jolt, as smoothly as it had brought us all this way. The train carrying the rest of the staff that had left headquarters in East Prussia about half an hour before us was standing empty and deserted at the next platform. When the passengers got out of the guest carriages and went through the barrier there was no sign of the Führer. He had left the train first, got straight into his car and was driven away.

There was no other barrier, and no soldiers on guard or crowds of people either. Hitler had gone to his private rooms on Prinzregentplatz, and I hurried to see my mother so that at last I could tell her in person everything that had happened to me. She wasn’t at all enthusiastic, and I think she would much rather I’d stayed in a modest little job in Munich and known none of this excitement and magnificence. Her maternal instincts saw all kinds of dangers lying in wait for me, some of them moral but some life-threatening. However, I had plunged headlong into the whirl of events without a thought, happy to have escaped the boring life of an office worker and hungry for experience.

The day passed quickly, and I had to go back to the station that evening. We set off again quietly when darkness had fallen. I didn’t catch sight of the Führer again until we reached Liefering, a little place near Salzburg. There I was just in time to see the lights of the black Mercedes driving away fast towards the Obersalzberg, a long column of cars behind it, with the other secretaries and me in them too. We were driving towards the silhouettes of the mountain peaks, and soon the road, which was deep in snow, began winding uphill. A long line of headlights made its way forward at a thousand metres above sea level. At last the Berghof came in sight. The big building lay in darkness, with only the window of the Great Hall shining faintly in the light reflected from the snow.

Hitler had arrived just before us and had already disappeared into his rooms. His coat and cap were hanging on one of the hooks in the hall. We were welcomed by Frau Mittlstrasser, [27] Willi and Gretl Mittlstrasser, husband and wife, looked after the Berghof household until the collapse of the Third Reich. housekeeper of the Berghof. She was a pretty, determined little woman, a native of Munich, and I had heard that she was very capable. She took the new arrivals to their rooms, and led us secretaries too along a broad, spacious corridor to a small flight of steps, leading to the rooms where Fräulein Schroeder and I were staying. We were right up under the roof in two little rooms of the old Haus Wachenfeld, which had belonged to Hitler’s sister [28] This was Paula Hitler, b Hafeld, Austria 26 January 1896, d Schönau, Berchtesgaden 1 June 1960; takes a commercial studies course, works in the Chancellery in Vienna, sacked in 1930 apparently because Hitler is her brother; receives a monthly pension from Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1945; 26 May 1945 tracked down by the British army at the Dietrich Eckart hut in Berchtesgaden and interrogated; campaigns until her death for her share of the legacy from Hitler’s estate. and later became the Berghof. Everything had been modernized and improved. Mine was a delightful, feminine little bedroom decorated in pale blue and white, with a toilet mirror, a little desk and a lovely bed. Fräulein Schroeder was next door in a rather larger room, decorated in red. We shared a bathroom opposite our rooms, and one of the chambermaids had a bedroom next to it. Those were the parts of the Berghof that I saw that evening.

I had really been looking forward to seeing the mountains at close quarters. I came from Munich myself, but I’d never before had an opportunity to go up into the mountains. But when I woke next morning and made haste to draw back the curtains and admire the famous landscape, I was disappointed to see nothing but a dense wall of mist and clouds, no trace of any mountain peaks. Sad to say, I discovered that these natural phenomena were among the principal features of the area, at least most of the time we were staying there.

But for the moment I was kept busy finding my way round the interior of the Berghof. Surely there must be breakfast somewhere? No one had told me where or how you got it here. So I stole down the stairs up which I had climbed so heedlessly the previous evening. Halfway down I found the door of another room, and behind it I heard the voice of General Schmundt, the chief Wehrmacht adjutant. [29] Rudolf Schmundt, b Metz 13 August 1896, d Rastenburg, East Prussia, 1 October 1944; 1938 appointed chief Wehrmacht adjutant to the Führer, promoted to lieutenant general; 20 July 1944 severely injured in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Dies a few weeks later in Rastenburg military hospital. The last bend in the stairs brought me to a forecourt on the ground floor. On the left there was a door with glass panes in it, on the right a side door out into the courtyard. The glazed door led to a farmhouse-style living room with a big green tiled stove. I shut it again on seeing nothing that looked like breakfast. There was no one in sight, and I felt a little uncomfortable. I didn’t know if I might not suddenly land in Hitler’s study or somewhere. The forecourt narrowed and became a wide corridor with light falling in through the windows. I turned the corner and was in the big entrance hall again. On my left I noticed a very large semi-circular double door. Judging by its position, it must lead into the famous Great Hall that I knew from picture postcards. The broad corridor led past the flight of marble steps and straight to another double door. Here I finally heard voices. No one had remembered that this was my first time here, so I would have to find the way to the dining room on my own. Well, at last I’d succeeded.