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

The hours passed by, and it would be four or five in the morning by the time Hitler rang for his valet to find out whether any air raids had been reported. He asked this question every evening before going to bed, and never retired for the night before he was told that the Reich was clear of all enemies. Sometimes the presence of a few aircraft or attacking enemy formations was kept from him, or the day would never have come to an end. Finally he would rise, say good night, shake hands with everyone and go upstairs.

Within a short time thick tobacco smoke would fill his living room, and everyone had woken up. Suddenly there was a cheerful atmosphere that would have delighted Hitler if he had been there.

The strong coffee we had been drinking to keep us awake all this time wouldn’t let us drop straight off to sleep now. But gradually the guests and the Führer’s colleagues withdrew, and finally the Berghof lay in deep peace until next morning.

This was the usual way we spent our days and nights for the first few days or weeks. Gradually more and more guests arrived. Minister of State Esser [43] Hermann Esser, b Röhrmoos 29 July 1900, d Dietramszell 7 February 1981; 1919 joined the DAP; 1920 leader-writer of the Völkischer Beobachter; 1923 propaganda chief of the NSDAP, notorious for his inflammatory anti-Semitic speeches; 1932 member of the Bavarian Landtag, sidelined for his political intrigues; 1935 writes the anti-Semitic Die jüdische Weltpest; 1945–1947 prisoner of the US Army; 1949 condemned to five years in a labour camp, released 1952. and his wife were invited for a few days. Frequent guests included Frau Morell, Frau Dietrich, Baldur von Schirach [44] Baldur von Schirach, b Berlin 9 May 1907, d Kröv, Mosel 8 August 1974; 1924 joins the NSDAP and SA; 1927 leader of the Nazi Student League; 1931 ‘Reich Youth Leader’; 1933–1940 ‘Youth Leader of the German Reich’; 1940–1945 Gauleiter and Reich governor of Vienna; 1946 condemned to 20 years’ imprisonment by the international military tribunal in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. and his wife, Heinrich Hoffmann and Frau Marion Schönmann, [45] Marion Schönmann, née Petzl, b Vienna 19 December 1899, d Munich 17 March 1981; met Hitler through Heinrich Hoffmann’s future wife Erna, a frequent guest at the Berghof in 1935–1944. a friend of Eva Braun. Hitler’s permanent colleagues and staff were glad of any guest who would entertain the Führer. Then they didn’t have to be present themselves on his walks and at tea every day.

Hitler envied his guests their civilian clothing. ‘It’s all very well for you,’ he told Brandt, who turned up in lederhosen one day when the sun was shining brightly. ‘Once I always went around like that myself.’ ‘You could now, my Führer, you’re in private here.’ ‘No, as long as we’re at war I shall not be out of uniform, and anyway my knees are so white. That looks terrible with shorts.’ Then he continued, ‘But after the war I’ll hang up my uniform, retire here to the Berghof, and someone else can look after the business of government. And when I’m an old man I’ll write my memoirs, surround myself with clever, intellectual people and never see any more officers. They’re all stubborn and thick-headed, prejudiced and set in their ways. My two old secretaries will be with me, typing. The young ones will all be married and leave, and when I’m old the older secretaries will still be able to keep up with my speed.’ I couldn’t help it: I asked, ‘My Führer, when will the war be over, then?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘but when we’ve won it, anyway.’ And his kindly, friendly, smiling face once again assumed the hard, fanatical expression that I knew so well from the bronze busts of the Führer.

Usually Hitler didn’t talk much about the war, and said little about politics. ‘We shall win this war because we’re fighting for an ideal and not for Jewish capitalism, which is what spurs on our enemies’ soldiers. Russia is dangerous, and only Russia, because Russia fights for its own idea of the world as fanatically as we do. But good will always be victorious, there are no two ways about that.’ No one in the whole company contradicted him. There were no military men present, and the rest of us believed what we heard because we wanted to believe it. Hitler radiated a power that neither men nor women could entirely escape feeling. Personally modest and kindly, but as Führer a harsh megalomaniac, he lived for his ‘mission’. He sometimes said that it demanded endless sacrifices of him. ‘If you only knew how much I’d sometimes like to walk the streets incognito, without companions! I’d like to go into a department store and buy Christmas presents myself, sit in a coffee-house and watch people go by. But I can’t.’ We said, ‘But kings and emperors used to mingle incognito with their people in the old days. A pair of dark glasses, a civilian suit, and you’d never be recognized.’ He replied, ‘I don’t want any masquerade, and anyway I’d be recognized all the same. I’m too well known, and my voice would give me away.’ For although he had said, ‘I’ve never feared assassination when driving through the crowds in my car◦– at the worst I’ve been afraid it might knock down a child,’ he still wouldn’t risk recognition if he was alone. He thought that the acclamations of the people would spoil all his fun.

It was some time since Hitler had appeared in public to receive the plaudits of the population. His headquarters, of course, were officially unknown for reasons of military secrecy. But when the Führer was staying in Berlin his presence was kept strictly secret too. Once the swastika flag used to be flown above the Reich Chancellery, and the inhabitants of Berlin knew, from the busy coming and going of cars, that ‘the Führer’ was in town. For some years, however, only those in the know had been aware that a double guard on the entrances to the Chancellery meant Hitler was in residence. Even on his journeys by special train, everything was done to avoid drawing attention to him. The windows of his carriage were blacked out even in broad daylight and bright sunshine, and he lived in there by artificial light just as he did in his bunker. At the Berghof, where crowds once used to gather outside the last gates before the road up to the house, there was no one waiting now.

Before the war, the gates had been opened once a day when Hitler went for his walk, and people used to flock in and line his path. Hysterical women took away stones on which his foot had trodden, and even the most sensible people went crazy. Once a truck taking bricks up to the Berghof was actually plundered by a couple of madwomen, and the bricks, which hadn’t been so much as touched by the Führer’s hands and feet, ended up as precious souvenirs in people’s living-room windows.

And then there were the love letters sent by such ladies. They made up a large part of the post arriving at the Führer’s Chancellery.

In 1943, however, Hitler spent his time at the Berghof entirely with his friends and colleagues. He had a special fondness for Albert Speer. [46] Albert Speer, b Mannheim 19 March 1905, d London 1 September 1981; studies architecture in Karlsruhe; 1927–1932 assistant to Heinrich Tessnow in Berlin; 1931 joins the NSDAP; 1933 organizes the May Party Rally; 1936 commissioned by Hitler to redesign Berlin; 1937 appointed to the Führer’s staff with responsibility for buildings and made Inspector General of Buildings for Berlin; 1942 Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition; 23 May 1945 arrested in Flensburg with the Dönitz government; 1946 condemned to 20 years’ imprisonment at Nuremberg; 1966 released. ‘He’s an artist, and a kindred spirit,’ he said. ‘I have the warmest human feelings for him because I understand him so well. He is an architect like me, intelligent, modest, not a stubborn military hothead. I never thought he would master his great task so well. But he also has great organizational talents and he’s perfectly capable of his task.’ Speer was certainly a very pleasant, likeable character: not by any means a Party functionary, not an upstart, but someone of real ability who didn’t lower himself to be a mere yes-man. Remarkably, he seemed to be one of the few people from whom Hitler would take contradiction. He himself once said, ‘When I work a plan out with Speer and ask him to do something, he thinks it over and then, after a while, he says, “Yes, my Führer, I think that can be done.” Or perhaps he may say, “No, it can’t be done, not like that.” And then he gives me convincing arguments why not.’