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

The least comfortable table, right at the back in the corner, was the one Hitler regularly occupied. We were only a small party of six, Hitler with two adjutants and Professor Morell, Professor Troost and me. Professor Troost was the widow of the late architect who had built the House of German Art. Hitler had thought very highly of him, and Professor Troost, who herself was an interior designer, was carrying on some of her husband’s work. She designed and produced tapestries, interiors, mosaics and so on for the Führer. For instance, she had designed and worked on the document appointing Göring to the post of Reich Marshal, and on the design of his marshal’s baton too. She was a very lively, natural, witty woman, and took the lead in conversation during lunch. She talked so fast and vivaciously that Hitler could hardly get a word in. She laughed at him and his diet, and claimed he wouldn’t live long if he nourished himself on such wishy-washy stuff and didn’t eat a decent piece of meat for once.

The meal didn’t last long, and then Hitler left, got into the cars with the other men and drove back to his apartment. That afternoon he had talks with political leaders and Gauleiters in the Führer Building on Königsplatz, where I wasn’t needed. I walked home and stayed on in Munich for another day, while my boss and his staff drove back to Berchtesgaden that evening, taking Fräulein Wolf with them.

When I turned up at the Berghof again two days later, Hans Junge too had been told that we should get married at once. He couldn’t think of any particularly good reason against Hitler’s persuasions either, and anyway I believe at heart he rather liked the idea. Finally I came to terms with it too, and the wedding was fixed for the middle of June 1943. I rebelled only once, when I saw the mountain of forms and questionnaires I must fill in because I was going to marry an SS man. I lost my temper and told my future husband that I’d throw the whole lot in the wastepaper basket if my marriage depended on this kind of thing.

Hitler laughed heartily when I read him out some of the questions on the forms. For instance, they asked, ‘Is the bride positively addicted to housework?’ He himself said that of course all this was nonsense, and he’d have a word with Himmler about it. Anyway, I was spared having to fight a battle on paper, and before I knew it June came and I was Frau Junge. My married bliss lasted four weeks, while we went on honeymoon to Lake Constance, and then my husband joined the army and I moved back to headquarters.

Meanwhile the Supreme Commander had moved back to the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia. The forest […] had been cleared around it to make room for several more huts and bunkers. What we called ‘hut disease’ had broken out and proved very infectious among the upper ranks. Everyone wanted his own hut to live in, and the bunkers were used only for sleeping. Speer built himself a whole housing estate, Göring’s hut was nothing short of a palace, and the doctors and adjutants erected summer residences of their own. Morell◦– but no one else◦– was even allowed a bathroom. Once again he was the butt of many jokes in the camp when it turned out that a normal bathtub was too small for him. He could just about get in, but he couldn’t get out again without help.

When I came back to the camp as a newly-wed wife, of course I too was the target of much male jocularity. I reported to Hitler that morning when he was about to go for his walk. ‘Why, you’re all pale and thin,’ he said, in a friendly and well-meaning tone, but Linge, Bormann, Hewel and Schaub grinned broadly, making me blush with embarrassment. From now on Hitler generally addressed me as ‘young woman’.

We secretaries were far from overworked. Fräulein Wolf and Fräulein Schroeder, the old guard, were working for Schaub. Every morning they were given a pile of letters to be answered. Schaub indicated briefly what the letters should say, but left the phrasing to the ladies. I did office work for the young SS adjutants Darges, Günsche and Pfeiffer. [58] SS-Obersturmführer Hans Pfeiffer was detailed for duty as Adolf Hitler’s aide-de-camp on 10 October 1939. I typed out the bodyguards’ reports, requests for promotion, orders for transfers, suggestions for the award of decorations. There were a great many of those; more and more men were becoming heroes, and silver and gold crosses and medals were lavishly handed out on the Eastern Front.

However, that wasn’t a really satisfying occupation, and although I enjoyed the forest and the lakes I still felt discontented, like a captive. Above all, life here was unbalanced in a way I couldn’t tolerate permanently. Perhaps I had been made more aware of that by my husband’s ideas. He had suddenly realized how hermetically cut off from real life we were, living in Hitler’s ideological sphere of influence. Once I had thought that here at the centre of events, the place to which all threads ran, you would have the best and widest view of all. But we were standing behind the scenes and didn’t know what was happening on stage. Only the director knew the play, all the rest of us just learned our parts, and no one knew exactly what part anyone else was playing.

No rumours reached us, we heard no broadcasts from enemy transmitters, we knew of no other attitudes, no opposition. Just one opinion and one belief ruled here; it sometimes seemed to me as if all these people were using exactly the same words and expressing themselves in the same way.

It was not until I had gone through with it to the bitter end and returned to ordinary life that I could see it as clearly as that. At the time, I suffered from a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, an uneasiness for which I couldn’t find a name, because the daily company of Hitler left no one a chance to give such ideas a firm shape.

I typed for Professor Brandt, the surgeon who was Hitler’s attendant doctor and head of the health service. I began keeping a diary, and looked for intellectual stimulation and diversion among the staff of the press office. I talked to many close friends about my doubts. Many other people felt the way I did. I was especially aware of this tension in Walther Hewel, with whom I had philosophical conversations on many evenings. He too disliked the narrow-minded, artificial atmosphere here and the human inadequacies of those around us. We called our mood ‘the camp megrims’, and resigned ourselves to not knowing why we felt that way.

Hitler had fallen into the habit of eating his meals with Fräulein Schroeder, because she had to stick to her diet and eat no salt. After a short while he extended his invitation to all the secretaries, and from then on we too shared mealtimes with Hitler at headquarters, but thank goodness Fräulein Wolf and I could have the normal menu provided by ‘Crumbs’.

Gradually I lost my shyness and timidity in Hitler’s presence, and ventured to speak to him even if he hadn’t asked me something first. More than ever he emphasized how much good it did him to be able to relax completely at mealtimes.

One day, when we had finished eating, I decided to seize my chance to complain to Hitler of the lack of work. It was on that very day that Hitler said, ‘Dara (Frau Christian) is coming back. I asked Colonel Christian how his wife was, and he told me she wanted to go and work for the Red Cross. But in my view if she really wants to work she can work for me.’

My two colleagues looked rather downcast, even though they smiled. They had probably been just a little jealous of Frau Christian, while they didn’t see me as competition or a rival. Also, and quite rightly, they felt as discontented with the lack of work as I did. We none of us liked the idea of having to share our duties with a fourth secretary.