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

Once again there’s a large section missing from the film of my memory. All that time in 1943 when I spent every day and every night living, talking and eating with Hitler is like a single long day. In that time bombs were dropped, the front lines changed, we flew air raids on England and tried to storm our way to victory. Christmas came, but hardly anyone took any notice, and Hitler ignored it entirely. Not an evergreen branch, not a candle marked the festival of peace and love. My husband had come back on leave; we stayed in our hut together. He was completely different; it was a stranger who had come back to me, leaving the man I’d married there at the front. He couldn’t stand being back behind the lines any more; he was in despair when a conversation with Hitler showed him that the Führer no longer had a clear view of the real situation. Soon after the festive season he flew back to the army. At some time in the spring of 1944, German POWs in Russia had been induced to make confessions by injections of some kind. For reasons of secrecy Hitler immediately had everyone who had been in his immediate entourage withdrawn from the Eastern Front. That included my husband. He was transferred to the West.

Hitler spoke more and more often of the possibility of a massive air raid on Führer headquarters. ‘They know exactly where we are, and some time they’re going to destroy everything here with carefully aimed bombs. I expect them to attack any day,’ he said, meaning the American bombers. We often heard the air-raid warning now, but it was never more than single aircraft circling above us. Our anti-aircraft guns weren’t used. The planes were presumably only on reconnaissance flights, and we didn’t want to attract their attention with incautious gunfire.

In spring we went to the Berghof again. Meanwhile, the headquarters in East Prussia were to be further reinforced. Hitler wanted to have several very stable, bombproof bunkers built. Colossal structures consisting of eleven metres of concrete were to be put up, and I hated the thought that we would have to live like moles, never seeing daylight.

But for the time being our drone-like existence on the Obersalzberg began again. Eva Braun was there once more, cheerful and sprightly with her inexhaustible wardrobe, the guests rolled up, and as far as they were concerned the war was far away.

Marlene von Exner hadn’t come with us. She had stayed behind at the Wolf’s Lair to pack her cases, wind up her affairs, and go back to Vienna. Hers was a tragicomic fate. She had lost her heart to the young SS adjutant Fritz Darges, even though she couldn’t stand Prussians and hated the SS. But it had happened, and there were two consequences. First, Gretl Braun was in love with Fritz Darges too, but a love affair with her was a little too dangerous and not private enough for young Fritz, so he hadn’t been able to make up his mind. Second, there was something the matter with Marlene’s family. She had mentioned when she first began working for Hitler that her mother’s papers weren’t in order. Her grandmother had been a foundling, and her origins couldn’t be established. In view of the good Nazi attitude of the whole family, Hitler thought nothing much of this, until suddenly the able and industrious SD [65] The SD◦– Sicherheitsdienst◦– was the security service of the Reichsleiter’s SS, after 1936 officially the intelligence and counter-intelligence service of the German Reich, its main business being to provide the Secret State Police (the Gestapo) with information about opponents of National Socialism at home and abroad. found out that there really was Jewish blood in her maternal line. Marlene was horrified, not so much because she might lose her job with Hitler as because now she couldn’t possibly become the wife of an SS man. Hitler had a conversation with Frau von Exner in which he said, ‘I’m really extremely sorry for you, but you will understand that I have no alternative to dismissing you from my service. I can’t possibly make an exception for myself personally and break my own laws just because it would be to my advantage. But when you are back in Vienna I will have your whole family Aryanized, and pay you your salary for the next six months. I would also like to invite you to be my guest at the Berghof again before you leave me.’

So Marlene said goodbye. Reichsleiter Bormann was asked, in my presence, to see about the Aryanization of the Exner family. It was a task that Bormann undertook only reluctantly, since when he himself made advances to the charming Viennese he had not had any luck, and he could never forgive her for that.

And he took his revenge, because a few weeks later I received a very unhappy letter from Vienna, saying that all the members of the family had had their Party books taken away, and they were in great distress. When I asked Bormann what was going on he said he would deal with it. But long weeks went by again, and finally I had shattering news: life for the Exners was now very hard. Marlene had to leave the University Hospital, her sister couldn’t study medicine, her elder brother had to give up practising as a doctor, and the youngest brother couldn’t now have a career as a military officer.

I was so angry and indignant that I sat down at the typewriter with the outsize characters, typed the letter out on it word for word, and took it to the Führer. He went red in the face with fury and called for Bormann at once. The Reichsleiter was red in the face too when he came out of Hitler’s room, and he gave me a furious glance. All the same, in March I received the cheering news that everything was all right again, the whole Exner family was extremely grateful to me, and their Aryanization had finally gone through. But four weeks later the Allies were in Vienna, and their Party books were probably condemned and burnt. [66] Here Traudl Junge is obviously anticipating an event in the spring of 1945. On 6 April Soviet troops entered Vienna, and by 13 April the city was in the hands of the Red Army. The following text, however, returns to the spring of 1944.

[…] Life was more irregular than ever [in the early spring of 1944: M.M.]. The conferences went on and on, meals were eaten at the most impossible times. Hitler went to bed later than ever before. The cheerfulness and light banter, and the coming and going of all the guests, couldn’t hide the uneasiness in all our hearts. Hitler’s entourage knew about his anxieties and the difficult situation, while those still in the dark believed his assurances of victory and so quelled their own bitter experiences and dark forebodings.

Eva Braun sought my company. She asked: ‘How is the Führer, Frau Junge? I don’t want to ask Morell, I don’t trust him. I hate him. I was alarmed when I saw the Führer. He looks old and very grave. Do you know what he’s worried about? He doesn’t discuss these things with me, but I don’t think the situation is good.’ ‘Fräulein Braun, I know less than you. You know the Führer better than I do, you can guess at what he doesn’t say. But the Wehrmacht report alone is enough to make the man responsible for it anxious.’

In the tea-house, Eva told the Führer he shouldn’t stoop like that. ‘It comes of having such heavy keys in my trouser pocket,’ he said. ‘And I’m carrying a whole sackful of cares around with me.’ But then he couldn’t help making a joke of it. ‘If I stoop I match you better. You wear high heels to make yourself taller, I stoop a little, so we go well together.’ ‘I’m not short!’ she protested. ‘I’m 1.63 metres, like Napoleon!’ No one knew how tall Napoleon was, not even Hitler. ‘What do you mean, Napoleon was 1.63 metres tall? How do you know?’ ‘Why, every educated person knows that,’ she replied, and that evening, when we were in the living room together after dinner, she went to the bookcase and looked in the encyclopaedia. But it didn’t say anything about Napoleon’s height.