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

It snowed without stopping during these weeks. Walls of snow towered up on the terrace, huge quantities of it had to be shovelled away every day to make a narrow path to the tea-house and leave the entrances free. Eva would have loved to go skiing, but Hitler wouldn’t let her. ‘You could break a foot, it’s too dangerous,’ he said. So she made do with long walks and often wasn’t in for lunch.

It was still snowing in April. At a thousand metres above sea level, the snow was nine metres deep. Then at last spring came, and with the spring enemy aircraft appeared above the Berchtesgadener Land. The Allies had captured so many bases to the south that large squadrons could keep taking off from them, flying over Austria and on to Bavaria. And they all flew over our area. The sirens always wailed just as we were dropping off to sleep in the early hours of the morning. Then the smoke mortars were set off in the valley and on the slopes of the Führer’s grounds, and the whole area was hidden by thick clouds of artificial mist. [67] The SS ‘mist department’ had over 270 smoke mortars, each of which could hold about 200 litres of mist-generating acid. If an enemy attack threatened, the Berchtesgadener Land could be covered with artificial mist within thirty minutes. Hitler was expecting an attack on the Berghof and his headquarters, and men had been working on a huge complex of shelters in and around the Berghof for months. The rock had been hollowed out in many places, machinery was eating its way into the mountain, threading a whole network of tunnels through it. But only the Berghof bunker was ready. A large gate led deep into the rock opposite the back door beside the living room. You had to climb down sixty-five steps, and then you reached an air-raid shelter which contained everything useful and necessary to sustain life for the Führer and a large number of other people. I only saw the two shelter rooms themselves, not the storerooms and archives accommodated there. Almost every day the sleepy guests assembled in the cave under the mountain with their cases. But no raid ever came.

We were only on the bombers’ flight path, and the raids were usually aiming for Vienna, targets in Hungary or cities in Bavaria. When the clouds of mist had dispersed we often saw the red reflection of fires in the sky over Munich. It was hard to restrain Eva then. She begged for permission to drive to Munich and see if her little house was all right. Usually Hitler wouldn’t let her. Then she would be on the phone, giving instructions, getting detailed information from everyone she knew. And when one of her best friends, the Munich actor Heini Handschuhmacher, died in an air raid there was no holding her. She went to the funeral with her friend Herta Schneider and her sister Gretl and came back badly shaken, with terrible accounts of the misery of the people who had suffered in the bombing. Hitler listened to her description with a gloomy expression. Then he vowed revenge and retaliation, and swore that the new inventions of the German Luftwaffe would pay the enemy back for this a hundred times over.

Unfortunately these threats never came to anything. Swarms of Allied planes kept flying over the Reich, and although V1 and V2 bombers flew in the opposite direction to London, what good did that do the German cities? Hitler was full of enthusiasm for the V1s and V2s. ‘Panic will break out in England. The effect of these weapons will wear their nerves down so badly that they won’t be able to hold out for long. I’ll pay the barbarians back for shooting women and children and destroying German culture.’ But the reports he received of the Luftwaffe defence measures were devastating. I remember one daylight raid on Munich. Hitler wanted to know exactly what forces were being used in defence, and Colonel von Below was on the phone all the time, getting news. Finally he had to report: ‘My Führer, it was planned for six German fighters to take off, but three never got off the ground, two had to turn back because of engine trouble, and the last plane felt so isolated it didn’t attack.’ Hitler was furious. Although his guests were with him he couldn’t help ranting and raging at the German Luftwaffe.

So we went on being routed out of bed almost daily and having to climb down into the underground dungeon. But after we had played this game dozens of times and no bomb had fallen anywhere near us, our willingness to leave our beds gradually faded. Hitler himself never climbed down the sixty-five steps until the anti-aircraft guns were firing or we were sure there was a genuine raid on nearby targets. But he stood close to the entrance keeping watch, like Cerberus, to make sure that no one left the bunker until the all clear went. He was particularly strict with Eva Braun about that.

One day, when the sirens were wailing again, and I was already up and had eaten breakfast, I went down to the tunnels to see if the Berghof party had assembled down there. There wasn’t a soul in sight. But when I reached the top steps and my head was already coming up to surface level I saw the Führer standing outside the entrance. He was talking to Adjutant Bormann and the liaison officer Hewel. When he saw me he wagged his finger and said, ‘Now don’t be so reckless, young woman, just go back down again, they haven’t sounded the all clear yet.’ Since I didn’t want to say that neither Eva nor the other guests had even got out of bed, let alone gone down to the bunker, I obediently withdrew. I tried to escape again twice, but each time I was turned back, and not until the siren sounded the all clear could I leave the dungeon.

At table Hitler delivered a lecture, saying it was absolutely essential to go down into the bunker when there was an air-raid warning. ‘It’s stupid, not brave, for people not to get into safety. The duty of my staff is to go into the bunkers◦– some of you are irreplaceable. It’s idiotic to imagine you show courage by running the risk of being hit by a bomb.’ He didn’t mean me so much as many of the men in his entourage, and the officers who didn’t believe an attack on headquarters was likely, and didn’t feel like spending hours of their time doing nothing down underground.

During our stay at the Berghof in the spring of 1944, Hitler assembled the army commanders, staff officers and the leaders of all divisions of the troops at the Platterhof and made inspiring speeches to them. Industrialists and political leaders were summoned too and given Hitler’s instructions. Although he made long speeches he didn’t dictate the text to me. On such occasions, when he was addressing an internal audience, he didn’t need notes. His speech wasn’t for the general public, and he much preferred speaking off the cuff. The top brass included Field Marshal Dietl, commander of the mountain troops in Norway. [68] Eduard Dietl, b Bad Aibling 21 July 1890, d Semmering, Austria 23 June 1944 (in a plane crash); was not, as Traudl Junge says, a field marshal, but a colonel general (from 1 June 1942), and was finally commanding officer of the 20 th Mountain Army (the Lapland Army). On his last visit to Hitler on the Obersalzberg on 22 June 1944, a day before his death, it was agreed that he would negotiate with the leading Finnish politicians and military men in Helsinki because Finland looked like breaking away from the confederacy of states allied to Germany, and that Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister, would take part in these negotiations. From 1 October 1909 a professional soldier, fights in the First World War (as captain); 1918 joins the Freikorps Epp; 1920 joins the German Workers’ party; 1 February 1930 major; 1 February 1933 lieutenant colonel; 1 January 1935 colonel and on 15 October 1935 commander of Mountain Regiment 99; 1 April 1938 major general; 1 September 1939 commander of 3 rd Mountain Army division in Graz; 1 April 1940 lieutenant general; 19 July 1940 general of infantry, position later renamed general of Mountain Army, leader of Mountain Corps Norway; 15 January 1942 commander of the 20 th Mountain Army (Lapland Army); 1 June 1942 colonel general; 1 July 1944 is given a state funeral attended by Hitler at Schloss Klesheim near Salzburg, buried in Munich North Cemetery on 2 July 1944. Holder of the 72 nd award of swords to the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with oakleaves. He had come straight from the front, and was awarded the brilliants to the Knight’s Cross on this occasion. [69] Traudl Junge is confusing Colonel General Dietl’s visit with that of General Hans-Valentin Hube of the Panzer troops on 20 June 1944 (for Hube, see also under note 70). The award to General Hube of the brilliants to the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with oakleaves and swords was the fourth level of award of the Knight’s Cross, and was made 27 times in all. The order of the Iron Cross was revived on 1 September 1939 and comprised the Iron Cross first and second class, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross (7,318 awards) as well as the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross (1 award). Further variations were as follows: instituted on 3 June 1940, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with oakleaves (882 awards); on 28 September 1941, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with oakleaves and swords (159 awards) and the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with oakleaves, swords and brilliants (27 awards); and on 29 December 1944, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with golden oakleaves, swords and brilliants (1 award). The original order goes back to the Iron Cross instituted by King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia on 10 March 1813. Hitler thought very highly of him, and they talked for a long time. Of course Dietl wanted to seize the chance of seeing his wife. Hitler advised him not to take off in a plane until next morning, since weather conditions around Salzburg were usually very bad for take-off in the evening. But Dietl couldn’t wait. He set off very early in the morning, in spite of the fog, and Hitler was woken with the news that his outstanding commander had died in a crash, brilliants and all. Hitler was very upset. I can’t imagine he was just pretending. We all liked Dietl and were very sorry about his sudden death. But at the same time Hitler was furious that Dietl had been so reckless as to put himself in danger, flying in poor weather conditions. He repeated yet again that it was the duty of his irreplaceable colleagues to avoid danger.