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

Göring’s telegram is the sole subject of conversation in the bunker all day. We hardly notice that, after a long conversation with Hitler, Speer has disappeared again and has finally left Berlin. Hitler has withdrawn into his room and won’t see anyone. Meanwhile the officers are putting their heads together over the street map of Berlin in the conference room, discussing salvage operations. The Führer takes no further interest in that. But the general staff isn’t giving up yet. Some kind of army under General Wenck [100] Walther Wenck, b Wittenberg 18 September 1900, d 1 May 1982 (in a car accident); professional soldier; 1942 teacher at the War Academy, chief of general staff of the LVII Armoured Division; November 1942 of the 3 rd Romanian Army; 1943 major general, chief of general staff of the 1 st Tank Army; 1944 lieutenant general, chief of operations department at the OKH; September 1944–February 1945 chief of leadership group at High Command; April 1945 general of Panzer troops and commander of the 12 th Army which was intended to relieve Berlin, and for which Hitler was still hoping until the last. Holder of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. is supposed to be on its way to the West somewhere. So if Wenck is told to come back and storms Berlin, we could be saved! And Obergruppenführer Steiner [101] Felix Martin Steiner, b Ebenrode 23 May 1896, d Munich 12 May 1966; 1914 begins a military career; 1914–1918 fights in the First World War, first lieutenant and company commander; 1919 enters the East Prussian volunteer corps; 1922 studies at the Kireigskademie; 1927 captain in Königsberg and regimental adjutant; 1932 company commander; 1933 leaves the Reichswehr and becomes head of training of the Landespolizei Inspektion West, joins the NSDAP; 1935 joins the newly created SS combat troops as SS Sturmbannführer; 1936 commander of the SS Standarte (Regiment) Deutschland; 1940 promoted to SS brigade leader, major general in the Waffen SS and commander of the SS Panzer Grenadier division Viking; 1942 SS Gruppenführer and lieutenant general of the Waffen SS; 1943 commanding general of the 3 rd SS Panzerkorps; 1944 SS Obergruppenführer and general in the Waffen SS; October 1944 to January 1945 recuperates from a severe attack of jaundice; February 1945 commander of the 11 th Panzer Army (the ‘Steiner’ army); 3 May 1945 taken prisoner by the Americans; 1948 released. Holder of the 86 th award of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with oakleaves. is to lead an attack from the north in support of Wenck! I don’t understand the military details of this plan, but it does give me back a tiny spark of hope, and the officers take it to the Supreme Commander. They manage to get the Führer to look at the map table. Once more he rouses himself from his lethargy and gives the order for the attack! Wenck will change course and relieve Berlin.

None of us can sleep. We wander round the rooms like shadows, waiting. Sometimes we slip upstairs, wait for a pause in the artillery fire, and are horrified to see the devastation spreading further and further. We are surrounded by ruins and the remains of buildings. A dead horse lies in the middle of the white paving of the Wilhelmsplatz. But my feelings are deadened, I feel quite hollow. There is nothing real or natural left about us. We are indifferent and composed, we laugh because we can’t cry, and we talk in order to silence the frightened voices of our despairing hearts, voices reminding us of home, our mothers, our families. Sometimes I think fleetingly of people living by a Bavarian lake, people who are waiting for me, who love me and are worried about me. People who don’t have to make decisions. Where women don’t have to fear the occupying power. Where life goes on. But the tense, oppressive atmosphere of the bunker has me in its grip. The Führer, now a broken old man, still holds the invisible strings. His presence is enough to stifle any real emotion, any natural feeling.

We women usually stick together. Eva Braun joins us too. We play with the children and the dogs. All the rooms are open to us, no work is officially being done any more. When a report comes in, when a dusty, perspiring officer arrives from the nearby front to announce that the Russian tanks are coming closer, Hitler receives the news in silence, with little interest. The Reich Chancellery has a defence commander now: Gruppenführer Mohnke. [102] Wilhelm Mohnke, b Lübeck 15 March 1911, d Hamburg 6 August 2001; salesman and storekeeper; 1931 joined the SS; 1933 SS Sonderkommando in Berlin, a member of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler; 1933 SS sturmführer; 1943 SS OberSturmbannführer; January 1945 SS Brigadeführer; February 1945 Führerreserve of the Waffen SS in Berlin; 23 March 1945 entrusted by Hitler, and as second in line to him directly, with the defence of the ‘citadel’ (the Reich Chancellery and its surroundings); 2 May 1945 taken prisoner by the Russians; 1955 released from imprisonment. Holder of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. I feel really faint and desperate to think of us still sitting here in a trap when the Russians begin storming the Reich Chancellery building. But the watchword is ‘Chin up, while there’s life there’s hope’, and we live by it, dulled and rigid as puppets. We don’t know what the date is any more. Sometimes we snatch an hour of sleep, but our nervousness soon wakes us again. We want to be there when news that General Wenck is attacking arrives. We keep venturing out into the hell above us and listening, hoping to hear the thunder of German guns at last.

There is fighting right inside the city now. The heavy Russian tanks are taking street after street. What’s the use of the Hitler Youth boys defending all the bridges and blowing them up? They get decorated by the Führer in person, a few Russian tanks are shot down, hundreds more replace them. And not a trace of Wenck. No news of Steiner’s attack. [103] On 21 April 1945 Adolf Hitler ordered a counter-attack against the advancing Soviet Army in the north of Berlin. SS Obergruppenführer and Waffen SS General Felix Steiner, commander of the ‘Steiner’ army, was to carry out the attack. The reconnaissance patrols that set out from the Reich Chancellery come back without anything to report. [… Manuscript illegible …] Hanna Reitsch [104] Hanna Reitsch, b Hirschberg 29 March 1912, d Frankfurt 28 August 1979; studies medicine but does not qualify, trains as a glider pilot; 1932 breaks the women’s world record for high-altitude aviation; 1937 flight captain; 1939 test pilot; 1942 awarded the Iron Cross II Class; 26 April 1945 flies to Berlin with Greim; 29 April 1945 flies from Berlin to Grand Admiral Dönitz and then on to Kitzbühel; imprisoned by the Americans until 1946. lands in a Fieseler Storch on the East-West axis just outside the Brandenburg Gate, bringing General Greim, [105] Robert Ritter von Greim, b Bayreuth 22 June 1892, d Salzburg 24 May 1945 (suicide); 1913 second lieutenant; 1916 pilot and first lieutenant; 1918 squadron leader and captain; 1920–1922 studies law; 1924–1927 is in China; 1928–1934 runs the training school for airmen in Würzburg; 1934 major in the Reichswehr; 1938 major general; 1940 lieutenant general and commanding general of the V Flying Corps; 1943–25 April 1945 colonel general and commander of the 6 th Air Fleet; 26 April 1945 appointed by Hitler field marshal and commander of the Luftwaffe in succession to Göring; May 1945 captured by the American army. Holder of the orders Pour k Mérite and the 92 nd award of swords to the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with oakleaves. an excellent Luftwaffe officer. Today is the first time I’ve seen either of them. Hanna Reitsch is a small, delicate, very feminine person, you’d never have thought she had such masculine courage. She wears the Iron Cross on her smooth black rollneck sweater. Greim limps into the bunker on one leg, leaning on her shoulder. He was wounded on their adventurous flight here, shot in the leg by Russian fighter pilots. Now he has come to succeed Göring and take over command of the Luftwaffe. But first he disappears into the operating theatre to be treated by Dr Stumpfegger, the silent, pale, reserved doctor. Hanna Reitsch hurries to see the Führer. She must have been one of those women who adored Hitler unconditionally, without reservations. Today that seems to me amazing, because she was the only woman who knew Hitler not just privately, as a man, but as a soldier and a military commander too. She sparkled with her fanatical, obsessive readiness to die for the Führer and his ideals. […]