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

Eva Braun is writing farewell letters. All her beloved dresses, her jewellery and anything valuable that she liked has been sent to Munich. She too is waiting and suffering. Outwardly she seems as calm and almost cheerful as ever. But once she comes to me, takes my hands and says in a husky, trembling voice, ‘Frau Junge, I’m so dreadfully frightened. If only it was all over!’ Her eyes show all the torment hidden in her heart. She is surprised that Hermann Fegelein doesn’t seem at all concerned about her. She hasn’t seen him for two days. And even before that he seemed to be avoiding her. She asks me if I have seen him. No, Fegelein wasn’t in the bunker at all today. No one knows where he is. People are looking for him on some kind of SS business, but he can’t be found. Perhaps he’s gone to the front to see what’s going on? The officers who share a room with him in the Reich Chancellery don’t know. On 27 April Hitler wants to see Fegelein too. There’s no trace of him. Now the security service follows up his trail. That night SS General Fegelein is back in the Reich Chancellery but without his orders and decorations, dressed as a civilian and hopelessly drunk. I have never set eyes on him since. But Eva Braun, disappointed and shocked, tells me that last night Hermann called her from his private apartment. ‘Eva, you have to leave the Führer if you can’t persuade him to get out of Berlin. Don’t be stupid◦– it’s a matter of life and death now!’ She replies: ‘Where are you, Hermann? Come here at once, the Führer is asking for you, he wants to speak to you!’ But the connection has been cut. [108] Adolf Hitler assumed that as Himmler’s liaison officer, Hermann Fegelein had taken part in Himmler’s negotiations with the Swedish diplomat and head of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte, or at least had knowledge of them.

No more newspapers are being published in Berlin. Only the radio keeps broadcasting information that the Führer is still in the unhappy city, sharing its fate and conducting its defence personally. But the few of us in the Führer bunker know that Hitler withdrew from the battle long ago and is waiting to die. Over in the Reich Chancellery bunker the soldiers of the company on guard are gambling and singing old battle songs, while nurses and women auxiliaries work frantically. Refugees and auxiliaries from all over the city are gathering in the Reich Chancellery. There are living people here who are still hoping, fighting, working. But the Führer bunker is a wax works museum. Yet human nature is still here too. There’s a birthday. Old Rattenhuber is sixty. We sit in the upper corridor of the bunker, where there are tables and benches and the staff of the Führer bunker have their meals, and drink schnapps with the birthday boy. Eva Braun on one side, me on the other. We talk about Munich and Bavaria, and how sad it is to have to die so far from home. ‘Among Prussians, of all things,’ says Rattenhuber, and his merry eyes are damp. We laugh once again, and try to forget everything for a few minutes.

Suddenly a great many people arrive in the bunker, some of them strangers, some of them faces I know from the other parts of the bunker complex. A long line forms, going all the way down to the Führer bunker. And then we see the Führer slowly coming closer. Stooping, left hand behind his back, he shakes hands with everyone, looking into all those faces but seeing none of them. Their eyes light up, they are glad to hear the Führer thanking them, and go back to their work feeling proud and refreshed. But we know better. This is not a way of saying thank you for their courage and industry, this is goodbye. We have fallen silent. I ask Eva Braun, ‘Has the time come, then?’ But she says, ‘No, you’ll hear about it first. The Führer will say goodbye to all of you too.’

That night there is even a wedding. A kitchenmaid is marrying one of the drivers of the column of heavy vehicles. One brave driver has even fetched the bride’s mother and family from the inferno of the city. We go up through dark corridors into the ruins of the Führer’s apartment. Somewhere there’s a high-ceilinged room dimly lit by candles. It is strange and uncanny. There are rows of chairs, and a podium. State Secretary Dr Naumann makes a speech, the couple join hands, and the guns known as Stalin organs make terrible music outside. Then we congratulate the young couple and go back to the bunker of death. The wedding guests celebrate, one of them has an accordion, another a fiddle. The newly-weds dance◦– on top of the volcano.

I play with the Goebbels children, read them fairy-tales, play forfeits with them and try to shield them from all the horrors. Their mother hardly has the strength to talk to them any more. At night they sleep peacefully in their six little beds, while the waiting in the bunker goes on and our doom comes closer and closer.

The last crushing blow falls on Hitler on 28 April. He still hasn’t decided what is to be done with Hermann Fegelein, who he feels has let him down and betrayed him, when Heinz Lorenz of the press office brings him alarming news: according to a Reuter’s report, SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler has been conducting negotiations with the Allies through Count Bernadotte. [109] Heinrich Himmler had allegedly met Count Folke Bernadotte four times to negotiate with him for surrender in the West.

I don’t know just where I was when the news reached Hitler. He may have ranted and raged one last time, but when I saw him again he was as calm as before. Only Eva Braun’s eyes were red with weeping, because her brother-in-law was condemned to death. He had been shot like a dog in the park of the Foreign Office, under the blossoming trees and near the sweet bronze statue of the girl. She had tried to explain to Hitler that it was only human nature for Fegelein to think of his wife and their child, and try to help them get through to a new life. But Hitler was implacable. All he saw was deceit and treachery. His ‘faithful Heinrich’, whom he had taken for a rock of loyalty in the middle of the sea of weakness and deceit, had gone behind his back too. Suddenly Fegelein’s actions took on another aspect: he had been part of a conspiracy. Hitler imagined terrible things about Himmler’s intentions. Perhaps Himmler meant to assassinate him? Hand him over to the enemy alive? By now he not only distrusted everyone from Himmler’s entourage still here with him, he even distrusted the poison that Himmler had given him. Dr Stumpfegger, who was with us in the bunker looking pale and thin, was more silent than ever. Hitler suspected him too.

So Professor Haase was brought over from the operating bunker in the New Reich Chancellery. We saw the Führer speak to him, give him one of the poison capsules, and then go with him to the little place at the entrance to the lavatories where Blondi and her puppies were kept. The doctor bent over the dog, a little waft of the bitter-almond scent reached us, and Blondi didn’t move again. Hitler came back. His face looked like his own death mask. Without a word he shut himself in his room. Himmler’s poison could be relied on!

Hanna Reitsch and General Greim prepared to fly out. […] After a long conversation with Hitler, they left the bunker.

We women took refuge in Eva Braun’s room with the children and the dogs. Decision was in the air now. Our nerves were stretched to breaking point. Eva told Frau Christian and me, ‘I bet you’ll be shedding tears this evening.’ We looked at her in alarm. ‘Has the time come?’ No, she said, we would see something else, something really touching, but she couldn’t tell us any more yet.

I don’t know now how we passed all those hours. It was like a nightmare. I don’t remember any more conversations or other details. What was there to talk about? Only the hellish noise made by the bombs, grenades, artillery and tanks spoke now. Soon the Russians would have reached the Potsdamer Platz, perhaps in a few hours’ time, and then they would be nearly at our door. Nothing happened in the bunker. The nation’s leaders sat there inactive, waiting for the decision, the last that Hitler would make. Even for the ever-zealous Bormann and the industrious Goebbels there was nothing more to do. Axmann, Hewel, Voss, the servants and adjutants, the orderlies and staff, they were all waiting for a decision. No one expected victory now. We all just wanted to be out of this bunker at last.