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

It seems to me almost incredible that we could still eat and drink, sleep and talk. We did it mechanically, and I have no memory of such things.

Goebbels made long speeches about the disloyalty of his colleagues. He was particularly indignant over Göring’s behaviour. ‘That man was never a National Socialist,’ he claimed. ‘He just basked in the Führer’s glory, he never lived by idealistic, National Socialist principles. It’s his fault that the German Luftwaffe failed, we have him to thank for it that we’re sitting here now about to lose the war.’ You suddenly realized that these two great figures had been bitter enemies and rivals. Frau Goebbels joined her husband in accusing the Reich Marshal.

We had become perfectly indifferent in those hours. We’d given up waiting. Time dragged wearily by while bedlam raged outside. We sat about talking, smoking, vegetating. You get tired doing that. The tension of the last few days now relaxes. There is only a great emptiness in me. I find a camp bed somewhere and sleep for an hour. It must be the middle of the night when I wake up. Servants and orderlies are busily coming and going in the corridor and in the Führer’s rooms. I wash, change my clothes, it must be time to drink tea with the Führer. We still drink tea with him. And death is always an invisible guest at the tea-party. But today something unexpected awaits me when I open the door to Hitler’s study. The Führer comes towards me, shakes hands and asks, ‘Have you had a nice little rest, child?’ When, surprised, I say yes, he adds, ‘There’s something I’d like you to take down from dictation later.’ I had entirely forgotten that this weary, weak voice sometimes used to race through dictation so energetically that I could hardly keep up. What was there to be written now? My glance passes Hitler and is attracted to the festively laid table. It is laid for eight tonight, with champagne glasses. And the guests are already arriving, Goebbels and his wife, Axmann, Frau Christian, Fräulein Manziarly, General Burgdorf and General Krebs. I can’t wait to know why they have all been summoned. Is Hitler going to make a big occasion of his farewell? Then he beckons me over. ‘Perhaps we could do it now. Come along,’ he says, leaving the room. Side by side we go to his conference room. I am about to remove the cover from the typewriter, but the Führer says, ‘Take it down on the shorthand pad.’ I sit down alone at the big table and wait. Hitler stands in his usual place by the broad side of the table, leans both hands on it, and stares at the empty table top, no longer covered today with maps or street plans. For several seconds, if the concrete didn’t act like a drumskin, mercilessly amplifying the reverberations of every bomb blast and every shot, you could have heard only the breathing of two human beings. Then, suddenly, the Führer utters the first words. ‘My political testament.’ For a moment my hand trembles. Now, at last, I shall hear what we’ve been waiting for for days: an explanation of what has happened, a confession, even a confession of guilt, or perhaps a justification. This final document of the ‘Thousand-Year Reich’ should contain the real truth, told by a man with nothing more to lose.

But my expectations are not fulfilled. In tones of indifference, almost mechanically, the Führer comes out with the explanations, accusations and demands that I, the German people and the whole world know already. I look up in surprise as Hitler names the members of the new government. I really don’t understand what’s going on. If all is lost, if Germany is destroyed, if National Socialism is dead for ever, and the Führer himself can see no way out but suicide, what are the men he is appointing to government posts supposed to do? I can hardly grasp it. Hitler goes on speaking, scarcely looking up. He pauses for a brief moment, and then begins dictating his private will. And now I discover that he is going to marry Eva Braun before they are united in death. I fleetingly remember what Eva said, about the tears we’d shed today. But I can’t summon up any tears. The Führer lists his legacies, but here, suddenly, he does mention the possibility that there may be no German state left after his death. Then the dictation is over. He moves away from the table on which he has been leaning all this time, as if for support, and suddenly there is an exhausted, hunted expression in his eyes. ‘Type that out for me at once in triplicate and then bring it in to me.’ There is something urgent in his voice, and I realize, to my surprise, that this last, most important, most crucial document written by Hitler is to go out into the world without any corrections or thorough revision. Every letter of birthday wishes to some Gauleiter, artist, etc., was polished up, improved, revised◦– but now Hitler has no time for any of that.

The Führer returns to his party, which will soon be a wedding party. As for me, I sit in the waiting-room outside Goebbels’ room and type out the last page in the history of the Third Reich. Meanwhile the conference room has been turned into a registry office, a registrar fetched from the nearby front has married the Hitlers, Eva has begun to write her surname with a B when signing the register, and has had to have it pointed out that her new name begins with H. And now the wedding party is sitting in Hitler’s room. What will they raise their champagne glasses to? Happiness for the newly married couple?

The Führer is impatient to see what I have typed. He keeps coming back into my room, looking to see how far I’ve got, he says nothing but just casts restless glances at what remains of my shorthand, and then goes out again.

Suddenly Goebbels bursts in. I look at his agitated face, which is white as chalk. Tears are running down his cheeks. He speaks to me because there’s no one else around to whom he can pour out his heart. His usually clear voice is stifled by tears and shaking. ‘The Führer wants me to leave Berlin, Frau Junge! I am to take up a leading post in the new government. But I can’t leave Berlin, I cannot leave the Führer’s side! I am Gauleiter of Berlin, and my place is here. If the Führer is dead my life is pointless. And he says to me, “Goebbels, I didn’t expect you to disobey my last order too…” The Führer has made so many decisions too late◦– why make this last one too early?’ he asks despairingly.

Then he too dictates me his testament, to be added as an appendix to the Führer’s. For the first time in his life, it says, he is not going to carry out an order by the Führer because he cannot leave his place in Berlin at the Führer’s side. In later times, an example of loyalty will be more valuable than a life preserved… And he too tells the world that he and his whole family prefer death to life in a Germany without National Socialism.

I type both documents as fast as I can. My fingers work mechanically, and I am amazed to see that they make hardly any typing errors. Bormann, Goebbels and the Führer himself keep coming in to see if I’ve finished yet. They make me nervous and delay the work. Finally they almost tear the last sheet out of my typewriter, go back into the conference room, sign the three copies, and that very night they are sent off by courier in different directions. Colonel von Below, Heinz Lorenz and Bormann’s colleague Zander take Hitler’s last will and testament out of Berlin. [110] Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant Colonel von Below was to take one copy of the testament to Wilhelm Keitel, Heinz Lorenz was taking the second to the ‘Brown House’ in Munich, and Wilhelm Zander was taking the third to Karl Dönitz.

With that, Hitler’s life is really over. Now he just wants to wait for confirmation that at least one of the documents has reached its destination. Any moment now we expect the Russians to storm our bunker, so close do the sounds of war seem to be. All our dogs are dead. The dog-walker has done his duty and shot our beloved pets before they can be torn to pieces up in the park by an enemy grenade or bomb.