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

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.

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.

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 thAir 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 ndaward of swords to the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with oakleaves.

Werner Haase, b Köthen, Anhalt 2 August 1900, d Moscow 1945; 1924 qualifies as a doctor, specialist surgical training; 1927 ship’s doctor; 1934 joins the SS; 1935 attendant doctor on the Führer’s staff; 1935 SS sturmführer; 1943 SS OberSturmbannführer, medical director of the Charité hospital in Berlin; April 1945 runs the medical ward in the Reich Chancellery bunker; 3 May 1945 taken prisoner by the Red Army in the Führer bunker.

Benito Mussolini was shot by Italian resistance fighters, together with his mistress Clara Petacci, on 28 April 1945 in Giulino di Mezzegra near Dongo, in the province of Como. Their bodies were hung from scaffolding in the Piazza Loreto in Milan.

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.

Heinrich Himmler had allegedly met Count Folke Bernadotte four times to negotiate with him for surrender in the West.

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.

Traudl Junge thinks she heard the shot. Experts have tried to reconstruct the course of Hitler’s suicide and have come to the following conclusion: ‘[…] At this point Frau Junge was far away, on the stairs from the lower to the upper part of the bunker. What she thinks she heard […] was probably an illusion caused by the running diesel generator and the constant heavy firing on the Reich Chancellery.’

Infantry General Hans Krebs, acting on behalf of Joseph Goebbels, negotiated surrender to the Russian general Vassily I. Chuikov on the night of 30 April 1945. For Krebs, see also note 94.

Franz Schädle had been head of the escort commando of well over 100 men since 20 December 1944.

As she said in conversation with Melissa Müller, Traudl Junge’s poison capsule was not taken from her until there was a cell inspection at Lichtenberg prison for women and young people.

Traudl Junge is playing on the literal sense of her surname: jung = young.

A low party membership number indicated that the holder had joined in the early years.

This and the following chapter divisions were added later by Traudl Junge.

Where Frederick the Great suffered a heavy defeat.