Traudl Junge (born
Gertraud Humps; 16 March 1920 – 10 February 2002) was
Adolf Hitler's youngest personal private
secretary, from December 1942 to April 1945.
Early life
Gertraud "Traudl" Humps was born in
Munich, the daughter of a master brewer and lieutenant in the Reserve Army, Max Humps and his wife Hildegard (née Zottmann). She had a sister, Inge, born in 1923. As a teenager she thought of becoming a
ballerina.
Working for Hitler
Traudl Junge began working for Hitler in December 1942. She was the youngest of his private secretaries.
"I was 22 and I didn't know anything about politics, it didn't interest me", Junge said decades later, also saying that she felt great guilt for "...liking the greatest criminal ever to have lived."
She said, "I admit, I was fascinated by Adolf Hitler. He was a pleasant boss and a fatherly friend. I deliberately ignored all the warning voices inside me and enjoyed the time by his side almost until the bitter end. It wasn't what he said, but the way he said things and how he did things."
At Hitler's encouragement, in June 1943 Junge married Waffen-SS officer Hans Hermann Junge (1914 – 1944), who died in combat. She worked at Hitler's side in Berlin, the Berghof in Berchtesgaden, at Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, and lastly back in Berlin down in the Führerbunker.
Berlin, 1945
In 1945 Junge was with Hitler in Berlin. She typed
Hitler's last private and political will and testament in the Führerbunker a day and a half before his
suicide. Junge later wrote that while she was playing with the
Goebbels children on 30 April, "Suddenly [...] there is the sound of a shot, so loud, so close, that we all fall silent. It echoes on through all the rooms. 'That was a direct hit,' cried Helmut [Goebbels] with no idea how right he is. The Führer is dead now."
On 1 May Junge left the Führerbunker with a group led by SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke. Also in the group were Hitler's personal pilot Hans Baur, the chief of Hitler's Reichssicherheitsdienst (RSD) bodyguard Hans Rattenhuber, secretary Gerda Christian, secretary Else Krüger, Hitler's dietician Constanze Manziarly and Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenck. Junge and Christian made it out of Berlin to the River Elbe, but most of the others still alive were found by Soviet troops on the morning of 2 May, hiding in a cellar off the Schönhauser Allee. The Germans who had been in the Führerbunker and captured by the Soviet army were handed over to SMERSH for interrogation about what had happened in the bunker during the closing weeks of the war.
Post-war
Although Junge had reached the Elbe she was unable to reach the western Allied lines, so she went back to Berlin, getting there about a month after she had left, hoping to take a train to the west when they began running again. On 9 July, after living there for about a week under the alias "Gerda Alt" she was arrested by two civilian members of the Soviet military administration and was kept in Berlin for interrogation. While in prison she heard harrowing tales from her Soviet guards about what the German military had done to members of their families in Russia and came to realize that much of what she thought she knew about the war in the east was only what the Nazi propaganda ministry had told the German people and that the treatment meted out to Germans by the Russians was an aftermath of what the Germans had done in the Soviet Union.
Junge was held in sundry jails where she was often interrogated about her role in Hitler's entourage and the events surrounding Hitler's suicide. By December 1945 she had been released from prison but was restricted to the Soviet sector of Berlin. On New Year's Eve she entered the British sector and stayed there for two months owing to a spell in the hospital for diphtheria. Her mother arranged for Junge to have the papers needed for her to move from the British sector in Berlin to Bavaria. Getting these on 2 February 1946 she traveled from Berlin and across the Soviet occupation zone (which became known as East Germany) to the British zone and from there south to Bavaria in the American zone. Junge was held and interrogated for a short time by the Americans about her time in the Führerbunker during the first half of 1946. She was then freed and allowed to integrate herself into post war Germany.
Later life
Following the war Junge was not widely known outside the academic and intelligence communities. Other than appearing in the 1974 television documentary series
The World at War she lived a life of relative obscurity, working in secretarial jobs. Junge twice resided for short times in
Australia, where her younger sister lived.
As the 20th century drew to a close she became more public about her experiences. In 1989 Junge's manuscript about her life throughout the war was published in the book Voices from the Bunker by Pierre Galante and Eugene Silianoff (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons). In 1991 she appeared in the documentary series Hitler's Henchmen produced by German television channel ZDF. The 2002 release of her autobiography Until the Final Hour, co-written with author Melissa Müller and describing the time she worked for Hitler, brought media coverage. She was also interviewed for the 2002 documentary film Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary which drew much attention. Junge died from cancer in Munich on 10 February 2002 at the age of 81 and she was given global celebrity for a few days, reportedly having said shortly before her death, "Now that I've let go of my story, I can let go of my life." Further fame came two years later when some of Junge's experiences with Hitler were portrayed in the academy award-nominated film Der Untergang.
Portrayal in the media
Traudl Junge has been portrayed by the following actresses in film and television productions.
Ann Lynn in the 1973 British television production The Death of Adolf Hitler.
Wanda Moore in the 1973 British film .
Sarah Marshall in the 1981
United States television production
The Bunker.
Alexandra Maria Lara in the 2004 German film Downfall (Der Untergang). The film was based on Junge's book and includes clips of Junge herself, taken from the 2002 documentary film Im toten Winkel (Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary), but the film's ending, depicting Junge being saved by a boy with whom she walks through the Russian line, is a fictional and metaphorical device.
Stacy Hart in the 2005 British television production Uncle Adolf.
See also
Erna Flegel
Third Reich
Notes
References
Beevor, Antony. Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books, 2002, ISBN 0-670-88695-5
Junge, Gertraud; Junge, Traudl; Müller, Melissa (editor). Until the final hour: Hitler's last secretary, Arcade Publishing, 2004. ISBN 1559707283, 9781559707282
Hooper, John. Traudl Junge obituary, The Guardian, 14 February 2002
External links
Hirschbiegel, Oliver (Director), Downfall, (DVD) 2005, www.momentumpictures.co.uk
Traudl Junge at Find-A-Grave
The Line, a comic that compares and contrasts Traudl Junge and Sophie Scholl
Category:Cancer deaths in Germany
Category:Deaths from lung cancer
Category:German people of World War II
Category:Secretaries to Adolf Hitler
Category:People from Munich
Category:Adolf Hitler
Category:Women in World War II
Category:1920 births
Category:2002 deaths
