Pleased as she is to be going to Berlin, Traudl feels guilty about leaving her mother alone in Munich. Her grandfather died in 1941, and since then Hildegard Humps has been sub-letting a room. She now lives on the rent and on what her daughter sends home from the capital city. The relationship has gone into reverse: Traudl now feels responsible for the mother who has sacrificed so many years for her children. And her sense of responsibility mingles with a guilty conscience for leaving her mother behind. Germany, after all, has been at war for two and a half years now.
Traudl’s new life begins just when the fortunes of war turn in the Allies’ favour. Germany declared war on the USA in December 1941. The severe Russian winter of 1941–42 has halted the advance of the German army; the Soviets have proved to be formidable enemies, and despite their political differences with the USA and Great Britain the three powers have come to an understanding about a second front in the West. In March 1942 Lübeck is the first German city to be the target of massive British area-bombing. The Nazi propaganda machine, of course, ensures that little of this filters through to the civilian population of Germany. The number of dead in Lübeck, for instance, is reduced from the real figure of 320 to only 50.
After a phase of great insecurity when hostilities first broke out, Traudl has become accustomed to the everyday life of wartime◦– air raid practices, blackout regulations, food rationing. Like probably the majority of the German population, she has been duped by Hitler’s claim that Germany was attacked first and the war is an act of self-defence. None the less, she has not felt triumphant about the victory announcements in the opening phase of the war. Hitler’s desire for expansion means nothing to her. She hopes there will be a swift end to the conflict. In what circumstances and how closely she will eventually see that end she cannot, of course, guess in her first months in Berlin.
EDITOR’S NOTE
The following account of her experiences in 1947/48 are Traudl Junge’s personal memoirs, published as she originally wrote them. The text, with Frau Junge’s own co-operation, has been slightly altered only where there were simple typing errors in the spelling of proper names, occasional omissions of words, etc. The few minor cuts in the content of the memoirs are indicated by […].
MY TIME WITH ADOLF HITLER
—
WRITTEN IN 1947
by Traudl Junge
I
Secretaries aren’t usually asked much about their former boss. But I was Hitler’s secretary for three years, so everyone is always asking me, ‘Do tell us, what was he really like?’ And then, almost always, comes the second question: ‘How did you get the job in the first place?’ People are usually disappointed or at least surprised by both answers, because I can’t tell them anything from first-hand experience about Hitler’s famous fits of rage or his carpet-biting, and I didn’t become his secretary because of any outstanding services to National Socialism or a low party membership number.{2} It happened more or less by chance.
I would probably never have become Hitler’s secretary at all if I hadn’t wanted to be a dancer. I am afraid I must explain at a little more length so that readers will understand what I mean by that. My younger sister and I both went to dance and gymnastics schools from a very young age, and I had no doubt at all that one day I would make a career in one of those two fields. But unfortunately we lived in straitened financial circumstances, and when I left school, being the elder sister, my priority had to be to earn money as quickly as possible. I thought that would be very easy and pleasant, and believed that I could earn enough working in an office to go on training as a dancer at the same time. But it turned out that it wasn’t so simple to find a firm where I could first earn enough money, and second have enough time left for what I really wanted to do. I finally found a job which, to be honest, I didn’t like at all, but it did meet those two conditions. Anyway, I didn’t expect it to be long before I could finally turn my back on the world of the typewriter I just had to pass my dance exams first. By now, however, the war had begun, and gradually we all found that personal restrictions and duties were imposed on us. Myself, I realized that I hadn’t reckoned with the state regulations. By the time I finally passed my dance exams in 1941, and triumphantly gave notice to the firm where I was working, rules about the state control of jobs and workplaces had come into effect.[1] You couldn’t just do as you liked any more, you had to do what mattered most to the state, and secretaries and shorthand-typists were needed a great deal more urgently than dancers. In fact dancers had become completely superfluous. However, I was twenty-one, and the war looked like being not a Blitzkrieg and over in a flash after all, but a long, long business. In a few years’ time the agility I had worked so hard to gain would be getting rusty, and then my dream of dancing would finally be over. I probably wasn’t entirely objective in my disappointment, because all my despair and resentment were directed against the firm and my boss. I blamed him, and accused him of spoiling my whole life out of selfishness because he wouldn’t accept my resignation, which was a terrible thing to say. But if my employer had agreed, then I could have given up the job. Anyway, I couldn’t stand the sight of him any more, and I wanted to leave that office at any price. So the avalanche slowly began to roll◦– an avalanche that was to come near to burying me in Berlin in 1945.
My sister Inge was living in Berlin then, performing at the German Dance Theatre as a ballerina. One of her colleagues was related to Albert Bormann,[2] and through him I got an invitation one day to go and work at the Führer’s Chancellery in Berlin. If I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the place and the position, the idea of getting away from home, getting to know the capital and beginning a real life at last was very tempting. The working conditions sounded all right too, so I accepted and went to Berlin. The first train journey of my life in a sleeping car was exciting in itself, but when I entered the huge labyrinth of the New Reich Chancellery to introduce myself I began to feel that I had made rather a bold decision. However, I couldn’t very well go back on it now◦– that would have been too embarrassing. I was met by Gruppenführer Albert Bormann, brother of Reichsleiter Martin Bormann.[3] He was a friendly, pleasant man. I was working in a department of the Führer’s Chancellery where post addressed to ‘The Führer’ came in to be sorted, sent on, and some of it dealt with there in the office. My job was extremely innocuous, and I didn’t have very much to do. Albert Bormann, head of the Führer’s Chancellery, was also Hitler’s adjutant and was seldom in Berlin. I sometimes wondered why they had engaged a secretary from Munich specially for him, even stipulating that my job was compulsory war service. I was working in the huge, magnificent building where I was always losing my way, sliding over the shiny polished marble floor of the hall, and generally waiting for the job to develop further. And soon the first upheaval in my tranquil existence did come. All of a sudden there was a rumour going round that Hitler needed new secretaries, and they were to be chosen from the staff of the Reich Chancellery.
All the secretaries, shorthand-typists, trainees and office assistants were very excited. Competitive shorthand and typing tests were held, and I was one of the secretaries who had to take part. By now I had been moved to the Führer’s Personal Adjutancy Office. This department was in the same building, but in a different part of it, looking out on the park. I didn’t expect to do well in the typing competition, because first I didn’t really see the point of it, and second I didn’t think I was a suitable candidate to be Hitler’s secretary. And the last of my self-confidence drained away when I saw how the other girls’ fingers raced over the keys. But probably for that very reason I was less nervous than anyone else in the final round, made fewer mistakes, and came out as one of the best typists. And one fine day I was given a railway ticket and told to take the courier train next day to Führer headquarters, where I and nine other girls were to present ourselves to the Führer.
1
State control of jobs as practised by the National Socialists in order to realize the ideas and plans of the ‘New Order of German Living Space’. Job allocation and changes of workplace were supervised and regulated by ‘obligatory services’.
2
Albert Bormann,
3
Martin Bormann,