At this time Hitler had three secretaries. The youngest of them, Frau Christian,[4] had now married and left her job with Hitler. The other two, Fräulein Wolf [5] and Fräulein Schroeder,[6] had been his secretaries and constant companions for over ten years. All the stress and strain of such an irregular life had already affected their ability to perform well, and so had their increasing age. One day Hitler wanted to dictate a document. Fräulein Wolf was unwell; Fräulein Schroeder was out at the theatre in Berlin. He was furious to find that there was no one available when he happened to need secretarial help, hauled his adjutant Bormann over the coals and told him to make sure such a thing never happened again. Younger secretaries must be recruited to take some of the burden off the shoulders of the two veterans. And so it was that at the end of November 1942 we ten girls, all of us still quite young, were summoned to the Supreme Commander.
The courier train that we boarded one evening in Berlin, bound for an unnamed destination, came into Rastenburg station in East Prussia next morning. Here a railcar was waiting in a siding for the Führer’s visitors and took us on into the forest. Finally we ended up at an inconspicuous little station building without any name outside it. We had arrived. We were received by Gruppenführer Albert Bormann, the railcar went on, and the other passengers who had got out here disappeared into the snowy forest. We could see no houses or other buildings, yet we were at Führer headquarters. Bormann took us to our temporary quarters. Only now did we see that there was another train standing at the second platform, and that was where we were to stay. It was also explained that we were still outside the restricted area of Führer headquarters itself, and the Führer’s special train, which was always kept waiting under steam near the Führer himself, would be our accommodation until he had seen us and made his choice.
It is worth describing this train in more detail, since it was furnished like a well-run hotel with all the comforts anyone could need. But I will come back to that later, when I describe the journeys we made in it. For the time being each of us girls had a compartment in the guest car, where we were extremely well looked after by the well-trained Mitropa staff, and there we waited for the great event of our introduction to the Führer. But several days went by and nothing happened. In the meantime we went for short walks in the forest until we came up against a barrier or some barbed wire, with armed guards who wanted to see our papers and asked us to give the password. Unfortunately we had none of the former and didn’t know the latter, and we had no intention of venturing into forbidden territory; we were just going out in little ‘reconnaissance groups’ to see what a Führer headquarters really looked like. By now, too, we had found out that there were a great many huts and little bunkers hidden, well camouflaged, among the trees and bushes, a number of roads in good repair ran through the forest, and a lot of people, all in uniform, lived here. We began to think of our stay in the magical winter landscape, with the train staff looking after us so well, as a holiday. We were feeling at ease and almost forgot what we were there for. The little kitchen next to the dining car stocked many good bottles, and the waiters, who hadn’t had female company for ages, spoiled us and often gave us a delicious liqueur in the evenings.
We didn’t guess that the great moment would come when we least expected it, in the middle of the night. We had just gone to bed when two orderlies from the Führer bunker appeared to fetch us all and take us to the Führer. Panic broke out. Our curlers got tangled up, we couldn’t find our shoes, our fingers were trembling so much that we could hardly do up our buttons. We all quickly cleaned our teeth, because we knew that the ideal German woman was not supposed to smoke, or at least you shouldn’t be able to smell the smoke on her.
Finally we stumbled along dark paths leading into the forest. The two orderlies steered us past the checkpoints, where guards shone dark lanterns on us and gave us temporary passes to enter the restricted area. We had no idea how the two men could find their way through this darkness. A faint beam of torchlight occasionally showed between the trees, but it was a mystery to me how anyone could go in any definite direction. I suppose the two soldiers weren’t as excited as we were. (None of us had ever seen Hitler at close quarters, and we knew that in Berlin, or anywhere else he went, hundreds of thousands of people always flocked to see him, if only from a distance.) All this made it an exciting experience for us. It isn’t every day that you find yourself face to face with a head of state!
At last we reached a heavy iron door with bright light shining on the other side of it. I could just make out the outlines of a low-built, relatively small bunker. The armed men on guard at the entrance let us in without any further checks. They didn’t search our handbags, some of them quite large, so apparently we weren’t suspected of carrying guns or bombs. Perhaps our scared faces ruled out any such suspicion from the start, because I think we must have looked more as if we were being taken to execution than to a great, inspiring event.
We passed through the low entrance into a narrow concrete corridor with a great many doors, almost like something in a big steamship, and went through the first door on the left into a waiting-room. It measured about three metres by four and was used by both the domestic staff and Hitler’s orderlies.
Hitler’s valet explained that we would have to wait for a little while, and got us to sit down at a round table in comfortable chairs, the kind you’d expect in a country house. Hitler was just feeding his dogs, he told us. Of course we asked how we were to address the Führer. He said Hitler would speak to us first, and then we were to reply, ‘Heil, my Führer’.
We also wanted to know if we were to stretch our arms out straight or bend them, but then Albert Bormann arrived and told us to follow him: Hitler was in his study now, he said, and wanted to see us. We were to act as naturally as possible, he added.
The narrow corridor went round a couple of corners, led through a small tea-room, and then we were outside the tall double doors of the study. The valet, Heinz Linge,[7] knocked, opened the door, and said, ‘The ladies from Berlin are here, my Führer’.
We entered the room, which was very large, and stood in front of the desk. Hitler came towards us, smiling, slowly raised his arm in greeting, and then shook hands with each of us one by one. His voice was very deep and full as he asked us all our names and where we came from.
I was the last, and the only girl from Munich. He asked my age again, smiled once more, turned that famous piercing gaze on all of us again, raised his arm in greeting for the second time◦– and we were dismissed without ever getting around to stammering out our ‘Heil, my Führer’.
Outside, the spell was broken, and we relaxed at last and began chattering about the way Hitler shook hands, his fascinating gaze, his figure and all the details that seem so significant at such an important meeting.
4
Gerda Christian, née Daranowski (‘Dara’),
5
Johanna Wolf,
6
Christa Schroeder,
7
Heinz Linge,