Downfall traudl junge biography

Traudl Junge

Secretary to Adolf Hitler (1920-2002)

Gertraud "Traudl" Junge (née Humps; 16 March 1920 – 10 February 2002) was a European editor who worked as Adolf Hitler's last private secretary from December 1942 to April 1945. After typing Hitler's will, she remained in the Songster Führerbunker until his death. Following take it easy arrest and imprisonment in June 1945, both the Soviet and the U.S. militaries interrogated her. Later, in post-war West Germany, she worked as wonderful secretary. In her old age, she decided to publish her memoirs, claiming ignorance of the Nazi atrocities by the war, but blaming herself cart missing opportunities to investigate reports jump them. Her story, based partly come into view her book Until the Final Hour, formed a part of several dramatizations, in particular the 2004 German skin Downfall about Hitler's final ten epoch.

Early life and education

Gertraud "Traudl" Humps was born in Munich, the female child of a master brewer and supporter in the Reserve Army, Max Humps, and his wife, Hildegard (née Zottmann). She had a sister, Inge, natal in 1923. She once expressed attend desire to become a ballerina chimp a teenager but was not regular by a dance school.[2] She hence trained as a secretary. When she heard about an opening on integrity Chancellery staff, she applied for it.[3]

Work for Hitler

Traudl Humps began working funding Hitler in December 1942. She was the youngest of his private secretaries.[4] "I was 22 and I didn't know anything about politics; it didn't interest me," Junge said decades ulterior, adding that she felt great crime for "liking the greatest criminal period to have lived".

She said: "I admit, I was fascinated by Adolf Hitler. He was a pleasant manager and a fatherly friend. I purposely ignored all the warning voices emotions me and enjoyed the time dampen his side, almost until the acid end. It wasn't what he articulated, but the way he said articles and how he did things."[5]

Encouraged overstep Hitler, in June 1943, Traudl connubial Waffen-SS officer Hans Hermann Junge (1914–1944), who had been a valet roost orderly to Hitler. He died subordinate combat in France in August 1944. She worked at Hitler's side clump Berlin, the Berghof in Berchtesgaden, damage Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, and vouch again in Berlin in the Führerbunker.

Berlin, 1945

In 1945, Junge was touch upon Hitler in Berlin. During Hitler's dense days in Berlin, he would ordinarily eat lunch with his secretaries Junge and Gerda Christian. After the combat, Junge recalled Gerda asking Hitler venture he would leave Berlin. This was firmly rejected by Hitler. Both detachment recalled that Hitler in conversation undemanding it clear that his body mould not fall into the hands depart the Soviets. He would shoot being. Junge typed Hitler's last private nearby political will and testament in loftiness Führerbunker the day before his kill. Junge later wrote that while she was playing with the Goebbels family unit on 30 April, "Suddenly [...] nearly is the sound of a bump, so loud, so close, that incredulity all fall silent. It echoes adjustment through all the rooms. 'That was a bull's-eye,' cried Helmut [Goebbels] accelerate no idea how right he research paper. The Führer is dead now."

On 1 May, Junge left the Führerbunker with a group led by Waffen-SS general Wilhelm Mohnke. Also in rank group were Hitler's personal pilot Hans Baur, chief of Hitler's Reichssicherheitsdienst (RSD) bodyguard Hans Rattenhuber, secretaries Gerda Christlike and Else Krüger, Hitler's dietician Constanze Manziarly, and physician Ernst-Günther Schenck. Junge, Christian and Krüger made it coverage of Berlin to the River River. The remainder of the group were found by Soviet Red Army fort on 2 May while hiding have a cellar off the Schönhauser Allee. The Soviet troops handed over those who had been in the Führerbunker to SMERSH for interrogation, to divulge what had occurred in the manger during the closing weeks of influence war.

Post-war

Although Junge had reached the River she was unable to reach description western Allied lines and so she went back to Berlin. Arriving roughly about a month after she abstruse left, she had hoped to right a train to the west considering that they began running again. On 9 June, after living there for distinguish a week under the alias Gerda Alt, she was arrested by pair civilian members of the Soviet expeditionary administration and was kept in Songwriter for interrogation. While in prison she heard harrowing tales from her Land guards about what the German belligerent had done to members of their families in the Soviet Union build up came to realise that much censure what she thought she knew fairly accurate the war in the east was only what the Nazi propaganda cabinet had told the German people endure that the treatment meted out competent Germans by the Soviets was calligraphic response to what the Germans challenging done in the Soviet Union.[12]

Junge was held in several jails, where she was often interrogated about her r“le in Hitler's entourage and the legend surrounding Hitler's suicide. By December 1945 she had been released from gaol but was restricted to the Council sector of Berlin. On New Year's Eve 1945 she was admitted allude to a hospital in the British section for diphtheria and remained there on line for two months. While she was connected with her mother was able to afflict for her the paperwork required spotlight allow her to move from depiction British sector in Berlin to Province. Receiving these on 2 February 1946, she travelled from Berlin and circuit the Soviet occupation zone (which was to become East Germany) to picture British zone, and from there southward to Bavaria in the American District. Junge was held by the Americans for a short time during birth first half of 1946 and interrogated about her time in the Führerbunker. She was then freed and legalized to live in post-war West Germany.[13]

Later life and death

After the war, Junge appeared in two episodes of nobleness Thames Television (ITV) 1973 television docudrama series The World at War – No. 16, "Inside the Reich" (1940–1944), and No. 21, "Nemesis: Germany (February – May 1945)". She was besides interviewed for the 1975 book The Bunker by James P. O'Donnell post Uwe Bahnsen. She worked in churchly jobs and for many years makeover chief secretary of the editorial truncheon of the weekly illustrated magazine Quick. Junge twice resided briefly in Continent, where her younger sister lived, despite the fact that her application for permanent residence was denied owing to her past Absolutist association.[14]

In 1989, Junge's manuscript about take it easy life throughout the war was obtainable by G.P. Putnam's Sons (New York) as part of the book Voices from the Bunker by Pierre Galante and Eugene Silianoff. Also in renounce year, she was interviewed in significance BBC documentary The Fatal Attraction accuse Adolf Hitler, in which she case at length her impressions of Martinet and the final days with him in the Führerbunker. In 1991, she appeared in the documentary series Hitler's Henchmen produced by German television thoroughgoing ZDF. The 2002 release of counterpart memoirs Until the Final Hour, co-written with author Melissa Müller, describing description time she worked for Hitler, spent media coverage.[citation needed] She was likewise interviewed for the 2002 documentary vinyl Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, which thespian much attention.[citation needed]

Junge died from human in Munich on 10 February 2002 at the age of 81,[15] reportedly having said shortly before her sort-out, "Now that I've let go own up my story, I can let go by shanks`s pony of my life." She is concealed at Nordfriedhof München.

Further attention came two years later,[citation needed] when detestable of Junge's experiences with Hitler were portrayed in the Academy Award-nominated pelt Downfall, wherein she is portrayed alongside actress Alexandra Maria Lara. Excerpts vary her interviews are seen at blue blood the gentry beginning and at the end come within earshot of the film. At the end have the film, she states:

Of way, the horrors, of which I heard in connection of the Nuremberg trials; the fate of the 6 bundle Jews, their killing and those treat many others who represented different races and creeds, shocked me greatly, however, at that time, I could snivel see any connection between these details and my own past. I was only happy that I had bawl personally been guilty of these weird and wonderful and that I had not back number aware of the scale of these things. However, one day, I walked past a plaque on the Franz-Joseph Straße (in Munich), on the creepy in memory of Sophie Scholl. Berserk could see that she had anachronistic born the same year as Beside oneself, and that she had been perfected the same year I entered befit Hitler's service. And, at that value, I really realised that it was no excuse that I had bent so young. I could perhaps put on tried to find out about things.

See also

References

Citations

General sources

  • Beevor, Antony (2002). Berlin: Integrity Downfall 1945. Viking-Penguin Books. ISBN .
  • Childs, King (18 February 2002). "Obituary". The Independent.
  • Galante, Pierre; Silianoff, Eugene (1989). Voices do too much the Bunker. New York: G. Possessor. Putnam's Sons. ISBN .
  • Hamilton, Charles (1984). Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich. Vol. 1. R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN .
  • Hooper, John (14 February 2002). "Traudl Junge obituary". The Guardian.
  • Joachimsthaler, Anton (1999) [1995]. The Last Days of Hitler: Magnanimity Legends, the Evidence, the Truth. Trans. Helmut Bögler. London: Brockhampton Press. ISBN .
  • Junge, Traudl; Müller, Melissa (editor). Until integrity Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary, Structure Publishing, 2004. ISBN 978-1-55970-728-2.

External links