She went to school in Munich during the Weimar Republic and at the beginning of National Socialist rule. As a naive young woman, she allowed herself to be blinded by the power of the new regime. Humps soon wanted to move to the center of power of National Socialism, Berlin. So in 1942 she applied to work as an office worker in the "Adjutancy of the Führer." She was selected from several competitors. Then, at the end of January 1943, Adolf Hitler offered her the position of one of his private secretaries, which she immediately accepted. In the Reich capital, the Führer's new secretary met SS officer Hans Hermann Junge, whom she married in July 1943.

A little later her husband joined the Waffen-SS and was killed in Normandy in 1944. The new secretary was a witness to the failed bomb attack against Hitler, which was carried out on July 20, 1944 by Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg at the Führer's headquarters in the "Wolf's Lair." Junge also experienced the collapse of the so-called Third Reich in the spring of 1945 in the immediate vicinity of Hitler in Berlin, which was surrounded by Soviet troops. In April she moved with his closest colleagues into the Führerbunker under the New Reich Chancellery. In the seclusion of the bunker, Junge experienced the internal disintegration of Hitler, who was, however, willing to drag the whole of Germany into his downfall.

The secretary was shocked to learn that the war had been lost and the once impressive "leader" had become powerless. Nevertheless, Junge initially remained in the Führerbunker, even though Hitler had ordered her to be taken out of Berlin. The dictator's 56th birthday was celebrated there on April 20, 1945. On the night of April 29th, Hitler dictated his political will to his secretary, and Junge was disappointed by his arrogance and megalomania. Then she witnessed the marriage between the dictator and his long-time partner, Eva Braun. A little later, on April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in the Führerbunker.

Immediately afterwards, Junge fled the bunker with other victims. After a four-week, 300km odyssey, Junge returned to Berlin in early June 1945, where she was imprisoned by the Soviet occupation. A year later, Junge managed to escape to his parents on Ammersee in Bavaria. After temporary imprisonment by the American occupation authorities, she was denazified in 1947. At that time (1947/48) Junge began to write down her experiences in the Third Reich. For her, recording these memories meant an act of coming to terms with the past, as she only now understood the criminal nature of the Hitler regime in all its dimensions.

Hitler's former secretary suffered throughout her life from her former naive enthusiasm for the National Socialist leadership cult and power behavior. Junge's memoirs were not published until more than half a century later. The journalist Melissa Müller edited the manuscript and published it together with Junge in 2002 under the title "Until the last hour. Hitler's secretary tells her life". The book, which illustrates the banality of everyday life at the center of National Socialist power, but also makes Hitler's personal charisma and power understandable, caused a great stir among the German and international public.

In 2001, based on Junge's memoirs, André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer made the documentary film "Im dead Winkel. Hitler's Secretary". The film is based on interviews with the 81-year-old Junge and expresses the hermetic isolation and surprising isolation in which the secretary lived from 1942 to 1945, despite being at the center of power. Shortly after the publication of her book and immediately after the film's premiere at the Berlinale, Traudl Junge died of cancer in Munich on February 11, 2002.

In 2004, a wider international cinema audience experienced the impressive eyewitness testimony of Hitler's private secretary in Oliver Hirschbiegel's Hitler adaptation "Downfall".

Death in the Bunker: The True Story of Hitler's Downfall

Hitler: The Lost Tapes of the Third Reich

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Traudl Junge

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