Hitler's Last Secretary (21 page)

Gruppenführer Fegelein had been detailed to investigate the assassination attempt and track down the guilty men. He was personally indignant to think of anyone wanting to blow up such a splendid fellow as himself. I think he thought that was more criminal than any plan to get rid of Hitler, and he flung himself into the investigation with the zeal of his desire for revenge. Finally it became obvious even to Hitler that the resistance movement had spread more widely in the army than he had supposed. Distinguished names of men holding high rank were mentioned. He raged and shouted and said a great deal about traitors and scoundrels.

Hitler did not look well, and was leading an unhealthier life than ever. He hardly went out into the fresh air at all now, he ate little and had no appetite, and his left hand was beginning to tremble slightly. He remarked, ‘I had this trembling in my right leg before the assassination attempt, and now it’s moved to my left hand. I’m glad I don’t have it in my head. I wouldn’t like it at all if my head kept wagging.’

There was a new subject of conversation for the evening tea-parties: Blondi was to have a family. Hitler was looking for a suitable mate for her. His choice fell on Frau Professor Troost’s German shepherd, a dog he had once given her as a present. So one day Gerdy Troost, the only woman visitor to Führer headquarters, turned up with her dog Harras. Blondi, whom we expected to be pleased by a male companion, took no notice at all of the visitor, and when he first tried getting closer bared her teeth furiously at him. Hitler was disappointed, but he didn’t give up hope that after a while the two animals would learn to value and love each other, and then he could bring up a puppy one day.

We were sitting over tea with Frau Troost in the evening. She told Hitler he ought to go for more walks. ‘This is no kind of life, my Führer. You might just as well have the landscape painted on these concrete walls and never leave the bunker at all!’ He laughed and said he found the Prussian climate so unpleasant in summer that it was much healthier for him to stay indoors in the cool. However, when Frau Troost said he ought at least to have massages, they would do his arm good too, he was very firmly against it. He hated to be touched. He had dislocated his shoulder in the November putsch in Munich in 1923, and it had been massaged by a sergeant who did him more harm than good, and whose treatment was still a painful memory to him.

Frau Professor Troost left again, leaving her dog behind. Rudely rejected by Blondi, he now took a lively interest in my tiny fox terrier bitch, who was in heat for the first time. I was rather alarmed when a big grey shape leaped through my window in the hut one night, but I soon realized that this was a visitor for my little dog.

Harras was getting obviously thinner as a result of the constant excitement. Finally Blondi became friendlier and more forthcoming, and at last Hitler told us one day, beaming, that the two of them had mated! Harras stayed a few weeks longer to eat his fill from the fleshpots at headquarters.

While life flowed by at a regular pace for us at headquarters, and Hitler was always friendly, confident, amusing and charming, there was fierce fighting on all the fronts. In the East, the only victories won were defensive, and the front was contracting while the Russians kept advancing and coming closer. And in the West the invasion had spread out, forcing the German troops into defensive manoeuvres. My husband’s division had seen bloody battles in the East, and had then been transferred to France to wait for more tanks and reinforcements. Hans Junge was sent to the Führer headquarters as a courier just as I was about to go to Munich to help my family, who had been bombed out. We spent a few days together in the ruined, bleak city of Berlin, and then parted. I went to Bavaria, he returned to his unit.

I found Munich a picture of destruction too. The building where we had lived was completely flattened. Nothing could be saved. People were desperate and hopeless. I met few who still believed in victory. When I repeated what Hitler said I lacked his own conviction and sense of security, and my heart was full of doubts and conflict. On going back to headquarters after three weeks, at the end of August, I asked the officers, the adjutants and every one who ought to know, ‘Tell me, how is the war going? Do you really believe we shall win?’ And I always got the same answer. ‘It looks bad, but not hopeless. We must hold on and wait for our new weapons to come into play.’

Once again we sat with Hitler in the evenings. Now that most of the German cities were rubble and ashes, he was devoting himself with passionate intensity to plans for rebuilding them. When Giesler was there, he discussed the reconstruction of Germany in minute detail. The rebuilding of Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, Linz and many other cities had taken firm shape, not just in Hitler’s head but as complete architectural plans on paper. Hitler tended these plans lovingly, the way a gardener tends his roses. Sometimes we listened, uncomprehendingly, as his descriptions brought the finest cities in the world into existence before our eyes, the broadest streets, the tallest towers on earth. Everything was to be much better than it had ever been before, and he lavished superlatives on it all. Did he believe in his own words? I never stopped to wonder about that at the time. […]

I didn’t want any monumental buildings, I wanted peace and quiet. I certainly had a better life than most other people in wartime, I didn’t have to sit in a boring office and I had hardly been in any air raids. But I felt like a prisoner in a golden cage, and I wished I could finally get away from here and go back to other people where I belonged. After all, I’d been married for over a year, and I hardly noticed. Hitler still treated me like the baby of a family. He particularly liked joking with me. I would be asked to imitate a comic Viennese film actor, or speak in Saxon dialect and reply to his jokes. Frau Christian was the object of Hitler’s gallant attentions. It sometimes looked like a little flirtation, but almost every day the conversation would come round to Eva Braun, and then I could see Hitler’s eyes take on a deep, warm glow, while his voice grew soft and gentle.

But when he called an officers’ meeting again around the middle of August, and addressed the top military leaders at headquarters, there was no tolerance and softness about him now. I wasn’t at the meeting, but I saw the grand uniforms locked in violent and agitated discussion in the mess afterwards. There seemed to have been angry words. Hitler had given full expression to his indignation over the treachery of 20 July, and he imposed the ‘German greeting’ on the whole German Wehrmacht. At the same time he called on the loyalty and conscience of the officers and their unreserved obedience. Later, by chance, I saw the minutes of this meeting. I had no right to read them, but I did cast a quick glance at some of the pages. They said: ‘… and I thought that at my last hour, my officers would gather around me in unshakeable loyalty, their daggers drawn …’ Here General Manstein
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called out: ‘And so they will, my Führer.’ In brackets, after that, the minutes said: Loud applause.

Hitler also awarded decorations to the men wounded on 20 July around this time. Several had now died of their injuries, including General Schmundt. The survivors were solemnly given the award for the wounded. The newsreels and photo-reports recorded this great moment. I saw that Hitler kept his left hand motionless behind his back all the time. He was very anxious that no one should see its constant tremor. I noticed that his state of health wasn’t very good anyway. He was taking any amount of medication. Either before or after meals Linge had to give him at least five different pills. One was to stimulate the appetite, another to aid digestion, a third to prevent flatulence, and so on. In addition Professor Morell, grunting and groaning, turned up in person every day to administer his usual miracle-working injections. The doctor had been suffering from particularly bad heart trouble recently. Once again he tried to lose weight by going on a diet, but his voracious appetite made it very difficult. When he came for tea in the evening it was usually only a few minutes before we heard his quiet snoring, which didn’t stop until Hitler went to bed. Then Morell would assure us he had enjoyed the evening very much, but he was extremely tired. Hitler was never angry with him, but as solicitous as if he were a child. There was much gratitude and something like pity in his eyes when he spoke of Morell. He trusted him so completely that he said, ‘But for Morell I might have died long ago, or at least have been unable to work. He was and still is the only person who can help me.’ However, no one knew what Hitler was really suffering from. No definite diagnosis was ever made.

V

We were sitting together at lunch again; this was the end of August [1944]. Hitler’s manner to me was very strange. He seemed almost unfriendly. He never said a word to me all through the meal, and when I happened to meet his eyes by chance they bent a serious, questioning gaze on me.

I couldn’t imagine what I might have done or how I could have annoyed him. I didn’t worry about it any further, and thought he was probably just in a bad mood.

That same day Fegelein phoned me. ‘Can I come and have coffee with you this afternoon?’ he asked. I wondered why he suddenly wanted to come and see me, he’d never done that before, but I said yes. Coffee time came and went but Fegelein didn’t turn up. Finally the phone rang again. He said the briefing had gone on a long time and now he had to get some work done, but could I just drop in on him for a moment? All right, I thought, I might as well take my dog for a walk, and I set off for Fegelein’s new hut, the last building in the headquarters complex. Fegelein greeted me. ‘Hello, nice of you to come, would you like a schnapps?’ Goodness me, I thought, what’s he after? I’d assumed he had something he wanted to discuss with me. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want a schnapps at the moment, but you were going to come and have coffee with me, weren’t you? What’s up? I mean, why are you doing me this honour although you know I’m faithful to my husband?’ Then he came over to me, put his arms round me in a paternal way and said, ‘I’d better tell you straight out. Your husband has fallen.
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The Führer has known since yesterday, but he wanted to wait for confirmation, and then he found he couldn’t tell you himself. If you’re in any kind of trouble come and see me, I’ll always help you.’ With these words he let me go and poured me a schnapps after all, and now I did drink it. For the moment I couldn’t think at all, and Fegelein gave me no time for it. He went on talking, and as if from a great distance I heard him saying what ‘a terrible mess’, everything was, this war and the Bolshevists and absolutely everything, but one day it would all be different … Funny how I still remember that, although I was hardly listening to him.

Suddenly I was out in the open air again. Warm summer rain was falling very gently, and I walked on down the road, out of the camp and over the fresh green meadows, and it was very quiet and lonely. I felt very much alone, and it was all so terribly sad. I got back to my room late. I didn’t want to see or hear anyone. I wasn’t anxious to hear any condolences and sympathy. Then a call came from the Führer bunker. ‘Are you coming to dinner today, Frau Junge?’ I said, ‘No, I won’t be there at dinner today.’ The orderly hung up. But the phone rang again. This time Linge himself was on the line. He said, ‘The Führer would like a quick word with you all the same, so come on over even if you don’t stay for dinner.’ Finally I thought well, the sooner the better, and then I’ll have it behind me.

I was taken into the little room that had once been Fräulein Schroeder’s living room. Now it was a temporary study for Hitler. How gloomy and sober the room looked now. Once Linge had closed the door behind me Hitler came towards me without a word. He took both my hands and said, ‘Oh, child, I’m so sorry. Your husband was a splendid fellow.’ His voice was very soft and sad. I almost felt sorrier for Hitler than for myself, because it’s so difficult to express sympathy. ‘You must stay with me, and don’t worry, I’ll always be there to help you!’ Suddenly everyone wanted to help me, and I felt like running away.

Soon I was sharing mealtimes with Hitler again. He was feeling very unwell, he was silent, and looked old and tired. It was difficult to arouse his interest in a conversation. Even when Speer was talking Hitler sometimes didn’t listen. ‘I have so many anxieties … If you knew what decisions I have to take, all by myself, no one shares the responsibility with me.’ This was the kind of thing he said every time we asked him how he was feeling. The doctors went in and out of the bunker. The senior doctor from Berlin was always there, and Brandt was consulted too and examined Hitler’s painful arm and trembling hand. Finally Professor von Eicken
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was summoned from Berlin. He had once carried out a successful operation on Hitler’s larynx, and had his full confidence. And Morell was ill himself; there was nothing for it, he had to go to bed and leave the care of Hitler to his deputy Weber. It was the worst blow in Morell’s ambitious life to find that Hitler was happy with his deputy. He suddenly realized that there were other doctors who could give injections as well as Morell. Hitler claimed it was positively a work of art to find a vein of his to inject, and it was rare for a doctor to be able to treat him well. Morell was wildly jealous and ambitious, but now he had to leave the field temporarily, just when Hitler needed him most. Dark clouds were gathering above his own fat head. Brandt and his colleague von Hasselbach had found out that the tablets Morell was giving Hitler contained a certain percentage of strychnine, which was bound to be deadly one day if Hitler went on taking such large doses.