Hitler's Last Secretary (38 page)

However, several historians and journalists writing books on Hitler are interested in Traudl Junge’s memories, and they do get in touch. In 1954 she has several meetings with the American naval captain Michael A. Musmanno. He was present as a lawyer at the Nuremberg trials, and between 1945 and 1948 questioned some two hundred witnesses to Hitler’s end in the Führer bunker, including Traudl Junge. He published his book
Ten Days to Die
in 1950. Musmanno gets in touch again in the autumn of 1954, when Georg Wilhelm Pabst wants to film the material. The idea is for Traudl Junge, as an eyewitness who was there at the time, to advise the Austrian director. She meets Pabst and Musmanno in Munich several times, and agrees to spend two weeks as assistant director to Pabst while he is shooting in Vienna, although she hesitates a good deal at first. Austria, after all, is still occupied by the Allies, and she is afraid of attracting the attention of the Russian military, since she fled illegally from the Russian-occupied zone of Berlin. The 1500 marks she is paid as a fee are by far the largest sum of money she has ever yet earned all at once, and enable her to move from the council dwelling in Moosach to an attractive one-room apartment in her familiar Schwabing.

In April 1955
Der letzte Akt [The Last Act]
has its première, with Albin Skoda and Oskar Werner in the lead roles, and is panned by the critics, one reason being that G. W. Pabst’s conduct under the Third Reich is a source of controversy. During the twenties, when he made
Die freudlose Gasse
and the film version of the
Dreigroschenoper,
he rose to fame as the most socially critical of German directors. In 1933 he emigrated for the sake of his convictions and tried his luck first in Paris and then in Hollywood, but for lack of success returned to Germany, and by the end of the war had made two films in the contemporary National Socialist spirit,
Komödianten
and
Paracelsus.

‘At the time Pabst and I didn’t discuss our own experiences during the Third Reich at all. Shooting a movie is such hectic work, and you have so many things to think of, that there was no question of a quiet conversation that might have probed rather deeper. Today, of course, I regret it.’

Another encounter with her past comes at the end of the 1950s, when she is reunited with Erika Klopfer, now Stone, who is living in New York and working as a photographer. Erika learns from Traudl’s mother – who returned to Munich from Australia in 1956 – that her old friend ‘was Hitler’s private secretary until the end’. At first she couldn’t believe it, says Erika, who did not emigrate voluntarily, and she did not want to get in touch again. In the end she feels curious after all, and visits Traudl without ‘feeling the slightest prejudice’, as she says in her book
Heimat wider Willen. Emigranten in New York [A Homeland Against One’s Will. Emigrants in New York]
(Berg am See, 1991). She got on well with her, says Erika, and adds that she is convinced there wasn’t a young girl at the time who would have turned down such a job offer. She even says, ‘It could have happened to me.’ So Traudl Junge is exonerated once more – although she does not now remember this occasion. Traudl Junge, Erika Stone concludes, is not a happy woman. ‘Her time with Hitler really messed up her life.’

The sixties – years of loss.

Traudl Junge’s father dies in 1962. His death is not a very painful blow, for even in his last years of life she has had little contact with him. Such was the impression left on her by the events in the Führer bunker that she even assumed, directly after the end of the war, that he too had committed suicide.
‘[…] Although death may be easier for many than the life that lies ahead – for instance for my father, whose birthday it would have been today,’
she wrote on 4 December 1945. Max Humps, as a member of the NSDAP and the SS, and during the war working as a security director ‘otherwise engaged’ (i.e. exempt from armed service), was one of the more than 300,000 Nazi activists who were arrested and provisionally interned by the Allied occupying powers. Like many of his companions who shared that fate, he saw himself as the victim of a misconceived and unjust policy of occupation rather than a criminal figure of the Nazi regime.

‘After the war I scarcely thought about my father’s fate until his wife got in touch with us. “So aren’t you girls worried about your father? The poor man’s in a concentration camp. The French arrested him and treated him very badly.” She sounded as if he had been unjustly held in a concentration camp. This kind of repression was typical of the time. My father was very soon released, but the experience left its mark on him. His wife had to earn a living for both of them. First she opened a small Lotto shop in Friedrichshafen, and over the years she made it into an elegant emporium in Bahnhofstrasse selling cigarettes, magazines and alcohol. My father was her best customer. After he died my sister and I built up a warm relationship with his wife, our Aunt Miezl. She was the ideal wife for my father.’

Her mother’s death in 1969 hits Traudl Junge much harder, although it is a release for the old lady, who by now is suffering from Parkinson’s disease and lives in a care home.

‘She sat there for years looking at the door, waiting for me to come through it. She managed to make me feel constantly guilty in her own gentle way. Once, when I was going away for the weekend, she said sadly, “Yes, you go, I’m used to being on my own.” I did go, but I couldn’t really enjoy myself. But I was terribly sorry for her, because she never had a good life. The first money she ever earned for herself was as a seamstress when she was sixty-five. She did sewing for my girlfriends too. It gave her great satisfaction.’

But the real break in her life comes three years earlier, when her lover dies of a heart attack. His sudden death deprives her of the central figure in both her private and her professional life.
‘I’ve always come to terms with grief well,’
she says.
‘Although I’ve always needed to talk about my pain.’

The main people to whom she turns as a substitute family in these and the following years, and not only at difficult times, are the Lanzenstiels. Luise Lanzenstiel is a sister of Heinz Bald and-quite apart from Traudl Junge’s affectionate relationship with her former fiancé – a very understanding friend, Traudl’s best friend for many years.

‘Luise was married to a pastor and had had six children. She was amazingly cheerful and steadfast. The family got through the Nazi period very bravely, without sacrificing their ideals. Luise told me she never once said “Heil Hitler” in all that time. The whole family were securely anchored in their faith, in an open-minded way – not at all bigoted. They always said grace before meals, which made me feel very awkward at first, but then I got to feel more and more like part of the family. I owe it to Heinz Bald that I have a substitute family today, because I am friends with those six children and thirteen grandchildren too. I’m their Auntie Traudl.

With the Lanzenstiels, I saw for the first time what it’s like for people to have the strength of faith. I envied them very much for their ability to believe – it’s not a gift given to me. But they weren’t missionaries, they accepted me as I am. I’ve gone to Luise when I wanted to hide from the rest of the world. I felt safe with her, I knew I was with someone who understood me.’

Traudl Junge is speaking of those bouts of depression that have afflicted her from around the middle of the sixties to the present day. At first she has a generalized sense of failure. ‘No one’s life story is so clear-cut that there was only ever one possible choice,’ writes the political scientist Claus Leggewie. Traudl Junge reproaches herself for having chosen the wrong path through life, and even worse for simply having let life sway her without going her own way at crucial moments.

Only later does she link her depression with the atrocities of the Nazi regime, which are in such painful contrast to what she felt was her innocuous role in the Third Reich. Guilt feelings of an increasingly concrete nature weigh down on her – suddenly even the excuse ‘You were so young at the time’, which has comforted her for so long, seems hollow.

‘At that time I must often have walked past the commemorative plaque to Sophie Scholl in Franz-Joseph-Strasse without noticing it. One day I did, and I was terribly shocked when I realized that she was executed in 1943, just when I was beginning my own job with Hitler. Sophie Scholl had originally been a BDM member herself, a year younger than me, and she saw clearly that she was dealing with a criminal regime. All of a sudden I had no excuse any more.’

Years of developing her own awareness. Long periods of depression, hospitalization, unsuccessful psychotherapy, lack of enthusiasm for her career. Between 1967 and 1971 Traudl Junge is responsible for the consumer magazine
Drogerie Journal
published by Wort und Bild.

‘Suddenly I couldn’t write any more. Even the simplest sentence was difficult. The idea of being unable to work at my profession made my condition even worse. Then I thought of flight – I would go to Australia, to seek refuge with my sister. I gave notice from my job and sublet my apartment …’

The Australian authorities refuse Traudl Junge a permanent residence permit, giving as their reason her role in the Third Reich. For the first time, after more than twenty-five years, she meets with rejection because of her past. Finally she goes to Sydney as a tourist, stays for several months, and tells herself that she would rather live permanently in Germany anyway. In 1974 she is diagnosed with abdominal cancer, which is successfully treated. In 1981, after several other jobs in journalism, she retires at the age of sixty-one.

She cannot find peace. The public ‘reappraisal of the past’ is gradually getting under way in Germany. As one of the last eyewitnesses to have been present at the final scenes in the Führer bunker in Berlin, Traudl Junge is invited to appear before the cameras several times. An unfortunate side effect is that Nazi fanatics and autograph hunters also keep seeking her out, wanting to shake the hand that was once shaken by ‘the Führer’. Traudl Junge does not want to be a public figure. She lives quietly, befriends and looks after a blind old lady, makes pottery and records audiocassettes for the blind. She reads whole books into the microphone.

Paradoxical as it may sound, Traudl Junge has radically distanced herself from National Socialism. She never felt she belonged to its system, and yet she shared part of the responsibility for it. She has not built up a façade, but has tried to be honest with her fellow human beings. The years of painful confrontation with herself did have a purpose: they matured her.

‘I withdrew and let the guilt feelings, the grief and sorrow eat into me. Suddenly I had become interesting as an eyewitness – which brought me into severe conflict with my guilt complexes. Because the conversations were never about the question of guilt, only about the historical facts. So I could describe them without having to justify myself. That was something that weighed on me even more – and gave me even more to think about. Today I mourn for two things: for the fate of those millions of people who were murdered by the National Socialists. And for the girl Traudl Humps who lacked the self-confidence and good sense to speak out against them at the right moment.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank their editor Ilka Heinemann, and also Jochen and Maria Maas. Without those three people this project would never have got off the ground.

Melissa Müller would like to thank André´ Heller for his wise advice, Christian Ude and Ursula Raff for their revealing memories of Traudl Junge, and Christian Brandstaütter, Barbara Bierach, Rüdiger Salat and Heinz-Werner Sondermann, the critical first readers, for their valuable suggestions and for asking the right questions.

Traudl Junge would like to thank the friends who are her substitute family wholeheartedly. They all know who they are.

INDEX

Ach, River,

Adam, Lance Corporal,

Adenauer era,

Adjutancy Office,

Albers, Hans,

Albrecht, Alwin-Broder,

Allianz,

Allies,

Altötting,

America,
see also
Americans

Americans,

Ammersee,

Amsterdam,

Anhalt Station,

Annaberg, storming of the,

Antonescu, Ion, n

Arcisstrasse, Munich,

Arendt, Hannah,

Arent, Benno von,

Arkady (interpreter),