Hitler's Last Secretary (7 page)

I gradually picked up all this information in conversations with Linge, during meals in the mess, on walks through the camp, etc.

After four weeks, on 30 January 1943,I was finally summoned to take dictation from Hitler again. I have to admit I was just as nervous as the first time when an orderly came to my table – I was eating in the mess – and told me to go to the Führer. It was a most unusual time for him to give dictation, in broad daylight! I abandoned my meal and wentto the Führer bunker just opposite. Hans Junge, who was on duty that day, told me the Führer wanted to dictate his proclamation for the tenth anniversary of his coming to power. I’d never have thought of that! But the anniversary was one of the regular occasions when Hitler made a speech. This time he wasn’t going to address the people in person but read out his speech over the radio and have it published in the press.

I was escorted into the study only a few minutes later, and for the first time I finally had leisure to take a closer look at the room.

After walking through the other low-ceilinged, artificially lit, cramped rooms in the bunker, it was pleasant to pass through the big double doors into the annexe which was the study. The valet announced me, and I said good day to the Führer.

He was wearing his usual black trousers, double-breasted field-grey coat, white shirt and black tie. I never saw him in anything else. His jacket was always perfectly plain, with silver buttons, but no braid or decorations. He just wore the golden Party badge on the left side of his chest, the Iron Cross and the black decoration for the wounded.

While Hitler gave his valet some instructions for the forthcoming military briefing, I took a rather closer look at the room. Full daylight fell into the whole of it through five big windows with colourfully printed rustic-style curtains. Almost the whole of the window side of the room was taken up by a long, broad table on which there were several telephones, desk lamps and pencils. This was where maps were spread out for the military conferences. Several small wooden stools served as seating. Opposite the door, at the far end of the room, Hitler’s desk stuck right out into the space available. It was an ordinary oak desk, the kind you get in any modern office. There was a clock on it, but Hitler never even glanced at it. He always got one of his companions to tell him the time, even when he was carrying his gold spring-lidded watch in his trouser pocket. A broad fireplace was built into the wall opposite the windows, with a big round table in front of it, and round the table there were about eight comfortable armchairs with woven seats and backs. The furnishings were completed by a cupboard for gramophone records built in at the other narrow end of the room, opposite the desk, and several more unobtrusively built-in oak wall cupboards. While I looked around I got the typewriter ready and fed in the paper. Meanwhile the valet went away.

Hitler came over to me, asking, ‘Aren’t you freezing, child? It’s cold in here.’ I rashly said no, and soon regretted it, because I really did feel bitterly cold as the dictation went on.

Hitler began on his speech, striding up and down the study with his hands clasped behind his back and his head bent. Once again I had to listen very carefully at first, so as to catch everything. As before, Hitler dictated without stopping, almost at the same speed as he delivered a speech, and without any notes. However, he didn’t have much new to say on the subject of his seizure of power. Only at the end, when he began speaking about the present hard struggle that must end with the final victory did he raise his voice, and then I didn’t have any difficulty in understanding him even when he had turned his back to me and was standing at the far end of the room. He finished dictation after about an hour, and I handed him the sheets of paper and confessed that I hadn’t been able to hear him very well. He gave me a friendly smile, shook hands and said that didn’t matter, it would be all right.

I left him with icy feet but a flushed face. Outside I asked the valet why it was so cold in the study. Glancing quickly at the thermometer, I could see that it was only eleven degrees. Surely a head of state could afford to keep his room warm? The whole complex had central heating, and it was warm enough everywhere else. But I was told that Hitler felt most comfortable at that low temperature and never let it rise. Now I realized why the generals and staff officers always came away from the military briefings that often lasted for hours with red noses and hands blue with cold, and immediately poured a warming tot of spirits down their throats in the valets’ room or the mess. General Jodl
¹⁴
even claimed to have contracted permanent rheumatism during these conferences with Hitler.

Gradually I came to know the most important people and places in the camp. One of those places was a hut fitted out as a cinema. When so many soldiers were living cut off from the outside world in a forest, they had to be provided with a bit of variety if they were not to get stupid ideas. So a film was screened at eight every evening. They almost all welcomed the entertainment, and so many people went to the cinema that the room soon had to be extended.

Only Hitler himself never went. He had the newsreels shown to him and censored them, but he never watched a feature film, not even the first showing of a German movie.
¹⁵
However, it was while watching the films that I got to know a number of gentlemen who were really nothing to do with me, but who were members of Hitler’s closest circle. Above all, I met his doctors, Professor Morell
¹⁶
and Professor Brandt,
¹⁷
who wasn’t there so often. The former was a specialist in internal medicine and Hitler’s physician, the latter a surgeon and the Führer’s attendant doctor. Later he was Reich Health Commissioner.

These two men were about as unlike each other as you can imagine, and I shall have to keep a special chapter to describe them. Besides them, it was mostly the journalists who came to see the films: Reich Press Chief Dietrich,
¹⁸
who had a very mousy look and made a totally innocuous, insignificant, colourless impression, and his colleague Heinz Lorenz,
¹⁹
a born newspaperman, witty, charming, clever – and usually in civilian clothing. You weren’t so likely to see the generals, because military briefings usually took place at this time of day, but sometimes you heard Martin Bormann’s loud, booming laughter. His name was on all the orders and directives about the organization and management of the camp, but we seldom saw him personally. A thick-set, bull-necked man, he was one of the best-known and most feared figures in the Reich, although he spent almost all his time at his desk in the bunker, working hard from morning to night to carry out his Führer’s orders.

The liaison officer Walther Hewel was really very nice. I first noticed him at a visit to the cinema because he had such a hearty, happy laugh and his cheerfulness infected the whole audience. I later met him in the Führer’s company quite often, and I shall have a chance to describe him in more detail later.

Once we were watching that very touching German film called
Mutterliebe
[Motherly Love]. It was so moving that it affected our tear ducts more than our laughing muscles. But I was very surprised to see two older men in floods of tears at the end of the film. They looked so tough that I wouldn’t have expected them to be easily affected. I asked my neighbour, Heinz Linge, who these tender-hearted officers were, and was told that they were the head of the security service, SS-Oberführer Rat-tenhuber,
²⁰
and Detective Superintendent Hogl.
²¹
They were in charge of the security of the Führer and the camp, but I felt it wouldn’t be very hard to make them believe any sob-story. Anyway, my visits to the cinema brought me into contact with a great many new people, and after that I always had company at mealtimes and afternoon coffee in the mess. The remarkable thing about conversations with all these people was that they never discussed politics and all the stirring events affecting Germany and the rest of the world, and if they did mention the war, all you heard was words of confidence, expressing their certainty of victory and their absolute belief in the Führer. And behind all these conversations was something that everyone thought was his own personal conviction – but most likely it was really Hitler’s influence.

I had come into these surroundings with so few preconceived ideas and prejudices that I soaked up the positive mood of this atmosphere like a baby taking in its mother’s milk. Since the end of the war I’ve often wondered how I could possibly have felt no reservations at all at the time, in the company of these people. And then, when I remember that the barrier and the barbed wire also cut us off from all doubts, rumours and differences of political opinion outside, I realize that I had no standards of comparison and could not have felt any conflict. When I began working for the Führer, in fact right after that first dictation, Julius Schaub had told me I was not to discuss my work with anyone, and I knew that such orders were incumbent on everyone else too, from an orderly to a field marshal.

By now two months had passed. I’d settled in well and had made some friends. The time passed at a peaceful, regular pace, until one day I noticed unusual agitation in the morning.

Orderlies were hurrying in and out of the Führer bunker, cars drove through the camp, and finally the orderly on duty in the Führer bunker summoned me to Julius Schaub. He acted in a very mysterious way when I entered his office.

He gave me the manuscript of an itinerary and explained that the Führer had to fly to the Eastern Front, and it was very, very secret. He probably wished I could type out the pages without reading them. I hurried away to type this important document. It contained the orders for the column of motor vehicles and the pilots, as well as all the other people who were going.

That was how I found out that Hitler was planning to fly to Winniza on the Eastern Front to visit the Army Group there. Only a small company was to accompany him: one valet, two orderlies, his physician, the adjutants of the various Wehrmacht departments, and several other people that I can’t remember now. My own name was not on the list.

In the afternoon the Führer bunker was empty. It was strange the way peace and quiet suddenly fell over the whole camp. As if the engine of the entire power plant had suddenly been switched off. I realized for the first time […] how Hitler’s personality was the driving force behind all these people. The puppet-master who held the strings of the marionettes in his hands had suddenly let them drop.

Today I know that it was only by a mysterious dispensation of Providence that he was ever able to pick those strings up again – because there was an explosive device in the plane bringing Hitler back from the Eastern Front, and if it had gone off it would have blown it into thousands of fragments.

As it was, when I woke up in the morning three days later the whole team was back, and Hitler never knew that his life had been hanging by the thinnest of threads during that flight.

Life in the Wolf’s Lair went on as usual, but only for a few days. Then I had to type out another itinerary, and this time not only was my name on the list, but so were those of the other secretaries. The whole staff was moving to Berchtesgaden on the Obersalzberg, where Hitler was planning to relax for a while at his house, the Berghof, and also hold important state receptions.

So at the end of March 1943 I was present as the vast apparatus set off to move house. We were to stay at the Berghof for several weeks, and it was amazing how calmly and easily all the preparations were made within a very short time.

We secretaries packed our cases with our personal possessions, but we also had to take our travelling office with us. The Führer might easily decide to write something during the journey, and we must have the proper equipment on the train. So we packed two Silenta typewriters, two that typed nothing but capital letters, and one typewriter for speeches, with characters almost a centimetre high that made it easier for Hitler to read the manuscript of a speech aloud. They travelled in cases specially made for them, because there was no typewriter at the Berghof. A big case like a wardrobe with lots of little drawers and compartments contained the stationery and other office material we would need.

We had to make sure we packed some of all the different kinds of notepaper, because we could be sure that if we had forgotten any sort it would be just the one that was wanted. For instance, there was the stationery that Hitler used in his capacity as head of state for all personal letters. The paper was white with the national emblem of the eagle and swastika on the top left-hand corner, and the words ‘Der Führer’ printed under it in gold. For his private correspondence, he used paper which looked very much the same except that his name, ‘Adolf Hitler’, stood under the national emblem. And we also had to take the embossed stationery for Party business, just in case, and some sheets of paper for military matters with ordinary black letterheads. It’s true that we never had to take down letters for those last two areas of work, because for Party business or military affairs Hitler passed on his instructions and orders through Bormann or Keitel
²³
or one of the other military commanders. But even on the journey someone might need our supplies of stationery, and each of us had to make sure she had the working equipment she needed all packed up and travelling with her.