Unknown Hitler

Unknown Hitler
Interview with Traudl Junge, Hitler's personal secretary, recorded by Gitta Sireny
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Date of publication: October 17, 2000

Traudl Junge is now eighty. She is slim, elegant and, despite the gray hair, still quite beautiful. One can easily imagine what she was like at twenty-two, in December 1942, when Hitler chose her from nine applicants who passed a competition in which several hundred young girls took part. So Traudl (at that time Gertrud Humps) became the fourth, youngest, secretary of the Fuhrer.

When I arrived at her home a few weeks ago, in her flower-lined studio in her native Munich, on the table lay Nemesis, the second volume of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler, just published in German. The book arrived at Traudl’s only the day before I arrived, but by the time we met she had already read the last six chapters. “I’m not very well versed in all these military affairs,” she said, “but it was interesting to me, because these chapters were written exactly about the time when I worked for him, starting in January 1943. ” In general, reading studies on the history of Nazism makes her tired and bored: “There are so many of them, and everyone either repeats the same thing or lies . ” Still, she was impressed by Kershaw's objectivity.

"He is not like the others. Maybe because he belongs to a different generation. He writes about what the Red Menace was like for us in those years, and how Hitler used it. And this is unusual. Not that he defends or in any way justifies us. No. But he seems to understand how it happened, that the Germans, although not suppressed in the same way as the Russians or the Poles, were still psychologically enslaved by Hitler. His terrible, monstrous charisma... everything was put in the service of one goal (now we understand this, but then we didn’t), a megalomaniac goal - the creation of a United Europe under German rule.

Only a foreigner could see Hitler with such eyes. No German can distance himself like that. Even young people are not yet able to do this. That is why, probably, none of the Germans undertook to write a biography of Hitler. With the exception of the biography written twenty years ago by Joachim Fest . "

Today Frau Junge is one of the last surviving close associates of Hitler. She no longer remembers many details of those two and a half years spent next to Hitler. “In any case, all the facts are known to everyone one way or another, ” she says, “ I can only remember the atmosphere that was around him - another Hitler, whom only we knew...” She doesn’t really like hyperbole and therefore stumbles on minute: "... two people who lived in it . "

I knew Frau Junge before. Over the past fifty years, every historian or journalist who has written about the Third Reich (including me) has tried to extract information from Traudl about people who belonged to Hitler's inner circle, as well as about the dictator himself, whom she knew as only a secretary can. know your boss. He was always kind and caring towards her. He treated her, in her own words, “very fatherly.” She still doesn't like to talk about this topic. “People are surprised by this. They cannot understand such things, and how can they understand it? But I cannot and do not want to renounce what happened - and the feelings that I had towards him at that time.” .

Like Albert Speer (whom she respects and sympathizes with since his release from Spandau prison - unlike most of the Fuhrer's inner circle, loyal to him until his death: Speer, who renounced Hitler, they branded as a traitor), Frau Junge went through a long period of reflection and deep disappointment; she still gets depressed at times. She is convinced that Hitler initially combined two completely different personalities. Moreover, Traudl herself, as well as other ladies from the Fuhrer’s inner circle - his beloved Eva Braun, four secretaries, the wife of his personal physician Annie Brandt, his adviser on military affairs Maria von Below, as well as Albert Speer’s wife Margaret - only the human side was visible side of Hitler, often quite sympathetic.

“We never saw him in the role of a statesman, we were not present at the meetings where he chaired. He called us only when he needed to dictate something, and at these moments he was as delicate as in private life. Our The office - both in the Reich Chancellery and in the bunker - was located very far from the command headquarters, and we never witnessed the fits of rage that were rumored.We were well aware of his daily routine, who he received, but with the exception of a few people "with whom he sometimes had lunch or dinner (such as Speer, another architect, Giesler, or his personal photographer Hoffmann), we almost never met any of them . " After Stalingrad, Hitler's two senior secretaries shared lunch with him, the two younger ones shared dinner, and one of the secretaries always stayed for tea, which they drank after midnight.

“My colleagues said that in the first years he talked incessantly about the past and future of Germany, but after Stalingrad, you know, I don’t remember him having particularly long monologues. We all tried to occupy his attention with chatter about films or gossip - any conversations that could distract him from thoughts about the war. He loved gossip. This passion was an integral part of the Hitler we knew . "

Traudl recalls the first text dictated to her by Hitler - a kind of exam that was supposed to determine her future. It was in December 1942 at Wolfschanz, Hitler's field headquarters in East Prussia. “Later I realized what a terrible time it was for him - just before Stalingrad. But it was impossible to guess about it: it seemed that the only thing he was concerned with was to calm me down and make everything more comfortable. Hitler hated the heat. In the rooms, where he worked, the temperature was always maintained at about 11 degrees. And, imagine, he ordered a heater to be brought for me . " Traudl gives another impressive example of the Fuhrer's thoughtfulness: “In the Berlin bunker, a few hours before his suicide, Hitler came up to me and said: “How are you feeling, dear? Have you rested? I would like to dictate to you a little. How do you look at this?" I understood what he was talking about only when he said the words: "My will." .

He usually dictated in an even voice, but sometimes, while working on a speech, his voice became hoarse, and his gestures became a little more animated. "This happened to him from time to time. At such moments it became clear that he was starting to play, rehearsing a performance. During such performances, he used terrible words that he never uttered in private conversation. These words (about Jews and Slavs) were in all his speeches. Now I understand that then we were so accustomed to them that in reality it was as if we had not heard them, we were shutting ourselves out from them... A minute later he calmed down again and became like a professor, his steel-rimmed glasses sparkling." .

Frau Junge has long understood that the genocide of entire peoples, including Jews, was planned by Hitler from the very beginning. But she still cannot understand how it happened that, countless times printing and reprinting his speeches, orders and memos, which undoubtedly contained all his sinister ideas and plans, she and her three colleagues could not discern the fatal essence of the “other” Hitler." “Working side by side with him around the clock, being unwitting witnesses to his private life, sharing shelter and board with him, we all also seemed to be leading a double life ,” says Traudl. “ But at that time it did not occur to us at all. We were separated from the German people and took for granted our lives, which were as overly privileged as they were completely abnormal . "

Was she aware of Hitler's impulsiveness? "Kershaw's biography reminded me how devoid of any structure everything around us was, how disorganized everything was - the way he made political and military decisions, and, in fact, his whole life. To sum up everything that is written in the book Kershaw, and remembering my unconscious feelings of those years, I realized a very important thing about him: in his thoughts, as well as in his actions, he was guided not by knowledge, but by emotions. I still cannot understand how he, who ", was supposed to love the Germans so much, was able to sacrifice them so coldly in the end. I didn't realize before how much influence he had on all of us - including the generals. You see, it was something more than just charisma. Sometimes, when he went somewhere -something without us... at that moment when he was leaving, it seemed as if there was not enough air around. Something important was missing - some kind of electrical voltage or even oxygen, the feeling that you were alive. It was... .it was a vacuum.

What I had no doubt about from the very beginning was that he had one feature that distinguished him from all other people (including even other dictators, as I now understand): he did not consider anyone as his equal. He had no one with whom he could consult about anything, no one who would dare question the decisions he had made. Speer was perhaps the only person for whom he had any feelings, whom he listened to and with whom he sometimes even talked. But not about politics. This role was assigned to Goebbels, to whom he, however, was completely indifferent as a human being (Goebbels himself, it seems, did not understand this, but we knew about it). He was too much of an intellectual for him. This may seem absurd, but he seemed to be afraid of him. Of course, Goebbels would have given everything to him, and in the end he himself and Magda, his wife, and their children died for him . "

In the last days spent in the bunker, all its inhabitants looked like soulless automata. “We had no feelings left, we didn’t think about anything except death. Hitler and Eva - about when they would die, when the six Goebbels children would be killed, when and how we should all die. All hierarchical differences were erased. "I asked Magda Goebbels, who was wandering around the bunker like a ghost, if it was possible to come up with something to get the children out of the bunker. She told me that it would be better for them to die than to live in Germany, covered in indelible shame . "

Two hours before Hitler’s suicide, finding himself alone with him in a conference room, waiting for him to begin dictating his last will to her, Traudl clearly felt that the moment of truth was coming.

“It occurred to me that now I would become the only person on Earth who would know why all this happened. He had to say something that would explain everything that happened, that would teach us something. He had to But when he began to dictate - My God, this long list of ministers to whom he intended to bequeath the leadership of the country... it was so grotesque... I thought - yes, that’s when I thought: how undignified it all looks ". The same phrases, the same quiet voice, and then, at the end, the same disgusting words about the Jews. After all this disappointment, after all the suffering that we experienced, he did not utter a single word of regret, not a hint of compassion "I remember how I thought then that he was leaving us nothing. Das Nichts . "

The Times
Translated by Ilya Kun