Reflections on Being Hitlers Secretary - Essay Example

Until the Final Hour: On being Hitlers Secretary Introduction Gertraud "Traudl" Junge (née Humps) was born on March 16th, 1920 in Munich, the daughter of a master brewer and lieutenant in the Reserve Army, Max Humps and his wife Hildegard (née Zottmann). With the blessing of the Fuhrer of Germany (and her boss) she married Waffen-SS officer Hans Hermann Junge who was killed in Dreux, France by an Allied fighter-bomber on August 13, 1944 while on his way to the Normandy front. From December 1942 until Hitlers death in Berlin on April 30, 1944 she was one of his personal secretaries. She was playing with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels children when the Fuhrer shot himself and her last professional duty has been transcription of his personal and political last will and testament 2 days earlier. Hitlers Secretary Immediately after the war, in 1947-48, Junge recorded her memories of her time as Hitlers secretary. They were only published in 2002, as one of three sections in a book entitled, Until the Final Hour. The book also included sections written by German writer Melissa Müller. The first section of the book is a biography of Gertraud "Traudl" Junges (née Humps) early life entitled, “A Childhood and Youth in Germany, written by Müller. Junges original manuscript, “MyTime with Adolf Hitler – Written in 1947” is the second section of the book. The final section of the book, written again by Müller, is entitled, “Confronting Guilt – A Chronological Study Written in 2001”. The book also includes a brief “Foreward” written by Junge in 2002. Together, the three sections present a longitudinal study of a very typical, and very atypical, German woman of her generation. A woman born into the post-World War One turmoil of Weimar Germany; entering her teens and twenties in the Third Reich in a totally nondescript manner until in a totally unexceptional manner she was selected to the extraordinary position of Hitlers personal secretary; and then exploring her post-war recollections of that experience from her naive description of her exceptional employment recorded in 1947, through her mature reconsideration of having been Hitlers personal secretary, and her personal guilt. In this sense the book is more than just biography or autobiography. It is also a rumination on the Nazi era, the banality of evil, and the personal responsibility of a generation of Germans, encapsulate in the life-story of one woman. As a young girl Trudle Hump had dreams shared by many girls round the world. She wanted to grow up to be a ballerina. Her father was a charming neer-do-well who spent more time fighting and drinking with his Oberland Freikorps (paramilitary) comrades than he did being a husband and a father. Ironically, even before he abandoned the family permanently, and before the Nazis came to power, young Trudle frequently heard her mother blaming that man Hitler for her husbands absences. (p. 15) Prior to passing the admission examinations for dance school she becomes a secretary. Then the war intervenes and she finds herself working in the Reichs Chancellery as a secretary. Despite her government employment and membership in the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM) with its aim of training “girls who believe unreservedly in Germany and the Fuhrer, and will instil that faith into the hearts of their children” (18) she considers herself to be apolitical. In 1942 various secretaries on the Chancellery staff were asked to take typing and shorthand tests to qualify to move to the Fuhrers personal staff. Having past the test Trudl and a group of young women are taken to the Fuhrers headquarters. Their interview consists of a brief meeting with Hitler and nothing else. Trudle describes her selection as happening “more or less by chance.” (27) She is a Munchener, Hitlers first home in Germany, and bears a striking resemblance to Hitlers mistress, Eva Braun. Based on these qualities and exceptional abilities as a typist and at shorthand she finds herself joining Hitlers personal staff in December 1942. She quickly discovers that the job requires irregular hours (Hitler was a night owl) and is demanding, but that she likes her boss immensely. She testifies that she has no experience of his “famous fits of rage or his carpet-biting” adding that Hitler quaintly and awkwardly warned her about the baser desires of soldiers isolated from family and “showing solicitude for my virtue” following his job offer. (27, 37) She also remarks on his love of his dog Blondi, the tricks he has taught her and the pleasure he takes in her company. She notes that on train trips he always takes care to see that his adjutants and valets walk and water her. She frequently dines with the small coterie that join Hitler for his meals and describes the table talk as “cheerful”. (66) Writing in 1947 she describes Hitler as an employer as “the best Ive had yet”. Trudle Junge, writing in 1947, simply recalls a nice boss even if the final weeks of her employment were spent under relentless bombing in an underground bunker as Germany crumbled around her and her companions murdered their children and lovers before killing themselves. A Chronology of Guilt This however is not the end of the story. As writer Melissa Muller remarks these recollections offer “illuminating insights” and have “historical value”. (8) They are an unvarnished account of life with Hitler and his staff, unencumbered with attempts to excuse the authors behavior or impose a personal agenda on the memories. Additionally, Muller notices Junges reactions to them more than fifty years after she first recorded them: She herself feels distress and shame at the naivety and inability to see dispassionately that are evident in long passages of them.... The tone is sometimes unpardonably simple-minded.... She sees her memoirs, above all, as evidence of her unthinking attitude at the time, a kind of conclusion to a guileless youth spent in an environment that was very far from innocuous.” (8) It is the shifting perceptions of Junge herself that are explored in the final section of the book, entitled, “Confronting Guilt – A Chronological Study Written in 2001”. Muller defends her as one who has never seen herself as a victim and employed buts like but those were different times or but there was a war on to diffuse her personal responsibility. She also credits Junge with the realization that it was the first step that was the big one: Acceptance of a chance offer from a Party functionary to leave Munich and go to Berlin set her off on the slippery slope and was her responsibility because she suppressed the nagging concerns of her conscience because she was young, impetuous and hell bent on getting to Berlin to pursue her career as a dancer. Muller and Junge both realize also that something even deeper underlies her ambiguity, she loved, in a non-erotic way, the man and the employer, Adolf Hitler, and she still does. “He was a kindly paternal figure, he gave me a feeling of security, solicitude for me, safety.... I can still look back to that time with warm emotions.” (218) Simply put, Adolf Hitler was the father that Trudl Junge never had, the man that her birth father Max Humps had never been. Membership in his inner circle offered Trudl Junge the security and solicitude that the Weimar Republics violence, inflation, poverty and political instability never had. She is also aware that she found that in finding that security and solicitude she aided and abetted the Fuhrer by providing him with both companionship and essential secretarial services. According to Muller, “She does not play down the fact that she provided him with female company while he and his accomplices were implementing the Final Solution. Conclusions In two senses Until the final hour: Hitlers last secretary provides evidence of the banality of evil. As a primary source it documents the banality of Hitler, from his attention to his dog to his obsession with his diet and his dictats about non-smoking. On another level it illustrates the banal reasons – a desire to be in Berlin and a sense of security in the Fuhrers presence – that led her to become complicit in the machinations of the Third Reich and its Wagnerian destructiveness. However, on an entirely different level it demonstrates the growing maturity and awareness of one woman who was a member of the generation of Germans that participated in that evil. References Junge, Traudl (author); Müller, Melissa (editor); Bell, Anthea (translator). Until the final hour: Hitlers last secretary, New York: Arcade Publishing, 2004. Read More