All language subtitles for The World at War - 27. Secretary To Hitler.eng

Traudl Junge was one of the intimate
circle who were with Adolf Hitler

at the moment of his suicide in the
bunker deep under Berlin in April 1945.

Like Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun,
Traudl Junge was a Bavarian.

To further her ambition to be a dancer
she moved to wartime Berlin.

At first she worked as a typist
in the Reich Chancellery.

In January 1943 Hitler decided
he needed a new private secretary.

Traudl Junge was 22 years old.

If I understand it right, he didn't
expect you to take down shorthand,

but he expected you to type what he said
directly onto the typewriter.

Can you remember the first time
that he gave you dictation in that way?

I was so nervous that when he began to
speak I couldn't reach one typewrite.

I looked at my paper
and it was just a foreign language.

I was so desperate, but in this moment
there came in the servant and said,

"Mein Führer,
there's a telephone call for you,

Mr Ribbentrop wants to speak to you."

So I had time to recover.

I was calm again and it went alright
when he dictated.

I excused myself and said, "Beg your
pardon, the beginning is not right."

He said, "lt doesn't matter, child."

And he was very friendly and...
pleasant.

So I got out and had my work done,
my first work.

Once a year
he made a sort of recreation time.

We all go to the Berghof.

I was prepared that
on the Berghof would be

the first meeting for me with Eva Braun.

She was the mistress of Berghof
and all people knew about her,

but nobody talked about her
in headquarters.

But in Berghof we had to meet her and
we had to accept her in the right way.

There was Hoffmann often invited

because he was full of stories
and anecdotes and jokes.

I remember one time Hoffmann said,

"Mein Führer,
I have to tell you a joke."

"l put you a question."

He said, "There is you
and Göring and Goebbels

standing under an umbrella."

"Say, who will get wet?"

Hitler said, "l don't know,
that's a stupid question."

"Who? I don't know."

And Hoffmann said, "Nobody,
because it's not raining at all."

Hitler said, "That's such a stupid joke,
I can't laugh."

"l don't understand. You get senile."

And Hoffmann said,

"But, mein Führer, the man who told me
this joke is now in Dachau."

And Hitler was upset and said,

"lt's impossible.
How can you tell such a lie?"

"lt's impossible that he is in Dachau."

"Yes, mein Führer, he is."

"But he lives there."

"He has his flat there."

Hitler was very angry,
but laughing angry.

He said, "Hoffmann, you get out."

So an oblique joking reference to a
concentration camp like Dachau was OK.

But I think you told me
that any reference at all

to what was being done to the Jews
was completely taboo.

For instance what happened
to von Schirach's wife

when she complained to Hitler about what
she'd seen on Vienna railway station

with a trainload of Jews
who were being deported.

Henny suddenly began to talk about

her experience on the station in Vienna
when she saw a train full of Jews

and... deported people.

She said to Hitler,
"Mein Führer, it was an awful view."

"l was so very much upset
how they were treated."

"Do you know that? Do you allow that?"

And he...

..fell silent, absolute silent
and shut his...

He let his mask fall down.

The friendly smile vanished off his face
and he stood up and went to bed.

Henny Schirach was never again invited.

(Barlow) Let's turn now
to the period of defeat.

Was Hitler worried by the suffering
of the people in air-raids?

Did he see the destruction in Berlin

when he returned to make
his headquarters?

(Junge) No.

He never saw,
he always tried not to see.

He came when it was dark.

The car searched for a way
which was nearly undestroyed.

Hitler never had the feeling he must see
with his own eyes what the war was.

He lost more and more
his sense of reality.

But suddenly,

on April 22, I think, yes,

he came out of the military conference
with a totally stony face

and dark, threatened eyes.

He called us to come
to this little ante-room

and he sent for Eva Braun
and the secretaries

and for the cook who was still in Berlin
who cooked for him.

Then he came in and said
with a monotone voice and so unkindly

as we never have heard him speak to us,

"Ladies, please pack your things
at once, you have to go to the south."

"The last ever plane
starts in about an hour."

Then was a silence.

No, he said, "lt's all lost.
There's no hope. You have to go."

And then was a moment of absolute
silence and we stood shocked.

Suddenly Eva Braun made a few steps,

went to Hitler and said,

"But you know I don't leave you."

"l stay on your side. You know that."

"Don't try to send me away."

When we saw Eva Braun
deciding to remain,

suddenly I heard my own voice
saying, "l will stay, too."

And the other girls did so, too.

And we had a very strange feeling of...

We talked without consciousness.

(Barlow) How did Hitler react?

Hitler had a look of... looked at us

and suddenly there came a sort of
sad smile on his lips and he said,

"l wish my generals would be so brave,

as brave as you."

But I think on the same day
the Goebbels family moved in as well.

Because they decided
to share the same fate as Hitler.

Frau Goebbels came with her children.
Mr Goebbels came, too. And they...

We cleaned their room,
which was full of some furniture.

We made some place for the beds of
the children and put each on the other.

Six little beds.

They came and were very happy.
The children found it very exciting.

They liked to be
in Uncle Hitler's bunker.

They didn't know what fate
they were expecting there.

But... Mrs Goebbels
knew what there would be and...

I think it was a very hard time for her

to not show her emotions
to the children.

The children gave us
a little chance to be human,

to be normal.

Because the children needed a warmth

and they needed to be nursed
a little and to be entertained.

So we tried a little
to forget the reality

and to do as the children
wanted us to be.

And to give them a feeling of warmth

and a good nest and so.

But it was not easy to do.

Perhaps you wonder
why we asked for poison, but...

..if you consider that

there came most appalling reports
from the East front

what the Russians had done
to the German population,

especially to the German women,

in the villages and the towns
they had run over.

We were very, very fearful
and we were very shocked.

And we intended not to fall
in the hands of the enemy.

And Hitler himself saw no other solution

and no other way out
than to commit suicide himself, too.

So it infected us a little, I think.

It was very much macabre.

Eva Braun asked for the best

and the most painless method
to commit suicide.

And Hitler said that would be cyanide.

It affects very quickly.

Some minutes
and you don't feel anything.

Then he gave us capsules,
poison capsules.

It was in a brass... Like a lipstick.

It looked like a lipstick
in brass outside wrapping.

And he gave it to Mrs Christian and me
and said,

"l would like to give you
a nice present for farewell,

but I think this one will be
of much use for you."

And with a regretting smile
he gave us this poison.

What was his state of health now?

It became more and more weaker.

He looked like a shadow.
He looked emotionless.

Very grey and pale
and like a broken old man.

His... His attitude was bent down

and his leg was lame and...

His movements were very slow.

He was not any more the dictator

and the impressive,
fascinating man he was earlier.

It was a macabre situation,

thinking that Hitler himself

had lost totally the interest

and totally his activity

and sat in his bunker as a broken man.

And around him

the preparation was encouraged

and the fighters were encouraged

by the presence
of this already nearly dead man.

We wanted to know what he thinks
about the future of Germany.

He said, "l believe there will not be
any more a National Socialist party."

"That... the idea will die with me."

"But maybe in 100 years or so

there will rise another national
socialist idea like a religion."

The situation outside
built up to a climax,

and inside of the bunker waiting became
more and more unbearable and...

We steadily waited
for something to happen.

Hitler came to me and said,
"Did you rest a little?"

"Feel you fresh and feel you able
to have a dictation?"

I said, "Yes, mein Führer, sure."

He led me to the next room

and then he began his last will.

Then he dictated to me at first
his private will

and afterwards his political testimony.

And I must confess that I was...

I was at first in a very excited mood

because I expected that I would be

the first and only one who knows,

who is going to know the explanation

and the declaration
why the war had come to this end.

And why Hitler couldn't stop,

and why the development
and why the catastrophe...

I thought, "Now comes
the moment of the truth."

And I was heart bumping

when I wrote down what Hitler said.

But he used nothing new.

He came out with his... old phrases.

He repeated his accusations,

his... deranged swearing to the enemy

and to the Jewish capitalistic system.

And then he announced

in the second part
of the political testimony,

he announced a new government.

And then I was like banged to the head.

Because an hour before,
a day before, he had said,

"All is gone, there will not be
a national socialist idea any more."

"Germany is totally destroyed."

And he urged me, he forced me,

"Please, hurry up to write it in
typewriting and bring it in my room."

"And then join us.
I have married Eva Braun meanwhile."

It was another news for me,
which me very much surprised.

I was not prepared.

But there was still
quite a long time to go

before Hitler actually
committed suicide.

Can you tell me about the next day,

when he lined everybody up
to say his final farewell.

The whole day is not remarkable
without this one event

when Hitler said farewell to me.

I went to him, against him,
and he came towards me.

And his face was already dead.
It was like a mask.

He looked at me, but I had
the feeling he looked through me.

He shook my hand and he murmured
something but I didn't understand.

I couldn't understand
what he said at last.

But Eva Braun was stood beside him

who shook hands to all the others.

She embraced me very heartily

and looked at me with a little sad smile
and said,

"Please try to go out of here."

"Please try to come to Munich again

and give my regards
to my beloved Bavaria."

And then she...

She and Hitler
shut the door and retired.

And I had an absolutely need
for fleeing and l...

I fled the stairs upstairs
on the next level

and there I found
the children of Goebbels.

They were lost, totally. They were
forgotten, nobody had cared for them.

I tried to hold them back so they
wouldn't go down in the other part

and be witnesses
of what was happening there.

And so I took a book and read them
a fairy tale and gave them some fruit

and...

We... We entertained...
We had a conversation

and with one ear I was always hearing

for what happened in the next part.

And suddenly there was a bang.

There was a shot
and it was obviously within the bunker.

Because the noises
of the outside shooting,

we know how they sound.

And...

The little boy of Goebbels,
he noticed that there was another sound.

He said, "Oh, that was a bull's-eye."

And I thought, "Yes, you are right,
that was really a bull's-eye."

I knew that was the shot
which made the end of Hitler

and his National Socialist era
and probably also of us all.

Erm, but...

I sat a little shocked and silent
and then I saw...

My head was empty.
I couldn't feel anything at this moment.

Then I saw one of the adjutants
coming upstairs and he said,

"Now I have fulfilled the last order.
The Führer is dead."

"l have burned his body."

Then he sat down by my side
and he was ash grey.

His face was ash grey.

Now that Hitler was dead, what was
the atmosphere in the bunker like?

Suddenly we were forced
to decide for ourselves.

We had... Every step until now
was ordered by Hitler.

And suddenly we were given
our own lives back.

But this life was...

There was no concept for this life.

We had our poison. That was the only
fixed step we had to do now.

And...

Suddenly I felt I must go out
of this bunker, this mouse trap,

and go out in the fresh air.

And then happened something
very strange for me.

Suddenly, I saw the war
in all its appearance.

There lay dead soldiers
and there were Russians

and there were refugees and horses
and burning houses.

And...

It was suddenly

such a concentrated picture of war

and damage and defeat.

I see it today like it was.

I must honestly confess that sometimes
I think that what I am telling you

is the story of another girl.

I feel so totally changed

that it always involves me again
if I am telling things of this time.