Traudl Junge, Working For Evil, Part Three/Final

In both her book and her interviews, Traudl Junge relates a number of anecdotes about life so close to Hitler, including his obsession with his female German Shepherd, Blondie. In her interviews she said that Hitler was detached from the ruin he was bringing to Germany, let alone to other nations, and that, when she once  mentioned to him about the destruction in Munich (she was from Munich) from air attacks, he just started spouting his usual slogans about how he would retaliate against his enemies once he regained the upper hand. She noted that, as far as she could recall, Hitler never saw a bombed out German city or area of a city, as he kept the curtains drawn in his private train and when he went to Berlin, the train would arrive in the darkness of night and the chauffeur would travel on streets with little or no damage. This is the sign of a man hiding from himself.

Traudl Junge spent much time telling of the final days of Hitler in his Berlin bunker, located well beneath the Reich Chancellery complex. His long time mistress, Eva Braun (pronounced like  "brown," not "brawn") joined him there. About a week before his death, Hitler told the women to get ready to leave Berlin, as a plane was going to take them to southern Germany. He admitted the war was lost. Two secretaries left, along with a number of other personnel, but Traudl Junge and one other secretary, Gerda Christian, as well as Eva Braun, chose to remain in Berlin. Traudl told of how during lulls in the fighting for Berlin, she, Eva and Gerda Christian would venture above ground and out into the garden part of the complex. They once came upon a fountain statue of a woman much to Eva's liking. Upon returning to the bunker, Eva told Hitler of the statue, and, with Soviet troops only a few blocks away, she asked if he would buy the statue for her if he won the war. Now, you've got to admit, that's pretty bizarre, BUT he answered her! He told her the statue was government property and that he couldn't just buy it and give it to her for her own private garden, but she asked if he would make this one exception just for her. These people were NUTS! 

Also along those same lines, as the war approached its end, some of the Nazi leaders still played cutthroat politics in an effort to grab more power. As the Soviets closed in, Hermann Göring, Hitler's designated successor, sent a telegram from southern Germany to Hitler stating that with Hitler surrounded in Berlin, and with the likelihood of his losing the ability to communicate orders to the military and to the nation, that if a reply to his telegram was not received from Hitler by that evening, he would assume Hitler no longer had the ability to communicate orders, and that he, Göring, would assume power as Hitler had specified several years before. The telegram was not anything unreasonable, and at first, according to Junge, Hitler too seemed to have accepted it as such. Then Martin Bormann convinced the fanatical, furious Führer that Göring's act was high treason. Hitler became violently upset and ordered Göring's arrest and possible execution.* Then came word from a British radio broadcast that Heinrich Himmler, the powerful head of the dreaded SS, and a murderous nutcase if there ever was one, had entered into negotiations with the Allies through a neutral party. Hitler had another serious temper tantrum, as the man he called "mein treuer Heinrich" (my true or loyal Heinrich) abandoned the fanatical, furious Führer too. He ordered Himmler's arrest and execution.** For good measure, Hitler ordered the arrest of Himmler's adjutant, Hermann Fegelein, who was Eva Braun's brother in law (he was married to her sister, Gretl, who was like 8 months pregnant at that time). Eva's brother in law notwithstanding, Fegelein was then executed. Even in the final days of his life, with the Russians just a block or two away, Hitler spread death over essentially meaningless things.

Junge noted, Hitler had told her he would never be captured alive, and in preparation for that situation, he had received cyanide capsules from Himmler. With Himmler's peace negotiations Hitler became suspicious that the poison Himmler had provided would not be sufficient to take his life; the fear being that Himmler might try to trade "a live Hitler" for his own safety, so Hitler had it tried out on his dog Blondie, and it was found to be potent, as the poor dog died immediately. Hitler married Eva Braun and he told Traudl Junge he wanted her to take some dictation from him. It was his last will and testament. Traudl said at first she thought something like, "Now we'll hear the real reasons for everything, the truth," but instead, Hitler spouted his usual nonsense, including blaming Jews for the war. Not long after she typed the dictated notes, Hitler and Eva committed suicide. Traudl Junge was part of a group that tried to get through the Soviet lines to the Western Allies. Some of the group were killed, others were captured, but Traudl got through, only to turn around and return to Berlin before getting to the Allies. I believe she said she hoped to be able to get a train to her parents in southern Germany. Instead, she ended up in Soviet captivity for about a year and a half.

Traudl eventually made it home and she worked at a number of jobs over the years, but she also learned what Hitler and the Nazis had done during their time in power. She said initially she felt no particular connection between her life and the terrible events that had transpired, that she had just been a secretary and had not known about the atrocities, but then one day in Munich, she saw the plaque commemorating Sophie Scholl for her resistance to the Nazis,*** and she realized that some Germans DID try to learn about what had been going on. For the rest of her life she had emotional troubles, as she struggled to deal with her role in the tragedies wrought by Hitler. Her guilt feelings got to the point they were not rational, as she even blamed herself for the initial Nazi persecution of German Jews in 1933, when she was only 12 or 13 years old. She said she took some consolation in the knowledge that millions of other Germans had been swayed by Hitler, but that it was just not enough to soothe her conscience. She died of cancer in 2002, age 81. As I've "preached" here at times, Traudl Junge came to realize, too late, that once you let fascists in, you don't get them back out easily, and that people from all walks of life can become susceptible to their hate and destructiveness. Stopping the advance of fascism starts with our own self evaluation and then the determination not to fall under the spell of simplistic solutions or hate filled slogans and rants by radio or television personalities trying to worm their way into our lives and minds. They lay the groundwork for fascist politicians to gain control. Traudl Junge's message was, "Pay attention to what's going on around you! Don't think it has nothing to do with you."   

* Martin Bormann was one of Hitler's closest and most powerful associates during the war, when his power grew tremendously. He controlled who got in to see Hitler and he saw all correspondence before it got to Hitler's desk. The German public knew little about Bormann, although he was almost always by Hitler's side from 1941 until the very end. With loads of captured Nazi documents available after the war, historians came to realize that the little known Bormann was one of the most powerful Nazi leaders, besides Hitler himself. For more on Bormann, see my article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/09/german-leaders-of-nazi-erabormann.html

** Himmler did not fall victim to his fanatical, furious Führer, but rather he was captured by the British awhile later. He committed suicide while in their custody. For more on Himmler, see my article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/10/german-leaders-of-nazi-erahimmler.html 

*** In early 1943, Sophie Scholl, her brother, Hans, and a friend, Christoph Probst, were arrested for distributing leaflets at the University of Munich urging Germans to resist the Nazis and the war. They were "tried" before a Nazi court and then beheaded. There are several memorials and honors to this young courageous German woman and to the other Germans who tried to fight evil, and who gave their lives doing so. A 2003 poll of Germans showed Sophie and Hans Scholl are viewed as some of the most important Germans in history, and another poll of Germans placed Sophie as one of the greatest women of the 20th Century. Germans have learned the lessons the hard way, others should pay heed to the German experience.

Photo is from the paperback edition of "Bis zur letzten Stunde" (Until the Last Hour) by Traudl Junge, with cooperation from Melissa Müller, published in paperback in 2003 in German (there have been English language editions also), although there have been various printings since the original paperback. This is the 8th German paperback printing from 2011 from List Taschenbuch.

WORD HISTORY: 

Turf-This word for "grass covered area" goes back to Indo European "darbh/dorbh," which meant "clump or tuft of grass." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "turb," which meant "grass covered surface/area." This then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "turf," with the same meaning. Some dialects had "torf" and "tyrf," but eventually English kept "turf" as the standard spelling. In post World War Two American English the word was used for "a neighborhood dominated by a gang;" that is, "their turf." Common in the other Germanic languages: Low German Saxon has "Torf/Törf," which means "peat" (soil with dead and decomposing plants, as the area of northern Germany and northern Europe had bogs/marshes, where such was common), standard German has "Torf," also meaning "peat," as the word came into standard German from Low German; Dutch and West Frisian have "turf" (peat), Danish "tørv"  (peat), Icelandic has "torf" (sod), Norwegian has the compound "gresstorv" (sod, turf) and Swedish has "torv" (turf, peat).