BERLIN, Feb 4: Traudl Junge witnessed one of the most dramatic scenes of the 20th century — Adolf Hitler’s final hours in his fortified bunker under Berlin where the dictator committed suicide in 1945 as the Third Reich collapsed.
Hitler’s secretary, who took down the fuehrer’s last will and testament, is the focus of a book published this week and a film that debuts at the Berlinale film festival opening on Wednesday.
“The longer I live and the older I become, the greater my feeling of guilt,” Junge says in the film “Blind Spot, Hitler’s Secretary”.
“Today I can say that he was a real criminal,” she says.
Junge, 82, became Hitler’s private secretary in 1942 in the middle of World War Two. She had wanted to work as a ballet dancer, but when she heard about a vacancy in the chancellery she played up her typing and shorthand skills to land the job.
“He was a pleasant elder man who welcomed us with real friendliness,” she recalled about her first meeting with Hitler at his Prussian Wolf’s Lair complex in what is now Poland.
Hitler frequently dined with his secretaries but he shied from controversial topics.
“I thought I would be at the source of all information. But I was really in a blind spot,” Junge says in the 90-minute documentary filmed in her Munich apartment. “It was an illusion. That was the big lie.”
She said she only once heard the German word for concentration camp in the chancellery, used by SS leader Heinrich Himmler.
“Hitler never expressed himself on the theme with anyone,” Junge said. “I never had the sense that he was consciously committing crimes. For him, these were ideals.”
“Sometimes I think if I had the chance to meet Hitler again, I would ask him if he discovered he had Jewish blood in his family tree, would he have gassed himself?” she said.
ONLY THE SECRETARY SPEAKS: The documentary shows nothing but Junge speaking without any historical footage. The German daily Tagesspiegel said on Monday that the film was originally twice as long and then cut. “But even these 90 minutes seem too long,” the paper wrote.
Filmmaker Othmar Schmiderer said he chose the spare style to let Junge tell her story free of distraction. Both he and co-director Andre Heller said the movie deserved to be longer.
“There are details such as that Hitler did not want any cut flowers as they were dead and he did not want any death in his room — this is the largest mass murderer in history,” he said.
The film is most engaging when Junge recalls the final days in the bunker as the Red Army neared in late April 1945.
“Hitler lost all hope and withdrew into himself,” she says.
Hours before he married long-time companion Eva Braun and then killed himself, he summoned Junge to record his testament.
“I thought, now I’ll find out what really happened,” Junge said. “It was all the old phrases such as the Jews were to blame....It was maddeningly senseless.”—Reuters
