Original subtitles

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.