Tradl Junge – Wikipedia

Gertraud “Traudl” boy (Born March 16, 1920 in Munich as Gertraud Humps ; † February 11, 2002 ibid) from 1942 to 1945 was one of the four secretaries of Adolf Hitler alongside Gerda Christian, Christa Schroeder and Johanna Wolf.

With the journalist Melissa Müller, Junge gave the book, which was already compiled in 1947, in 2002 shortly before her death Until the last hour – Hitler’s secretary tells her life out of here. It served as one of the foundations for the feature film The downfall (2004), in which she too is portrayed as a secretary. The documentary film was previously in interview form by André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer In the dead corner – Hitler’s secretary (2002) recorded.

Traudl Junge was born as the first child of the beer champion Max Humps and the general daughter Hildegard Humps (born Zottmann). Her younger sister was Inge Kaye (born Humps, 1923-2008).

Max Humps became unemployed early on and soon joined the Freikorps Oberland, a politically right -wing extremist connected, who fought against the Weimar Republic together with others and was later banned. When Traudl was five years old, the father left his family and moved to Turkey, where he could work again in his job. The mother Hildegard refused to follow up and demanded the divorce.

From then on, Traudl Humps and her family lived with General Maximilian Zottmann (1852–1942), the father of Mother Humps. Traudl Humps later described this as pedantic, discipline and regulatory. In 1933 the young Traudl discovered her passion for dancing. She started dreaming of a career as a dancer together with her sister. However, the economic reality of her family prevented them. In 1936 she ended her school prematurely with medium maturity. Reluctantly, she attended the commercial school for a year with the view of a job as a secretary. Various jobs followed as an accountant, as an assistant to the editor -in -chief of a magazine for the tailoring crafts and as a secretary in a company.

In 1942 Traudl Humps moved to Berlin and received a job in the Reich Chancellery of Adolf Hitlers through her sister, who was involved as a dancer “Inge Zohmann” at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, with the help of Albert Bormann. First she sorted the dictator’s post. Then an internal secretary competition took place. She was still dreaming of becoming a dancer and was not interested in a permanent place as a secretary. When the “leader” was looking for a new private secretary because his experienced Gerda Christian went on vacation for a long time, Humps was not nervous and made the fewest mistakes in the dictation. Together with a small group of other young colleagues, she was sent by train to the Führer headquarters Wolfschanze, where Hitler was at this time, and after a suitability test – surprisingly – received the job in December 1942.

Humps lived and worked in Berlin, in the Berghof in Berchtesgaden and in the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia. With Johanna Wolf, Christa Schroeder and Gerda Christian, she formed the quartet of the so -called leaders’ secretaries. In the war years, when Hitler’s aversion to military, he only used the secretaries to dine with the secretaries, which gave these intimate insights into his private life, his world of thoughts and his past. Humps and the others had to get used to Hitler’s daily routine: getting up late, eating at lunch, eating, resting, drinking coffee, resting, resting, late dinner, film screenings, endless night tea hours, going to bed late (approx. 5 a.m.). On June 19, 1943, Traudl Humps and Hitler’s personal servant, Hans-Hermann Junge, got married ^[first] Officer of the Waffen-SS from Preetz in Holstein, in Munich. He fell in Normandy on August 13, 1944.

At the beginning of 1945, Traudl Junge moved with the other members of the leader’s personal adjutant to the driver’s bunker under the Reich Chancellery, where she witnessed Hitler up close for the past few weeks. In the night of April 20-21, Hitler wanted to remove the remaining women from the bunker and have it brought to the Berghof in Berchtesgaden, including the secretaries. However, only Johanna Wolf and Christa Schroeder agreed to do so; Traudl Junge, Gerda Christian, Hitler’s diet cook Constanze Manziarly, Bormann’s secretary Else Krüger and Eva Braun remained. On the evening of April 28, she attended Hitler’s marriage with Eva Braun, immediately afterwards her Hitler dictated his political and private will. When the shot fell on April 30 at around 3:30 p.m., with which Adolf Hitler shot, Traudl Junge was sitting in a bunker side wing and ate with the Goebbels children.

After Adolf Hitler’s suicide, she joined a group of approximately twenty people led by SS brigade handler Wilhelm Mohnke, who still managed to leave the Reich Chancellery on May 1st to May 2nd and converted a bunker in the morning hours To reach beer cellar, but was surrounded by Soviet soldiers. With her colleague Gerda Christian, Martin Bormann’s secretary Else Krüger and Constanze Manziarly, she was given the order from Mohnke to continue through civilian clothing and to hand over a last report Hitler’s last report previously written by Mohnke. The following night she was separated by her companions. On the following days she left Berlin and fled over land towards the British zone. Meanwhile, she did not achieve the news of the official end of the war. With other refugees together, she finally reached Wittenberge, where she did not manage to cross the Elbe in order to reach the American zone. At the beginning of June, Traudl Junge reached Berlin again after another walk. Meanwhile, the Dönitz government had been arrested in the Mürwik special area. In Berlin she lived until her arrest by the Soviets on June 9th with a friend under the pseudonym Gerda everything . ^[2] It was classified as a fellow runner by the Allies – also because of their small age and therefore went out without punishment.

In 1947, a friend of your life suggested that Boy should lay down her experiences in book form. However, the text was not published on the grounds that “readers in such stories would not have any interest”.

After the war, she worked as editor -in -chief for Quick and as a freelance journalist. She spent her last professional years (from 1975) as an office worker at the Bavarian State Association for Homeland Care before retiring in 1981.

In the mid -1970s she was for the book The catacombe – the end in the Reich Chancellery by Uwe Bahnsen and James O’Donnell and for British documentation The world in war (engl. The World at War ) ^[3] interviewed by Michael Darlow.

In 2000, Junge met the journalist and writer Melissa Müller, whom she presented to the artist André Heller. With the director and cameraman Othmar Schmiderer, he drew young memories of her life as Hitler’s secretary in interview form as a documentary In the dead corner – Hitler’s secretary on; The film published in 2002 received the audience award of the Berlinale in 2002. Müller published the young and her revised manuscript as a book Until the last hour – Hitler’s secretary tells her life that had been in a young drawer since 1947; Shortly after his appearance, Traudl Junge died of cancer on February 11, 2002 in her hometown of Munich at the age of 81. The book served as one of the foundations for the film made by Oliver Hirschbiegel and published in 2004 The downfall (Script and production Bernd Eichinger), the two interview scenes from the film In the dead corner – Hitler’s secretary contains and in which the secretary shown by Alexandra Maria Lara forms an important role as a leading figure for the audience.

1. ↑ Armin Dieter Lehmann, Tim Carroll: In Hitler’s Bunker: A Boy Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer’s Last Days . Globe Pequot, Guilford 2005, ISBN 978-1-59228-578-5.
2. ↑ Traudl Junge, Melissa Müller: Until the last hour – Hitler’s secretary tells her life. Munich 2002, p. 213 f., 234 ff.
3. ↑ The world in war (1973–1974) at television, accessed on March 16, 2020.