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Traudl Junge

Traudl Junge (March 16, 1920 - February 11, 2002) was the youngest of Adolf Hitler’s private secretaries during the Nazi regime. She was born in Münich and later moved to Berlin seeking employment where she was chosen by Hitler alongside Johanna Wolf and Christa Schroeder as his secretaries in November 1942. She also worked with Hitler at Wolf’s Lair (his field headquarters in East Prussia), at his Bavarian residence at Berchtesgaden, and on the Führer’s special train.

On July 14, 1943, at the age of 23, she married an SS officer Hans Hermann who died in combat on August 13, 1944 in Normandy. She too encounteered a staggering experience when she was at the Wolf’s Lair on July 20, 1944 during the assassination attempt carried out by Stauffenberg. During the fall of Berlin when many followers of Hitler including his Generals fled the city, Frau Junge had decided not to abandon the Führer and remained in his service until he commited suicide in April 1945. She was also among those who accompanied Hitler's wife Eva Braun during her final days.

Traudl Junge is one of the handful of witnesses to Hitler’s last days in his fortified bunker as the Third Reich was collapsing above them. In his final hours, Hitler dictated his final will and testament to her. Hitler had also provided her with a cyanide capsule at her request, though the Führer was utterly dissapointed in his inability to make the parting gift a more pleasent one. However, after Hitler commited suicide on April 30, 1945, she decided to leave the bunker with a group of German officers. After four weeks on the move, their attempt to get over the Elbe was in vain when they were eventually sorrounded by the Red Army marching into Berlin. She was held captive and later fell into the hands of the Americans. After being interrogated and spending about six months in prison, she was released. She continued to work in Germany as a secretary, and later as a science reporter.

It was only years after the war, Frau Junge claimed that she learned the truth about the Holocaust. She insisted that she never heard anything pertaining to the 6 million Jews who died during her years serving the Führer. However, many have condemned her claims of ingorance as a reflection of the blind loyalty of those who were faithful to Hitler which enabled the implementation of the Final Solution.

In 1947, an almost invariably printed manuscript named My time with Adolf Hitler was published which included notes of Frau Junge's experience as a secretary of the Führer which was later used to published a book named Through The Final Hours. However, it was decades after the end of the War did she decide to share her full experience with the entire world. She appeared in a special segment of Thames Television's World War II Documentary The World at War in 1974 and later in Sony Picture Classics' Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary in 2001. In most of her interviews she expressed a vehement hatred for the Nazi regime and ideology, and dissappointment in the young girl she once was for the naiveté and ignorance that led her to admire Hitler.

Among other media that deals with Frau Junge's story, the most prominent is the German movie released in 2004 named Der Untergang (Downfall) that relates the final days of Hitler alongside the Fall of Berlin. In the movie Traudl Junge is played by the young Romanian born German actress Alexandra Maria Lara.

Almost six decades after her life changing experience, Traudl Junge died from cancer at the age of 81 on February 11, 2002, in her home town Munich.