Hitler's Last Secretary by Traudl Junge Read Free Book Online

shook hands with each of us one by one. His voice was very deep and full as he asked us all our names and where we came from.
I was the last, and the only girl from Munich. He asked my age again, smiled once more, turned that famous piercing gaze on all of us again, raised his arm in greeting for the second time – and we were dismissed without ever getting around to stammering out our ‘Heil, my Führer’.
Outside, the spell was broken, and we relaxed at last and began chattering about the way Hitler shook hands, his fascinating gaze, his figure and all the details that seem so significant at such an important meeting.
Bormann, glad to have completed his mission at last, gave each of us a glass of champagne to celebrate the occasion, and then took us into the canteen, a little way off. The soldiers and officers were pleased to meet us. We ate some sandwiches, because excitement sharpens your appetite, and then Bormann had us escorted back to our special train.
Next morning we were playing guessing games: which of us had Hitler liked best? We thought he would choose by our appearance, and were rather upset when Bormann told us next day it wasn’t as simple as that, we must wait to take a dictation test. The staff of the Führer’s special train, and some men from the restricted area who sometimes came round now that they knew there were some girls worth visiting in it, did assure me that I had a good chance of becoming Hitler’s secretary, first because he had a liking for Munich and Munich girls, and second because I looked like Eva Braun. But as I never do well in exams, I thought my prospects rather poor in view of the coming dictation test.
The few days we were originally supposed to stay had lengthened into several weeks, and no one could tell when Hitler would have time for the dictation tests. We had to wait until he really did have something to dictate. By now we were sometimes being called in to help the two old secretaries, who were busy making lists of Christmas presents and Christmas bonuses. We made several snowmen, which were demolished again next day by the commandant of Führer headquarters because he thought they were too frivolous for these surroundings, and we had some keenly contested snowball fights.
And guess what – the fateful summons came after one of those snowball fights, when I was sitting in my compartment in the train with my face flushed and my hair all wet.
I and a colleague – a pretty blonde girl who also came from the Führer’s Adjutancy Office – were told to come and take dictation. We felt very excited again as we went over to the Führer bunker, taking the same route as before.
I was to be the first sacrificial lamb, and if I failed Fräulein Böttcher was to step in. After we had waited a few minutes Linge took me into the study again, announced me to Hitler, and this time the door closed behind me and I was alone with him.
I noticed that he wore glasses. An old-fashioned, cheap pair of glasses with a nickel-rimmed frame – or I suppose it could have been platinum, but it wasn’t showy anyway.
He shook hands with me again and took me over to a desk with a typewriter on it near his own. While I took the cover off the machine and adjusted the paper, he explained in kindly tones, as if speaking to a child about to have her photograph taken: ‘There’s no need to be nervous, I make more mistakes in my own dictation than you possibly could!’
I assured him that I wasn’t nervous, but my hands gave me away, because when he finally began on the first sentence my fingers were trembling so badly that I didn’t hit a single correct key. I stared in horror at that first line, which looked like something in Chinese, and desperately tried not to lose the thread of the dictation and to calm my hands down.
At that moment there was a knock on the door and the valet announced the envoy Hewel, 8 who was liaison officer between Hitler and Ribbentrop. 9 Hewel had a short discussion with