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Loading... Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary (2002)by Traudl Junge
THE WAR ROOM (516) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Traudl Junge var blott 22 år och drömde om en karriär som dansös då hon fick sitt livs chans: att bli Adolf Hitlers sekreterare. Från 1942 till Hitlers självmord i bunkern i april 1945 fanns hon alltid vid hans sida. Det var Traudl Junge som renskrev Hitlers tal och brev - till och med hans testamente. A fascinating memoir from someone who spent a lot of time with Hitler, right up to the end. The everyday details are mesmerizing. It seems the writer existed on a slightly detached plane - maybe a defense mechanism, maybe just innocence or ignorance. It is only long afterwards that anything approaching guilt affects the writer. It is difficult to know how to judge someone in this position. What would most us have done? Junge was Hitler's personal secretary from 1942 to the end in the bunker in Berlin in 1945. Never interested in politics, she never realized what the Nazi's were really doing until after the war. She admits she was mesmerized by Hitler who to her was a warm caring man who almost treated her like his daughter. She writes about Hitler and his entourage as they enjoyed a life that was unavailable to the average German citizen. She only realized the difference when she went to Munich to visit her mother and saw the bomb damage and the people seeking food and new housing. She tried to ask Hitler about what he was doing about it but he did not seem interested and as far she could see, he never saw a bombed German city in daylight. She was there in the bunker when Hitler and Braun committed suicide, Hitler gave her a pill to end her life if she wished although he gave her permission to flee. Eventually captured by the Russians, she eventually made it back to Munich where she made a career as a writer and editor although her personal life never lived up to her hopes. If you wish to find out what went on in the Wolf's Lair or Berchtesgaden, here is a good source. As well, Junge describes the regulars in Hitler's entourage and often explains why she did not like an individual.
Until the Final Hour is a remarkable historical document [...] But more than this, it is another painful reminder of how it is possible for a person - or even an entire nation - to sleepwalk slowly into sin. You put the book down and your skin prickles with the knowledge that, out in the world, there will always be invisible lines to be crossed. Mistakes: how easily they are made. Belongs to Publisher SeriesList Taschenbuch (60470)
References to this work on external resources. Wikipedia in English (16)Traudl Junge (then Humps) was 22 years old and dreamt of a career as a ballerina, until the 'opportunity of her life' beckoned. Adolf Hitler appointed this young secretary to his private office and from 1942 until his death she was at his side in the bunker, typing his correspondence, his speeches and even his last private and political will and testament. 'I was 22 and I didn't know anything about politics, it didn't interest me, ' she claims. It was apparently only after the war that this young woman began to realise what had happened and the horrible reality began to dawn on her. She was wracked with guilt for 'liking the greatest criminal ever to have lived.' She'd found him a 'pleasant older man and a good employer'. Her journal, written in 1947, recounts her mostly mundane time typing, making tea, until the coldness of the bunker, the building sense of despair and doom as the war progressed. The journal is topped and tailed with a preface and an afterword, co-written by Melissa Muller, giving the background to the story, the rest of Traudl's unhappy life and her feelings of guilt over her naive actions." No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)943.086History and Geography Europe Germany and central Europe Historical periods of Germany Germany 1866- Third Reich 1933-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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