Traudl Junge, one of the few young women who served as Hitler's secretaries during the war and through the cataclysmic demise of the Third Reich and its founder in a besieged Berlin bunker, died on the day this documentary was premiered. Junge was no stranger to interviews and the camera. In fact this articulate woman appeared in several documentaries long before this minimalist film in which she is the only person on screen and, in fact, is the sole speaker except for a few questions posed by an off-screen interlocutor.
Because of her typing skills she was offered the position of working directly for Hitler by the fuehrer himself. This brought her into close, indeed daily, proximity with high-ranking Nazis as well as characters such as Eva Braun and the family members and hangers-on of the regime. Junge herself maintains that she was apolitical and viewed the job offer as an exciting opportunity, not a chance to serve the Party or its ideology.
Junge frequently refers to Hitler as a criminal and ponders her own involvement and whether she is guilty of anything because of her association. She maintains she knew nothing about the extermination camps and remarks that Jews were rarely referred to in any context at Hitler's headquarters. Some have feared that her comments, clearly not disingenuous, will fuel revisionist Holocaust deniers in their sick quest to absolve Hitler and the Nazis. In fact, however, many other accounts have long supported Junge's statements that the fervent anti-Semitism of the Nazis wasn't on display for those visiting or working with Hitler. She recalls that one woman visitor asked Hitler about the cruel packing of Jews into trains for deportation and he angrily told her, basically, to mind her own business. She was never invited to his headquarters again.
The one-time secretary admits she initially much admired Hitler who often addressed her and the other female office workers as "my child ("mein kind"). She describes his manner as gentle and very different from the filmed rally and Reichstag harangues all today have seen. In fact Junge never attended any of the military conferences held near where she worked where Hitler's histrionic displays were always on offer and where his screaming, berating of generals was routine.
Junge was present on 20 July when the attempt on Hitler's life failed and she saw him in tattered clothes shortly after the bomb explosion. Her closest association with the Third Reich's leader came during the final days when the Red Army slowly encircled and then took Berlin. Her description of life in the bunker and Hitler's slow slide into defeatism is neither new nor analytical - there are many other accounts of Hitler and his entourage in the bunker. But she speaks with a clear memory, cogently and not unemotionally.
Junge is strong voiced and clear-minded and she betrays little deep emotion. The one point where she loses her composure is as she describes getting food for propaganda minister Goebbel's six little girls, the oldest only ten, while their parents prepared to murder them in the belief they would have no worthwhile life after the Nazi defeat. A microcosm of Nazi madness, the killing of these six innocent children has always disturbed me.
Directors Andre Heller and Othmar Schmiderer employed a wholly minimalist approach. Their subject occupies the screen entirely during the interviews which spanned a number of sessions. They decided, correctly in my view, to let her narrative totally dominate where many documentarians would have interweaved film illustrating the events she experienced. This approach may bore some but listening to Junge for eighty-plus minutes actually is a very absorbing and intense experience.
A book containing Junge's reminiscences has just been published.
Students of Nazism and the war won't learn anything new here but Junge's testament as a witness to Hitler in his headquarters is a valuable insight.
9/10.
Because of her typing skills she was offered the position of working directly for Hitler by the fuehrer himself. This brought her into close, indeed daily, proximity with high-ranking Nazis as well as characters such as Eva Braun and the family members and hangers-on of the regime. Junge herself maintains that she was apolitical and viewed the job offer as an exciting opportunity, not a chance to serve the Party or its ideology.
Junge frequently refers to Hitler as a criminal and ponders her own involvement and whether she is guilty of anything because of her association. She maintains she knew nothing about the extermination camps and remarks that Jews were rarely referred to in any context at Hitler's headquarters. Some have feared that her comments, clearly not disingenuous, will fuel revisionist Holocaust deniers in their sick quest to absolve Hitler and the Nazis. In fact, however, many other accounts have long supported Junge's statements that the fervent anti-Semitism of the Nazis wasn't on display for those visiting or working with Hitler. She recalls that one woman visitor asked Hitler about the cruel packing of Jews into trains for deportation and he angrily told her, basically, to mind her own business. She was never invited to his headquarters again.
The one-time secretary admits she initially much admired Hitler who often addressed her and the other female office workers as "my child ("mein kind"). She describes his manner as gentle and very different from the filmed rally and Reichstag harangues all today have seen. In fact Junge never attended any of the military conferences held near where she worked where Hitler's histrionic displays were always on offer and where his screaming, berating of generals was routine.
Junge was present on 20 July when the attempt on Hitler's life failed and she saw him in tattered clothes shortly after the bomb explosion. Her closest association with the Third Reich's leader came during the final days when the Red Army slowly encircled and then took Berlin. Her description of life in the bunker and Hitler's slow slide into defeatism is neither new nor analytical - there are many other accounts of Hitler and his entourage in the bunker. But she speaks with a clear memory, cogently and not unemotionally.
Junge is strong voiced and clear-minded and she betrays little deep emotion. The one point where she loses her composure is as she describes getting food for propaganda minister Goebbel's six little girls, the oldest only ten, while their parents prepared to murder them in the belief they would have no worthwhile life after the Nazi defeat. A microcosm of Nazi madness, the killing of these six innocent children has always disturbed me.
Directors Andre Heller and Othmar Schmiderer employed a wholly minimalist approach. Their subject occupies the screen entirely during the interviews which spanned a number of sessions. They decided, correctly in my view, to let her narrative totally dominate where many documentarians would have interweaved film illustrating the events she experienced. This approach may bore some but listening to Junge for eighty-plus minutes actually is a very absorbing and intense experience.
A book containing Junge's reminiscences has just been published.
Students of Nazism and the war won't learn anything new here but Junge's testament as a witness to Hitler in his headquarters is a valuable insight.
9/10.