BLIND SPOT -- HITLER'S SECRETARY", a new 90 minute documentary film from Austria by Andre Heller, is the ultimate statement on the 'banality of evil' and has created a minor sensation at the 52nd Berlin Film Festival. The film consists entirely of a monologue by 81 year old TRAUDL JUNGE who was Hitler's private secretary from autumn 1942, when she was 22, until the final days in the Berlin Bunker ending with Hitler's suicide and the debacle of April 30, 1945. Every normal human eye has a certain point (called in German the "Der Tote Winkel", or dead corner") where no image registers and it is this "blind spot" which Ms. Junge invokes as the metaphor for her own inability to see the incredible evil of the infamous man she was in daily contact with for two and a half years, perceiving him only as a kindly gentlemen and sympathetic employer, while all the time feeling herself privileged to be working for such a "great man".
What is striking in the film is the vividness of her memory, her near total recall, and total refusal to gild the lily or make excuses for the fact that she was entirely taken in by Hitler's personal charisma.
Among details she reveals are many which we would perhaps prefer not to believe -- In person Hitler was a man full of warm "Austrian charm", soft-spoken, polite and very considerate to the female members on his staff. He employed cute Austrian colloquialisms like 'nimmermehr' and never rolled his Rs stridently in private as he did in his public speeches. He was a strict vegetarian and didn't smoke or use alcohol, and in general presented a healthy, well-groomed appearance. Most of the dictation Ms. Junge took was personal including answers to love letters from Hitler's hordes of female admirers! Politics were never discussed in her presence, and the word "Jude" (Jew) was never mentioned.
She was with Hitler at his Wolf's Lair HQ in East Prussia at the time of the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944. When Hitler miraculously escaped with only minor lesions from a bomb blast during a strategy conference at the lair. Traudl was greatly relieved for he had by this time become a complete father figure to her.
Convinced that the war was already lost and that Hitler was only leading them on to destruction, a group of his own officers hatched the plot and planted the bomb. The miracle was that the meeting was transferred at the last minute from a concrete bunker, where everyone in the room would have been killed, to a flimsy wooden barracks where the force of the explosion was dissipated. Moreover, the bomb was hastily placed under a heavy wooden table which further shielded Hitler from its effect. Instead of realizing that things were now going haywire, Hitler took this as a sign that he was under divine protection and was more convinced than ever of ultimate victory. It was at this point, observes Junge, that Hitler began to lose his grip on reality. "He no longer had his feet on solid ground" is the way she puts it.
The last third of the film is an hour-by-hour account of the mounting despair in the bunker as the Russians approach and all hope of escape evaporates. Watching this lovable elderly woman reliving the ghastly experience she went through 56 years before as though it were yesterday becomes a hypnotic ordeal for the viewer. The German audience I watched it with was totally entranced to put it mildly. Breathless pin-drop silence all the way.
Finally Hitler announces he is going to shoot himself and asks Eva Braun to leave but she insists on staying with him to the bitter end. He calls in a magistrate and officially marries her on the eve of destruction. She proudly walks before all remaining members of Hitler's entourage, and says, "Now you can call me Frau Hitler". Until then she had been addressed as "Fraulein Braun".
Cyanide capsules are distributed to all those who choose to remain, but Hitler has now become so paranoid that he doesn't even trust the poison -- thinking someone might try to drug him and deliver him to the allies -- so he tests it out on his beloved canine, Goldie. The dog dies immediately as the smell of bitter almonds fills the room. The atmosphere has now become surrealistic but a semblance of life goes on as the topic of conversation turns to the most effective and painless ways of committing suicide. To illustrate the changed atmosphere, Junge points out that people for the very first time began to smoke in the führer's presence. After Mme. Goebbels poisons her six children "to save them from the shame of growing up in post-Nazi Germany" Trudl's love for "father Hitler" suddenly turns to hate and she wanders out of the bunker into the hell fire of the final day. Immediately after the nightmare of the bunker she was briefly interned by the Americans but released when it was determined that she had no political leanings whatsoever.
Heller does not "embellish" the film with archival footage which only serves to make the confessional monologue even more powerful. What she is talking about is in itself so monumental it needs no embellishment. The only "device" he employs is to show Ms.Junge watching previously recorded segments of her interviews, which sets off additional commentary on her own original comments, but this effect is sparingly used and does not detract.
This is a mind-boggling story told by a magnificent old woman. Sadly, two days after the world premiere here in Berlin of "IM TOTEN WINKEL" Traudl Junge, terminally ill with cancer, died in hospital at age 82 -- the very last eye-witness to the incredible last years and last days of Adolph Hitler. We can only hope that she died finally at peace with herself. ALEX, BERLIN: FEB: 17, 2002
What is striking in the film is the vividness of her memory, her near total recall, and total refusal to gild the lily or make excuses for the fact that she was entirely taken in by Hitler's personal charisma.
Among details she reveals are many which we would perhaps prefer not to believe -- In person Hitler was a man full of warm "Austrian charm", soft-spoken, polite and very considerate to the female members on his staff. He employed cute Austrian colloquialisms like 'nimmermehr' and never rolled his Rs stridently in private as he did in his public speeches. He was a strict vegetarian and didn't smoke or use alcohol, and in general presented a healthy, well-groomed appearance. Most of the dictation Ms. Junge took was personal including answers to love letters from Hitler's hordes of female admirers! Politics were never discussed in her presence, and the word "Jude" (Jew) was never mentioned.
She was with Hitler at his Wolf's Lair HQ in East Prussia at the time of the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944. When Hitler miraculously escaped with only minor lesions from a bomb blast during a strategy conference at the lair. Traudl was greatly relieved for he had by this time become a complete father figure to her.
Convinced that the war was already lost and that Hitler was only leading them on to destruction, a group of his own officers hatched the plot and planted the bomb. The miracle was that the meeting was transferred at the last minute from a concrete bunker, where everyone in the room would have been killed, to a flimsy wooden barracks where the force of the explosion was dissipated. Moreover, the bomb was hastily placed under a heavy wooden table which further shielded Hitler from its effect. Instead of realizing that things were now going haywire, Hitler took this as a sign that he was under divine protection and was more convinced than ever of ultimate victory. It was at this point, observes Junge, that Hitler began to lose his grip on reality. "He no longer had his feet on solid ground" is the way she puts it.
The last third of the film is an hour-by-hour account of the mounting despair in the bunker as the Russians approach and all hope of escape evaporates. Watching this lovable elderly woman reliving the ghastly experience she went through 56 years before as though it were yesterday becomes a hypnotic ordeal for the viewer. The German audience I watched it with was totally entranced to put it mildly. Breathless pin-drop silence all the way.
Finally Hitler announces he is going to shoot himself and asks Eva Braun to leave but she insists on staying with him to the bitter end. He calls in a magistrate and officially marries her on the eve of destruction. She proudly walks before all remaining members of Hitler's entourage, and says, "Now you can call me Frau Hitler". Until then she had been addressed as "Fraulein Braun".
Cyanide capsules are distributed to all those who choose to remain, but Hitler has now become so paranoid that he doesn't even trust the poison -- thinking someone might try to drug him and deliver him to the allies -- so he tests it out on his beloved canine, Goldie. The dog dies immediately as the smell of bitter almonds fills the room. The atmosphere has now become surrealistic but a semblance of life goes on as the topic of conversation turns to the most effective and painless ways of committing suicide. To illustrate the changed atmosphere, Junge points out that people for the very first time began to smoke in the führer's presence. After Mme. Goebbels poisons her six children "to save them from the shame of growing up in post-Nazi Germany" Trudl's love for "father Hitler" suddenly turns to hate and she wanders out of the bunker into the hell fire of the final day. Immediately after the nightmare of the bunker she was briefly interned by the Americans but released when it was determined that she had no political leanings whatsoever.
Heller does not "embellish" the film with archival footage which only serves to make the confessional monologue even more powerful. What she is talking about is in itself so monumental it needs no embellishment. The only "device" he employs is to show Ms.Junge watching previously recorded segments of her interviews, which sets off additional commentary on her own original comments, but this effect is sparingly used and does not detract.
This is a mind-boggling story told by a magnificent old woman. Sadly, two days after the world premiere here in Berlin of "IM TOTEN WINKEL" Traudl Junge, terminally ill with cancer, died in hospital at age 82 -- the very last eye-witness to the incredible last years and last days of Adolph Hitler. We can only hope that she died finally at peace with herself. ALEX, BERLIN: FEB: 17, 2002