Blind Spot: Hitler's secretary

I just watched Blind Spot: Hitler's secretary, which is widely available on DVD. Released in 2002, it's an interview with Traudl Junge, who was one of Hitler's secretaries from December 1942 until the end of the Third Reich, in late April 1945. Her experience is also told in movie format, in The Downfall. Both Blind Spot and Downfall are in German with English subtitles. I highly recommend both.

Traudl Junge, 1945

Born Traudl Humps, she's pictured here
after marrying Hans Junge, an aide to Hitler

Junge in 2001 or 2002

Junge's grave marker in Bavaria, Germany

This material is from Blind Spot:

He was an absolute criminal. He was a criminal -- I just didn't realize it. At some point afterwards I began to wonder if I should have seen that. But then I think I was only 13 years old when he first came on the scene, and I was quite late in developing in lots of ways. And after all, apart from me there were millions who didn't see that. I mean, it's not as though everyone apart from me realized what a criminal he was. And I try to take heart from those thoughts.

[...]

And Hitler did somehow embody something monumental, at first, when I was a child. The first time I met him he probably had a kind of paternal, protective attitude towards me, too, and that's something I had longed for. I'd never been able to follow my own inclinations, and I'd never had that feeling of security in a complete family.

[...]

Now, I'd only ever seen him in newsreels and public appearances. So I knew his military expression, with his arm outstretched. And then a kindly old gentleman came up to us, speaking in a low voice and giving us a friendly smile. He shook hands with each of us, looked straight into our eyes with that famous gaze of his, asked our names, said a few words to us with a sort of friendly, paternal air. And then he disappeared again. When he went, he just said, "Good evening."

The experience of meeting him was completely different than I had imagined beforehand. It wasn't at all frightening and there was a harmless, peaceful atmosphere.

[...]

(The first meeting with Hitler) was quite exciting. Suddenly there I was, little Traudl Humps, sitting opposite the Fuhrer. And the Fuhrer himself, whatever you thought about him, was a great man in those days. It was such an extraordinary situation, so incredible, such an adventure.

[...]

You know, I never had the feeling that (Hitler) was conscious of pursuing criminal aims. For him they were ideals. For him they were great goals. And human life meant nothing to him in comparison. But that only became so apparent to me afterwards. You see, in the inner circle surrounding him, he was shielded from the megalomaniac projects and the barbaric measures. That was the awful thing, that's what gave me such a shock later, when I realized what had been happening.

When I started working there I thought I was at the source of information, and in fact, I was in a blind spot. In an explosion, there's one place where calmness reigns. And that was the great illusion, the great, not disappointment, but the great lie that I had made myself believe.

[...]

That same man who made speeches, when I think back, with that rolling "R", and all that roaring and clipping his words -- I never heard him speak like that in private. He could speak in such a flattering -- such a modulated tone. In his private life he had that gentle Austrian intonation, too, and he used some words that were typically Austrian. For example, "nimmermehr", or "nevermore", isn't used in Bavaria or the rest of Germany. "I heard it nevermore." And things like that did fascinate me, really, the courteous manner he displayed in his private life.

She said some things that go towards answering my Questions 1, 7, & 14 (these are questions I would like answered by this blog):

1. How could the German people follow Hitler? It seems an excellent question, considering he was largely a dictator by consent, as opposed to the likes of Saddam Hussein, who massacred all opposition on a single day, in a single setting, and then only maintained power through terror.

7. What did the average German think of Hitler? I ask this because nearly everyone at the time either said nothing as they went about their daily lives, or they spoke in favor. As we have seen with other dictators, such as Saddam Hussein, a public position in favor of the dictator is often the opposite of the private feelings. Only fear causes the public statements of support.

14. Who is the real Hitler? This may be the most interesting question for me. Hitler's public image, one that was carefully designed for public consumption, seems to be at odds with the private Hitler. Most people believe Hitler a lunatic, which is the version we see in Nazi propaganda films, but a wealth of information has been coming out for the last thirty years which suggests a very sane Hitler (with the understanding that one who commits mass murder and lusts for world domination is insane by any measure of the concept).

Here's from Junge's obituary in The Guardian, February 2002:

With masterly ambiguity, the documentary, by the multi-talented André Heller, was called Blind Spot - a title that did justice both to Junge's claims to have been kept in the dark and the belief of many historians that she and others close to the Führer suffered from an entirely self-induced amnesia.

Junge insisted that Hitler and other Nazi leaders "practically never mentioned the word Jew" in her presence, even though it was while she was working for the Führer that his regime killed most of the 6m Jews who died in the Holocaust. She said she only found out about the Holocaust after the war, and then felt wracked with guilt for having liked "the greatest criminal who ever lived".

Among those who scorned her claims were staff at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. After Heller's film was screened in Berlin, Efraim Zuroff, director of the centre's office in Israel, said: "Her story reflects the blind loyalty of far too many Germans whose allegiance to Hitler and the Nazi party enabled the implementation of the final solution."

Links
Blind Spot at IMDB
The Downfall at IMDB
Traudl Junge's memoirs at Amazon
Traudl Junge's obituary in The Guardian
Review of The Downfall in the San Francisco Chronicle