Hitler's last Secretary - Hardcover

Traudl Junge

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1611454034 ISBN 13: 9781611454031

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 2011

Synopsis

n 1942 Germany, Traudl Junge was a young woman with dreams of becoming a ballerina when she was offered the chance of a lifetime. At the age of 22, she became private secretary to Adolf Hitler, and served him for two and a half years, right up to the bitter end. Her memoir, written not long after the war but set aside until recently, offers a unique view of the human face of this man known to posterity as a Adolf Hitler.

About this title

About the Author:

Traudl Junge was born in Munich in 1920. From the end of 1942 until April 1945 she was Hitler’s private secretary. After the war she was sent to a Russian prison camp and later returned to Germany. She died on February 10, 2002, shortly after the publication of the German edition of her book.

Review:

Like her infamous employer, author Junge struggled with unfulfilled artistic dreams: she traveled to Berlin in 1942 to pursue a career as a dancer and ended up taking dictation for Adolf Hitler. "There were very few days when I didn t see Hitler, talk to him, work with him or share meals with him," she remembers. Junge s account, undoubtedly a primer on the so-called "banality of evil," is a detailed, efficient and humorless memoir of the three years she spent as Hitler s secretary. Her tale full of trivial tidbits and, often interchangeably, chilling observations draws a picture of a man at once astonishingly uninspired, quixotic and devoted to his cause. It also documents how the Fuhrer served as a father figure to Junge, whose own parents were divorced. She reveals that her post-war disdain for Hitler resembled that of an abandoned child: she hated him after his death, she says, "for his failures." This moral equivocation may seem disturbing in hindsight, but the irony of Junge s proximity to Hitler was that she was all but shielded from the heinous realities of the war. The most compelling part of this memoir comes near the end when, upon escaping Berlin after the Allied advance in 1945, Junge makes her way from village to village, encountering the remnants of battles. This picture of a fugitive literally running away from herself suggests why Junge, unable to fully accept the nature of her complicity with the Reich, took 30 years to write her story; it also proves far more interesting than learning what Hitler ate for breakfast. 15 photos. --From Publishers Weekly

recommended to anyone interested in modern euorpean history.Brings to life the confines of the Hitler circle from a birds eye point of view, Comment | --Heather Caselaw

Very interesting and factual account of the lifestyle of Hitler and his last days from his secretary. Very interesting if you enjoy that era of history --Colin

About this edition

• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1611454034
• ISBN 13: 9781611454031
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 261
• Editor: Melisa Muller