As exits go, that of Traudl Junge was timed to exquisite perfection. Her life was largely one in which infamy was overlaid by obscurity. Then, for a brief few days, she was accorded something approaching global fame. And, in the midst of it, on February 10th at the age of 81, she died.
Traudl Junge was one of Adolf Hitler's secretaries. She took down his last will and testament. She was in his bunker when he committed suicide in 1945. Her book, Through The Final Hours, which was based on notes she compiled in 1946, has just been published.
She died hours after a long-awaited and widely publicised documentary on her life was given its première at the Berlin Film Festival. With masterly ambiguity, the documentary, by André Heller, was called Blind Spot - a title that did justice both to her claims to have been kept in the dark, and the belief of many historians that she and others close to Hitler suffered from an entirely self-induced amnesia.
Traudl 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 six million 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."
Traudl Junge was born Gertraud Humps in Munich. She had wanted to be a ballet dancer, but when she heard of a vacancy in the Chancellery, she played up her typing and shorthand skills to land the job. "I thought I would be at the source of all information. But I was really in a blind spot," she said in the documentary.
In December 1942, she became the youngest of the Nazi dictator's personal secretaries. "He was a pleasant older man who welcomed us with real friendliness," she said of their first meeting. Among her recollections of the Führer was that he did not like cut flowers because, he said, he did not want to be "surrounded by corpses".
In 1943, she married one of Hitler's aides, Hans Junge. He was killed a year later when a British plane strafed his company in Normandy.
The young widow joined Hitler and his staff when they moved into an underground bunker in Berlin in January 1945. She recalled Hitler sitting for long periods of time, just staring into the distance. Meals were no longer served regularly, and people even began to smoke in the Führer's presence.
"It was a terrible time. I can't really remember my feelings. We were all in a state of shock, like machines," she said.
After the war, she was taken into custody by the Red Army, then the Americans. After being interrogated and spending about six months in prison, she was released. She continued to work in Germany as a secretary, and later as a science reporter.
Othmar Schmiderer, the producer of the documentary, was among the last people to speak to her. He quoted her as saying: "Now that I've let go of my story, I can let go of my life."
She had no children, but is survived by a sister who lives in Australia.
Traudl Junge: born 1920; died, February 2002