The Blind Spot - Hitler's Secretary is a fascinating documentary with interviews of
Traudl Junge who was one of Hitler's private secretaries from 1942 thru the end of WWII. She was 22 when she began working for him.
She did not give many interviews in her long life, the ones in this documentary occurred at the end of her life. She died the night the documentary premiered.
I transcribed some of her quotes -
That can only happen when a tyrannical system is so well established that it can dominate the entire fabric of society. And the Germans are good at organizing.
Interviewer - "Peoples consciences too?"
Yes, that is an example where Hitler did a huge amount of harm. He actually tried to manipulate the consciences of the German people. He convinced them they had a task to do, they had to exterminate the Jews, because the Jews caused all our problems. It wasn't Hitler's own idea, it had been put forward much earlier. They had to make a sacrifice.
And I can remember a writer, she interviewed a soldier who had been stationed at a concentration camp. He was a guard, and she asked him: "Didn't you feel any pity at all for the people you treated so badly there?" And he replied, "Yes, I certainly did feel pity for them but I had to overcome it, That was a sacrifice I had to make for the greater cause".
And that's what happened to conscience. After all, Hitler always used to say: "You don't have to worry, any of you, you just do whatever I say, and I'll take responsibility". As if anyone can take charge of another person's conscience. I do think you can make someone's conscience more sensitive or desensitize it, or manipulate it.
You know, I never had the feeling that he was conscious of pursuing criminal aims. For him the were ideals, for him they were great goals. And human life meant nothing to him in comparison.
After the July 20 attempt on his life -
His hair was standing on end, his trousers were hanging in tatters, but he greeted us with an almost triumphant smile and said: "I have been saved. Destiny has chosen me, Providence has preserved me. It is a sign that I must see my mission through to the end".
Her perspective late in life about Hitler and her WWII opinion of him -
Today there is no doubt about it, I have to say he was an absolute criminal. He was a criminal, it's just that I didn't realize it. At some point afterward I began to wonder if I should have seen that.
I was only 13 years old when he came onto the scene and I was quite late developing in lots of ways. And after all, apart from me there were millions who didn't see that. I mean it is not as though everyone apart from me realized what a criminal he was, and I try to take some heart in those thoughts.
The only time she heard of Hitler being confronted about the treatment of the Jews -
Once Frau von Schirach was a guest , she was on fairly cordial terms with Hitler and she suddenly raised the subject. She told the Fuhrer directly that it was quite terrible the ways Jews were treated in Amsterdam. They were packed into trains she said, and it was an inhumane way to behave.
It must have made him very angry and he said to her, "Don't interfere in things you don't understand, this mawkishness and sentimentality." He was really quite annoyed, he walked right out of the room and didn't return. And Frau Schirach was never invited to the Berghof again.
Traudl Junge, secretary, born 1920; died February 10 2002