Hitler's secretary describes power of Fuehrer's rule

BERLIN -- During Traudl Junge's three years as one of Adolf Hitler's secretaries, most of Europe's Jews died at the hands of the Nazis and World War II was at its height.

In a new documentary, Junge, now an ailing 81-year-old, admits she was taken with the magnetic power of Hitler when, at 22, she applied for the job. It was only after the war, when she learned what many already knew, that she felt wracked with guilt for having liked the "greatest criminal who ever lived."

"Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary," presented this week at the Berlin International Film Festival, shows an elegant, white-haired Junge lucidly recalling in an interview in her one-room Munich apartment the events of more than 50 years ago. An official at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Nazi watchdog group, said Junge's gullibility was symptomatic of attitudes in Germany during Hitler's rule.

"The important thing here is not whether she knew what was happening or heard it mentioned. Those crimes were definitely committed. 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," said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israeli office of the Wiesenthal Center.

Austrian director Andre Heller culled 10 hours of interviews for the 90-minute film, in which Junge insists she was insulated from the Nazi terror despite having close contact to Hitler, held responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.

Hitler and other Nazi leaders "practically never mentioned the word Jew" during scores of meetings she attended, Junge said. Instead, she recalls life in Hitler's inner circle as a "harmless and peaceful atmosphere" -- except during the chaotic final days when the Red Army moved in on his Berlin bunker and Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945.

As Hitler faced Germany's defeat, the illusion was shattered. "He said it was all over," said Junge. Two days before Hitler and his longtime mistress Eva Braun killed themselves, as the bunker shook with the explosions of shells from advancing Soviet troops, Hitler asked Junge to take down his last will and testament.