Free Hitler's Last Secretary by Traudl Junge Page B

one of the Wehrmacht adjutants came in with a message. The Führer never forgot that Blondi would need to go out, and would tell Linge to take the dog out of the train next time it stopped. Hitler called everyone simply by his surname, without any title. He would say, for instance: ‘Linge, take Blondi out.’ And then, after a while, he asked: ‘What’s the time, Bormann?’ It was about one-thirty in the morning. He asked Schaub again what time we would reach Munich next day, and rang for his valet. The conversation was over, and it looked as if we were to disperse. Linge had to go and find out if there were any reports of air raids, and when he came back to say there weren’t Hitler rose, shook hands with everyone and withdrew.
Suddenly I wasn’t tired any more. The coffee had woken me up. We all went back to our compartments, but stopped in the dining car to smoke a quick cigarette, and I sat for a while with Hewel and Lorenz. Then I went to bed and slept until the sound of footsteps hurrying up and down the corridor woke me. When I raised the blackout blinds I saw the sun shining on snow-covered trees. We were going to reach Munich about twelve noon.
It was nine o’clock now. I quickly dressed and went to have breakfast. People were talking about the Berghof and Eva Braun. She was to join the train in Munich and travel on to the Berghof with us. Of course I was tremendously interested in her and her relationship with Hitler. Junge, with whom I was getting on very well – I liked his company – told me she was mistress of the Berghof, and tacitly accepted as such by all the guests there. I should be prepared, he said, for the fact that the Berghof was the Führer’s private house, and we must all consider ourselves his guests and would be eating with him. However, ‘all’ meant quite a small circle; the rest of the staff would be staying in the buildings near and around the Berghof, and the Reich Chancellery and Wehrmacht leadership departments were quartered in Berchtesgaden.
First, however, we were to spend a day in Munich. I could hardly bear to sit still any more. We were approaching our journey’s end, and I was looking forward so much to seeing my family again. I hadn’t been home for six months. At last we steamed into Munich Central station, and the train came to a halt without a jolt, as smoothly as it had brought us all this way. The train carrying the rest of the staff that had left headquarters in East Prussia about half an hour before us was standing empty and deserted at the next platform. When the passengers got out of the guest carriages and went through the barrier there was no sign of the Führer. He had left the train first, got straight into his car and was driven away.
There was no other barrier, and no soldiers on guard or crowds of people either. Hitler had gone to his private rooms on Prinzre-gentplatz, and I hurried to see my mother so that at last I could tell her in person everything that had happened to me. She wasn’t at all enthusiastic, and I think she would much rather I’d stayed in a modest little job in Munich and known none of this excitement and magnificence. Her maternal instincts saw all kinds of dangers lying in wait for me, some of them moral but some life-threatening. However, I had plunged headlong into the whirl of events without a thought, happy to have escaped the boring life of an office worker and hungry for experience.
The day passed quickly, and I had to go back to the station that evening. We set off again quietly when darkness had fallen. I didn’t catch sight of the Führer again until we reached Liefering, a little place near Salzburg. There I was just in time to see the lights of the black Mercedes driving away fast towards the Obersalzberg, a long column of cars behind it, with the other secretaries and me in them too. We were driving towards the silhouettes of the mountain peaks, and soon the road, which was deep in snow, began winding uphill. A long