Traudl Junge

Secretary to Adolf Hitler (1920-2002)

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Lived 1920–2002, aged 82Germany

Germany WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
42 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1920–2002
Aged 82
Known for
Downfall
2004

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

She typed the dictator's last will and testament, then stayed in the bunker until the end — the secretary who saw Hitler's final hours and spent decades afterward trying to reckon with what she'd been too young, or too incurious, to see.

Biography

About

Gertraud Junge was twenty-two when she became Adolf Hitler's private secretary in December 1942. She worked at his side until April 1945, typing his will in the Führerbunker before remaining there through his death. Arrested in June 1945, she was interrogated by both Soviet and American forces, then released to rebuild a quiet life in West Germany. For decades she worked as a secretary and said little. In old age she published her memoirs, confessing not to active complicity but to a failure of curiosity — a young woman who claimed ignorance of the atrocities unfolding around her, yet blamed h…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Traudl Junge

Traudl Junge

said14 Feb 2002

Now that I've let go of my story, I can let go of my life.

— As quoted in her obituary in The Guardian (14 February 2002).

Traudl Junge

saidundated

Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply.

— On her emotions on learning she was the same age as a famous martyr of the White Rose anti-Nazi activist group, in Im toten Winkel -

Traudl Junge

saidundated