Saturday Matinee: Old Gossip

History Daily

This episode explores the life of Traudl Junge, who served as Adolf Hitler's personal secretary. It traces her journey from an indifferent y

Key takeaways

• Traudl Junge was not a member of the Nazi Party but became part of Hitler's inner circle via connections to Albert Bormann.
• She lived in high-security locations like the Wolf's Lair and the Berghof, often unaware of the true scale of the Holocaust.

Main topics

• Biography of Traudl Junge
• Life in Nazi Germany

Notable quotes

I asked the man no questions. And what really matters is that I asked myself no questions either.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a cautionary tale about how passive ignorance ca

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:07) You know when you get talking to a friend or maybe someone you just met at a party. Someone who you know pretty well, but not that well. But then they start talking, and at first you're nodding along because it's polite. And you're at a party, and that's what you do. Maybe you just finished boring everyone with a story about work, and now it's your turn to sit quietly and listen. It's a social transaction, but one you don't really expect to be valuable. But then, oh my, does this person start telling a story? It starts off prosaic, just like yours, but then it takes a turn. Wait a minute. This is no ordinary, isn't-that-so-funny story that isn't all that funny, really. This is turning into an adventure. So your eyes grow wider. Your lips part. You lean in. What is going to happen next? This is the power of good gossip. You don't even need to know the people involved. It's the story, the oh-my-goodness-that-did-not-just-happen plot. She did not say that. He did what? What did you do? It's riveting and irresistible. And on today's Saturday Matinee, we're bringing you an episode from a podcast that revels in spilling the tea, Old Gossip. Today we get to listen slack-jawed to the story of Traudl Junga, Hitler's secretary. and she has a lot to say. I hope you enjoy. While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow Old Gossip. We put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you. Oh, Speaker 2 (2:05) and welcome back to Old Gossip with me, your best friend, Rebecca Siegel. Today, I want to talk about something very nuanced, okay? It's juicy and it's scandalous, but it's also very complicated, and you might have mixed feelings about it, and maybe that's the point. So time for our trigger warning. I'm going to talk about Nazis and I'm going to make fun of them and you might laugh. And if you don't like that idea, laughing about the architects of the Holocaust, then I fully get it. Just hang up and I'll call you later. If though you're sticking around, let's get to it. Today, we are going to talk about a woman named Traudl Junge. She was not a high-powered Nazi. In fact, she was not even a Nazi Party member. But her story is very important because it's one of those that we don't think about very often. I mean, let me explain, okay? I think typically when we, collectively best friends, when we think about the people of Nazi Germany, we tend to think about the guys in charge, right? Like we picture guys in crisp. quasi-scary uniforms with names like, oh heck, I mean, maybe we think of a short, farty Austrian named Adolf Hitler, or a tiny little speck of a man named Josef Goebbels, or maybe we think of a big, oversized personality like Hermann Goering, right? People often think about the dudes who ran the whole sinking ship. Or Speaker 1 (3:22) maybe Speaker 2 (3:22) you might think about the people who didn't run the Nazi party, but... who were into it because it got them what they wanted. Like maybe you could think about somebody like Werner von Braun, the rocket designer who went along with Nazi war crimes because doing so allowed him to play with rockets in the way that he wanted. But like those weren't the only people in Nazi Germany. There were a ton of other groups of people there. Like some people were passive supporters. Some people were passive critics, right? It's just like today. There is a political spectrum. And Traudl-Junge is fascinating because she actually didn't care very much about politics. And yet she wound up in the literal epicenter of Nazi hierarchy, sort of on accident. Let me back up. Traudl-Junge was Speaker 1 (4:05) the Speaker 2 (4:06) cutest girl ever. She really was. She was as pretty as the day is long. She had light brown collarbone length hair that she wore curled, often kind of pinned back from her face. She had blue eyes and her celebrity lookalike is a lighter complected Judy Garland. Post Wizard of Oz, but pre A Star is Born. Now, Traudl came of age alongside the Nazi party. Like when she was born. Her maiden name was Troutal Humps, by the way. When she was born in 1920, everyone was still in absolute shambles about the way that World War I had ended. And then this guy appeared with a bad haircut and an ugly mustache who was like, hey, none of this is your fault. I'll fix everything. And Troutal's dad, who was a good-time Charlie but a bad-time dad, he bought what Hitler was selling. When she was a tiny toddler, he bebopped right out of their house to go participate in the beer hall putsch. Like, if my husband did that to me when I was home with the toddler, I would have been kind of mad because, spoiler, that event wound up being pretty violent. Anyway, her dad didn't get arrested during the beer hall push with the muckety-mucks or anything, not because he wasn't causing mayhem, just because he wasn't very important, and probably because of stuff like this. Troutle's mom divorced her dad when she was just five years old, and this is important because Troutle had a bunch of trauma and insecurities growing up. Speaker 1 (5:29) her poor Speaker 2 (5:29) mom just did not have enough money and all of Troutal's friends had dads and things were just not settled. They were not secure, you know? So she developed a personality that was super easygoing, honestly, because she had to. She learned that she had to take what she could get, be grateful for it and not be annoying because she really did not have any kind of a safety net. In 1933, Traudl was 13 and Hitler and the Nazi party took power. And then the next year he was like, call me Führer. And Traudl was aware of it, but only in the vaguest terms, truly. Like she felt proud of Germany and she was happy to have some school celebrations happening and stuff like that. But she did not think any more about it. She wasn't Jewish. Her family wasn't communist. She wasn't Roma or Sinti or gay or mentally or physically disabled. So none of this impacted her life. Also, she was just too busy with a new pet interest to think about politics because she had just started dancing and she loved it. Her little sister Inga was actually so good at dancing, definitely better than Traudl. But Traudl was like, who cares? This is still fun. Then in 1935, Traudl joined the League of German Girls. And again, I don't think she did this because she was super into national socialism. I think that she really wanted to get the brown velour alpine waistcoat uniform. And the League of German Girls didn't really do very much. They would just like march around and sometimes attend community events. It seemed like a purely social thing. And I don't think Traudl was alone in her motivations there. And then in 1938, she joined an offshoot of the League of German Girls called the Faith and Beauty Organization. And that was for older girls, girls that were 18 to 21 years old. And the description of that one feels a little bit more brainwashy. It said, quote, The task of our league is to bring up young women to pass on the national socialist faith and philosophy of life. We want to train girls who are proud to think that one day they will choose to share their lives with fighting men. We want girls who believe unreservedly in Germany and the Führer and will instill that faith into the hearts of their children. Now, yet again, Traudl didn't really care about the political stuff she was supposed to be learning in the Faith and Beauty Organization. She just liked that she got to go and learn different dances there. And she also liked going to the big Third Reich festivals and events. Now, at that point in 1938, Traudl was 18. So it's not like she was fully ignorant of the Nazi Party's existence. Like, she would hear jokes, either pro or anti-Nazi jokes, and she saw this one newspaper, it was called Der Stürmer, and it was really gross and violent and anti-Semitic, and she didn't really like seeing that. But because the party did not negatively impact her or her sister or her best friends, it just registered on a very low volume for her. Now, because her mom had approximately zero Deutschmarks, she couldn't afford to send Twoudl to the equivalent of college. And instead, she encouraged her daughter to basically go to secretarial school, you know, like the classic, reliable, boring career that no kid wants to take. But Twoudl was still on her dancing thing. She was like, no, no, I'm going to be a star. And her mom was like, sure, but why don't you work as a secretary until that happens? Traudl went to secretary school, and then she became a clerk at a metalworks company, and she hated it. Her gross coworker would follow her around showing her photos of naked women, which like, hello, that's literal harassment. But this was a long time ago, and I'm not sure workplace harassment was really in anybody's vernacular. So she ended up just quitting. And she took a couple of other typing jobs, hating them, but understanding that she needed to pay her bills. She wound up working in Munich in publishing, basically cranking out a magazine that focused on apparel tailoring. It was not a thrill ride. In 1941, she took her exams to see if she could get into a dance school, and she did so well. good on her exams. But then her boss said she couldn't quit the publishing business to go to dance school. And he was allowed to do that because it was wartime. And there was some kind of wartime work regulation happening that made it legal for him to make her stay on at her position, even though she hated it so much. And Traudl was like, oh, I just want to dance, you know. And her sister Inga, who at that very moment was a literal dance star, was like, wait, I can help you. She was like, my best friend's sister-in-law knows Albert Vorman. Maybe he can get you out of this dumb job in publishing, you know, like he's not going to be able to get you onto the stage, but he could at least help you bail on your boss. And Traudl was like, oh my God, yes. Now, Albert Bormann, by the way, he was the brother of the famous and awful Martin Bormann, the guy who later became secretary to the Führer and one of the most important dudes in Nazi Germany. Anyway, Albert Bormann really delivered. He got Traudl a job in Berlin saying that the move was mandatory because it was a compulsory war service job. And Traudl was like, huh? Because it ended up just being another secretarial job. This time it was in Berlin in the Führer's Chancellery. And that was kind of like Hitler's headquarters. A very bad and oversimplified comparison is to say that the Chancellery was kind of like Germany's White House, except for nobody lived there. Well. You get it. I'll tell you more about her job at the Chancellery after we take a brief break for ads. Now, this gig at the Chancellery was still kind of a boring job, but it was in Berlin, which was cool. And remember, Traudl was a pretty girl in a huge city away from home, and it was a busy and important kind of place. Now, nobody seemed to care that Traudl was not a Nazi party member and also was... barely aware of politics at all. And her job, even though it was at the seat of his government, still felt kind of removed from Hitler's role, if that makes any sense. Like, she never once saw him, even though her job was to open his mail. But like, That mostly meant weird personal letters from citizens and then a bunch of love letters. Women loved Hitler. By the way, there are a couple of collections of letters to Hitler that you can read. I'll include one in my show notes. The love notes aren't as juicy as I want them to be. They're mostly just like, I love you. Love you so much. You're the best. Love you, Gina, or something like that. I wanted them to have drawings or underwear stuffed in them or something. And maybe those letters did exist, but someone took them home. Anyway, then one day there was a fun rumor circulating in the chancellery that Hitler wanted a new secretary to join his little posse because he had a few private secretaries that like traveled around with him and stuff. And it sounded like a position in this very personal, very small inner circle was opening up. And Trautl honestly did not care. Maybe because she just liked her gig in Berlin, or maybe because there was a typing test required and she did not think she was going to pass it. But as everyone was chatting and whispering about this fun new opportunity, she was just like, nah. Then, though, randomly, Albert Borman shows up again. And remember that little girl with no dad or money who would go along to get along? Me too. Trautl took the test, and she did fine. And then the women with the top 10 scores got to go to officially interview for this job. And this in itself is wild because these 10 women got onto a train in Berlin and then they stepped off that same train in a dark forest in East Prussia. That's Poland today. And they were like, huh, what now? And then Albert Borman, that man will not leave this story. He appeared out of nowhere and he's like, right this way, ladies. And they think they're headed to a hotel or something, but nope. He takes them four paces to the left where they see another train. It's the Fuhrer's special train, the Fuhrer Saundersug. And they are going to sleep on it. Wait, do you know about the Fuhrer Saundersug? Oh my God. So when Adolf Hitler was blitzkrieging all over the place, he needed to travel a lot to like shout orders and make mistakes and stuff. And so he had a special train designed just for him. And it was bananas. Let me give you some numbers here. The Führer-Sandersack had different arrangements depending on what everybody needed at the moment. Like it could have more cars or less, but it always had an anti-aircraft car at the front and at the back. So like soldiers with big guns could shoot airplanes out of the sky if they needed