Last night, my husband I watched, Blind Spot – Hitler’s Secretary. It is an interview with Traudl Junge who was chosen to be one of Hitler’s secretaries when she was 22 years old.
She speaks eloquently on film, 60 years after the fact. She explained how she thought she was in the center of information (Hitler’s bunker) at the time but she was really in the blind spot and I thought me must certainly be a Pisces (and she is).
She talked about how at the center of an explosion, it is calm and she describes, Hitler as fatherly, and polite in his private life, nothing at all like his public persona. The soldier and I were riveted.
“What do you think, P?”
“She’s telling the truth. She’s astonishing. I think she’s being honest…”
We were both mesmerized watching her watch herself talk on camera because this is how she is presented. They filmed the interview and then filmed her watching the interview so it was sort of this Neptune squared situation.
Today I looked up her birth data and she is a Pisces with a tight Jupiter Neptune conjunction in Leo opposing an Aquarius Moon, all square her Mars in Scorpio.
“She left some stuff out,” my husband said when he woke this morning.
“Well yeah.”
“She didn’t get into the corners, there is stuff you deny.”
“Yeah and there is loyalty, I’m sure. You just don’t get rid of that regardless. She is going to keep some secrets but she did a good job. She put something very valuable on film.”
“Yeah, she did. I feel sorry for her.”
“Hmm. Me, not so much.”
“Why not, P?”
“Don’t know. Maybe I feel sorry for her too but if so, it is not the first thing that occurs.”
Traudl Junge died of cancer as the film was released. Shortly before her death she is reported to have said, “Now that I’ve let go of my story, I can let go of my life.
incredible. i’m glad she had the opportunity to speak.
I don’t know – it’s hard to feel sorry for anyone that was in the middle of that much hate.
Er…that side of it, anyway. And of their own accord.
Just had a look at the reviews on Amazon – sounds fascinating, must get a copy. Thanks.
“As exits go, that of Traudl Junge was timed to exquisite perfection. Her life was largely one in which infamy was overlaid by obscurity. Then, for a brief few days, she was accorded something approaching global fame. And, in the midst of it, at the age of 81, she died.
Junge was one of Adolf Hitler’s secretaries. She took down his last will and testament. She was in his bunker when he committed suicide in 1945. She has just published her book, Through The Final Hours, which was based on notes she compiled in 1946. She herself died in the night of Sunday to Monday, hours after a long-awaited and widely publicised documentary on her life was given its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.
She had been suffering from cancer. She spent her last days in a Munich hospital.
With masterly ambiguity, the documentary, by the multi-talented André Heller, was called Blind Spot – a title that did justice both to Junge’s claims to have been kept in the dark and the belief of many historians that she and others close to the Führer suffered from an entirely self-induced amnesia. ..
from here
I saw the film a few years ago; it’s fascinating. Highly recommended, makes you think. I don’t know that it’s a matter of feeling sorry for her or not. We all have to live in the context of our times and make our choices. She made her choices and acknowledges in the film that others her age, such as Sophie Scholl chose differently. She clearly spent her later years coming to terms with her choices.
She was 22? She was definitely old enough to know she was gonna work for one of the most notorious people in history! I don’t feel sorry for her, but I don’t hate her either.
Working for the Hitler eh? That’s just crazy!
haven’t seen it… don’t know personally. but everyone is given a different set of scenery and environment within which to make their choices…
as doreen notes.
i think it’s fascinating to how and what and why people will choose… and the means by which they justify (or attempt to) or don’t their actions… to themselves and then to others…
Ugh makes me nauseated and also say wow — would love to see it. Hitler as fatherly – yeah that’s the nauseating part. Not that i doubt it at all but ugh–
I forgot I saw this but I rented it a few years ago. It is absolutely fascinating and chilling. I did get the impression she existed inside a bubble, even the way she described the office. It seemed like she was just in a vacuum there.
This is riveting. I’ll have to rent it.
One thing she said was that Hitler could not fathom a man being interested in a less attractive woman then the one he had. She said it was outside his realm a woman could have some quality that was not physical that could be appealing.
classic sociopathic thought pattern right there ( regarding hitler, of course ).
I’m amazed that people *don’t* get how she ended up there. She wasn’t the only one working for Hitler, millions of people did.
If you think back to Bush/run-up to Iraq War, you see a similar thing. There was an [intellectual/political] argument being made that didn’t quite make sense. Even if the details (Iraq/Al Queda/9-11) didn’t gel, most people gave over to their feeling of wanting revenge, wanting a strong leader, a unified nation, etc. The few voices that tried to point out the contradictions were shouted down. Their concerns were ignored, they were called traitors.
Of course, I don’t think Bush equals Hitler. I’m just saying mass-delusion, a willingness to trust, to not ask hard questions or examine the details too closely in the face of fear, isn’t limited to Germany in 1939. Way more people are susceptible to it than believe they are.
And even if she “woke up,” in say, 1943 or 1944, she couldn’t walk away then. She’d have been living better than 99.9% of the population, and by that I mean the basics, like having enough to eat. Her family’s well-being was dependent on her too. What would she have done?
Sometimes self-induced amnesia can save our lives, and survival is a powerful instinct.
Hitler had Libra rising. In person, in every day encounters he was very personable and charming. When Neville Chamberlain described the Hitler he met, he was describing Hitler’s Libra rising persona. At many points in this film, Junge, too was describing that. His kindly fatherly nature came from his Capricorn Moon blended with that Libra Ascendant.
The Hitler we think of from newsreels, his impassioned speeches before the masses, was the Hitler completely submerged in his Pluto-Neptune conjunction in Gemini in the 8th house.
Well, it’s very easy to make judgements in hindsight, but at the time Hitler wasn’t the most evil man in history, he was simply the leader of Germany. And everyone who was alive at the time was involved in the situation. And when you’re in the middle of something, can you see the big picture?
Another thing to mention is that when stories of the concentration camps started leaking out, NO ONE believed it, none of the allied governments did. It wasn’t till near the end and they started liberating these places that anyone saw the full horror.
Thing is, all sociopaths can be charming. They want to be admired, they want to be liked… they just don’t want to be held accountable for their misdeeds, whatsoever. They want to be praised for them. So whomevers ass they have to kiss to get their precious “veneer of power” and “all-authoritativeness” they will and they’ll do it with skill. Same for Hitler, albeit in different ways. They are dead inside, and without love we are empty. He lacked love, he lacked empathy, so he tried to fill it up with fame and glory and projecting his inadequacies upon a group of innocent people. The least deserving. Sick, but that’s the way it goes with these monsters. Sometimes i entertain trying to mix the astrology in with the behavior/nature of the sociopaths, but then again i think why bother? They’re all the same inside. Just blood-sucking machines. People are just pawns to them.
“…Blind Spot – a title that did justice both to Junge’s claims to have been kept in the dark and the belief of many historians that she and others close to the Führer suffered from an entirely self-induced amnesia…”
Very interesting (quote above). Don’t forget that the Nazis were the pioneers of various mind-control techniques and testing, practices that were subsequently adopted by several governments namely the US (anyone familiar with the MK-Ultra experiments? . So there is a possibility, however slight, that she actually didnt know what the hell she was doing.
This film certianly intrigues me. Thanks for the post Elsa.
wow thanks for this, I went to watch the interview on youtube.
I was thinking of how a society can change easily. it dominantes. mass thinking and mass fear. so interesting he said that (hitler) he felt pity for them but for the greater good it has to be done. (that is what a lot of scientists feel — ironically it is not feeling) it starts with testing animals/experimenting them and you put aside feeling for the greater good. where does it stop?
I meant hilter’s guard said that to one of the people at the camps. they all had this mentality. (there’s some vids there with English subtitles) I don’t think hitler has any pity at all.
Sounds fascinating. I worked with a German woman that said her grandmother was a Nazi. She didn’t participate in anything just was in agreement with the doctrine. She called her an ignorant woman but I doubt it.
History repeats itself over and over, for those who have eyes to see. The specifics vary, but the psychology and the sociology repeat. Ad nauseam.
Nothing surprising at all.
R.I.P. Traudl (Thanks for sharing those parts of your story that you were able to.)