Junge-Humps, Gertrud “Traudl”.

Junge-Humps, Gertrud, “Traudl” born on 16-03-1920, in Munich , Bavaria, as the daughter of a master brewer and leutnant in the Reserve Army, Max Humps and his wife Hildegard, born Zottmann. Hildegard’s brother Maximillian Zottmann was a Generalleutnant  who died 1942, old age 90. Traudl had a sister, Inge, born in 1923. As a teenager she thought of becoming a ballerina and became fascinated with Hitler in her teenage years. An enthusiastic member of Naziassociated youth groups. Traudl Junge began working for Adolf Hitler (did you know) in December 1942. She was the youngest of his private secretaries. “I was 22 and I didn’t know anything about politics, it didn’t interest me”, Junge said decades later, also saying that she felt great guilt for “…liking the greatest criminal ever to have lived.” She said, “I admit, I was fascinated by Adolf Hitler.  He was a pleasant boss and a fatherly friend. I deliberately ignored all the warning voices inside me and enjoyed the time by his side almost until the bitter end. It wasn’t what he said, but the way he said things and how he did things.” At Hitler’s encouragement, in June 1943, Junge married SS-Obersturmführer with the 12^th SS Panzer Division “Hitlerjugend” or for the Americans the “Baby Division”  .  Hitler’s driver SS Obersturmbannführer, Erich Kempka  and adjutant SS Sturmbannführer, Otto Günsche were the witness’s. SS Obersturmführer, Hans Hermann Junge, a former servant of Hitler, died in combat, shortly after D-Day, 10-06-1944, in a low flying aircraft attack in Dreux, Normandy.

  

   She worked at Hitler’s side in Berlin, the Berghof in Berchtesgaden, at the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, Führerbunker. In 1945 Junge was with Hitler in Berlin and lastly back in Berlin down in the Führerbunker.

     She typed Hitler’s last private and political will and testament in the Führerbunker a day and a half before his suicide. She also typed Joseph Goebbels last will, before he committed suicide with his wife Magda Goebbels. She was good friends with Eva Braun (Braun parents)and Eva gave her fur-coat as a last present. Junge later wrote that while she was playing with the Goebbels children on 30 April, “Suddenly […]  there is the sound of a shot, so loud, so close, that we all fall silent. It echoes on through all the rooms. ‘That was a direct hit,’ cried Helmut Goebbels with no idea how right he is. The Führer is dead now.” Later the Goebbels couple poisoned their six children, one son and five girls and committed suicide too with the help of SS Obersturmführer, Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger. On 01-05-1945 Junge left the Führerbunker with a group led by SS-Brigadeführer, Wilhelm Mohnke. Mohnke died old age 90, on 06-08-2001, Hamburg. Also in the group were Hitler’s personal pilot SS Obergruppenführer, Johannes “Hans” Baur, the chief of Hitler’s Reichssicherheitsdienst (RSD) bodyguard SS Gruppenführer, Hans Rattenhuber. Although Junge had reached the Elbe, Reichsleiter, Martin Bormann

would committed suicide there some later, she was unable to reach the western Allied lines, so she went back to Berlin, getting there about a month after she had left, hoping to take a train to the west when they began running again. On 9 July, after living there for about a week under the alias “Gerda Alt” she was arrested by two civilian members of the Soviet military administration. By December 1945 she had been released from prison but was restricted to the Soviet sector of Berlin. On New Year’s Eve she entered the British sector and stayed there for two months owing to a spell in the hospital for diphtheria. Her mother arranged for Junge to have the papers needed for her to move from the British sector in Berlin to Bavaria. Getting these on 02-02-1946 she traveled from Berlin and across the Soviet occupation zone to the British zone and from there south to Bavaria in the American zone. Junge was held and interrogated for a short time by the Americans about her time in the Führerbunker during the first half of 1945.

She was then freed  and allowed to integrate herself into post war Germany. Traudl Junge died from lung cancer in Munich on 10-02-2002, at the age of 81 and she was given global celebrity for a few days reportedly having said shortly before her death.                        Above picture with permission of Harry von Gebhardt.  .

 , “Now that I’ve let go of my story, I can let go of my life.” Traudl Junge who seems to have been a sympathetic lady is buried on the Nordfriedhof of Munich and only steps from the graves of the Troost couple, Paul Troost and Gerda and Generaloberst der Gebirgstruppe, Eduard Dietl.

  Close by the graves of Heinrich Hoffmann Hitler’s personal photographer and his daughter Henriette “Henny” von Schirach-Hoffmann

  , wife of the Hitler Youth Führer, Baldur von Schirach,  also buried here Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven, Dr. Gustav von Kahr President of the Bavarian court in 1923 during the Putz and some further Hitler’s former adjutant SS Standartenführer, Max Wünsche, Hitler’s driver and founder of the SS Oberführer, Emil Maurice, Hitler’s doctor SS Obersturmführer, Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger,  the General der Flieger, Kuno Fütterer and Generalleutnant  der Artillerie, Erich von Botzheim.

 

    

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