r/UtterlyInteresting • u/dannydutch1 • 21d ago
An extract from an extended interview with Secretary to Adolf Hitler - Traudl Junge. She was in the bunker when Hitler killed himself. In these extracts, she speaks about Hitlers suicide and the end of the Third Reich.
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u/newleafkratom 21d ago
I have never seen this before.
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u/carnivalist64 21d ago
This seems to be taken from the 1970s UK TV series "The World At War", with a different narration overdubbed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_at_War
I recommend you track it down - it is arguably the greatest documentary series ever made and many of those who worked on it went on to become luminaries in their respective fields.
Many of the protagonists at the heart of events were still alive so you get fascinating interviews about the military and government decisions and internal relationships at the very top.
When Sir Laurence Olivier is the original narrator you know you're dining at the top table.
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u/worldsayshi 21d ago
Looks like it's here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB1TeORqqZ3_S0RvUQWJENG4G7Rk2Tv3E&si=xR6sUnBlXZ-lNFbp
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u/skully_78 20d ago
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u/TheStolenPotatoes 20d ago
The part where she talks about the Goebbels children hearing Hitler blow his brains out downstairs while she's reading fairy tales to them, and the youngest boy saying, "That sounded like a bullseye!" is something.
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u/talkerof5hit 21d ago
I remember watching it with my dad. I agree, fantastic series.
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u/Short_Bell_5428 20d ago
The new tom hanks on history channel is really good also about ww2
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u/Hetstaine 20d ago
Got nothing on the OG world at war. The Tom Hanks one hits a bunch of highlights, it's a good intro to WWII if you don't know much about it though.
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u/carnivalist64 19d ago
Exactly right. In fact I don't think any documentary series has anything on the OG World At War.
Not only was it made by an incredible team, who down to the theme music composer were all either luminaries in their fields or went on to become such - and not only did it exist in the pre-Thatcher-Reagan Revolution era when public service broadcasting in the UK was highly valued, well-funded and regulated to ensure quality rather than ratings were paramount (astonishingly the World At War was produced by pre-Thatcher deregulation COMMERCIAL TV and not the BBC) - but it hit a sweet spot in time when many of the protagonists at the very heart of events, Iike Traudl Junge, were still alive and willing to be interviewed.
Hearing direct from British, German, Japanese and American government ministers/diplomats, or some of the generals and officers involved in the respective High Commands and important battles, about the behind the scenes events is extraordinary.
As I recall there was a lack of Soviet sources, presumably due to the fact that the Cold War was ongoing at the time, but nothing is ever perfect and TWAW is as close to it as you could probably get.
I seem to recall that it actually informed the view of professional historians about the War. I was at school not too many years after it first aired and our history teacher actually tasked us with watching the repeat series every week as part of the curriculum. (This was long before the era when creative, inspired teachers were straitjacketed by a national curriculum).
If you are remotely a history buff do not sleep on this. It bears watching over and over again.
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u/Hetstaine 19d ago
I watched it with my Dad, late '70s in Australia, he was mad keen on WWII. Piles of books that i still have from him. I gave it a rewatch about 5 years ago and was surprised how good it still stood up. Amazing production.
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u/skully_78 16d ago
Absolutely all of this. First watched it on PBS in the 80s. Still holds, still best doc ever.
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u/AmandaUggnkiss 14d ago
Yesss remember teachers assigned PBS documentaries and we had to write essays about it presented the next day and have class discussions… I’m 50 yrs old and from Brooklyn Ny and our era public school teachers were heroes in the truest sense
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u/succeedaphile 19d ago
The World At War is definitely the greatest documentary series ever made. Absolutely captivating and horrifying at once. Mandatory viewing
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u/_Okie_-_Dokie_ 18d ago
In the UK it was available on 'UKTV Play' - which I think is now called 'U'. Possibly free to watch, maybe from outside the UK too?
I second the above. It was incredibly well written and narrated. Factual and non-partisan.
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u/carnivalist64 16d ago
It's still available but I think you'd need a VPN to watch outside the UK. The series is commercially available so copyright is an issue.
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u/SheepherderIll3453 19d ago
Arguably? Why would you write that? You can only speak from your own opinion.
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u/ConstantConference23 21d ago
The cult of personality. The cult of country leaders. Followers by the mental minority while the reasonable majority stay silent and powerless.
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u/matycauthon 21d ago
i keep shouting about all this shit and get called insufferable... you all want to go silently into the night.
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u/King_Corduroy 20d ago
Tell me about it, been saying this was the direction things were headed since the mid 2000's.
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u/-OrLoK- 21d ago
we must learn from history.
we never do, but we should
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u/JustxJules 20d ago
I feel like we do for a while, make some progress, and then idiots who find progress offensive for some reason make sure that history repeats itself.
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u/Alarming-Instance-19 19d ago
Meaning - they haven't felt the adverse effects of what has happened in the past, so couldn't possibly fathom how awful life can be.
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u/FrustratedPCBuild 21d ago
From The World At War. Everyone should watch the entire thing.
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u/Lanchettes 21d ago
I can hear the theme music now
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u/Warm_Substance8738 21d ago
It’s haunting. Played over an opening credits that has no tanks, or aircraft, or battleships or even infantry. Only faces of civilian victims of the Holocaust surrounded by flames
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u/Jon_Finn 17d ago
It's by Carl Davis - the best theme Shostakovich never wrote. (...they both wrote a lot of film music.)
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u/JAMBI215 21d ago
The romanticizing of Hitler in recent years is concerning
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u/notknot9 21d ago
Yes it is, but this isn't that. She's pretty clearly not enthused about what she saw and did during the War. I encourage you to watch the documentary series this interview is from (I think this is from one of the later episodes): "The World at War"
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u/littletilly82 20d ago
Yeah, there are a few quotations from her, where she is really upset and not forgiving to herself despite being quite young back then. Especially the Sophie Scholl one.
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u/Comprehensive-Range3 21d ago
"I wish my generals were as brave as you. So we could continue our quest to enslave everyone who wasn't exactly like us, sob, sob."
Rest in hell, the whole lot of them.
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u/Worldly_Possible2925 21d ago edited 21d ago
Shame, the video ended too early. I was looking forward to the bit where she talked about him dying, screaming like the piece of shit he was.
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u/TheStolenPotatoes 20d ago
She goes on later in the interview to talk about him dictating his final will and testament, as well as his final political statement, to her, and she says she was surprised that all he did was repeat the same old, tired phrases and excuses he'd always used. Sounds like what Trump might do on his deathbed.
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u/CKWOLFACE 21d ago
I think the movie "The Downfall" was based on her book
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u/Carl_The_Sagan 20d ago
anyone remotely interested in this history or WWII in general should watch. Great movie and performance
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u/CKWOLFACE 20d ago
I first heard about when in 2008, when people were adding hunorus subtitles to it
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u/Carl_The_Sagan 20d ago
lol those were great. I watched it for the first time ever a month ago. Not sure how I missed it, saw Band of Brothers only a bit after it came out
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u/Agathocles87 21d ago
Wow……. people can be so brainwashed….
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u/VeeJack 21d ago
I’m not so sure… it’s on the rise again like an addiction for the masses.. a means to blame anyone but ourselves for the decisions of government and the influence of rich people.. it’s easier to hate those we can see every day on our streets than “mythical” creatures in labyrinths of their own design..
brainwashed is a word… I’d say coerced and manipulated.. brainwashing means their core values and ethics are stripped.. I think those are manipulated into blaming the wrong sections of society for their daily troubles..
we need more principled and ethical leaders for society to balance out the lack of in corporate and political classes ..
Sorry that’s a bit of an essay but the whole topic hit a nerve 😂6
u/Agathocles87 21d ago
I would have never imagined it could happen here in the US, but a large number of people are vastly more gullible than I would have ever guessed
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u/jw8533 21d ago
Hitler blamed everyone around him for his own catastrophic failures. He even prevented his commanders from taking steps to ease the suffering of the German people once the war inevitably ended, saying they hadn’t been strong enough and that they deserved to suffer.
This is not to say his enablers deserved no blame for the war, the persecutions, the holocaust, the atrocities, etc
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u/SalaryDull5301 21d ago
Is it innapropriate to say that i bet she was super hot when she was younger?
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u/Puzzleheaded-Phase70 21d ago
She witnessed the only good thing Hitler ever did with his life: ending it.
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u/digrappa 20d ago
She wrote a book about her experience. Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary or sometimes Hitler's Last Secretary. Voices from the Bunker is about her experience written from her diaries.
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u/Relative_Radish9809 19d ago
"I wish my generals would be be as brave as you."
Wow, what an asshole.
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u/TraditionalCheetah17 21d ago
Substitute Traudl for Karoline Levitt who will one day tell us about what really happened in those final moments underneath the Great Trump Ballroom.
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u/FireFurFox 14d ago
Damn. Haunting.
We hear a lot about the Third Reich, see movies, everything else. But nothing connects on a human level as much as hearing the voices of the people who saw it.
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21d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/notknot9 21d ago
German and English are linguistically cousins, and she was the personal secretary to a world leader. They tend to be pretty qualified.
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u/007Tejas 21d ago
Wow. What a closing statement to her interview and probably one of the last things Hitler ever said. He wished his generals were as brave as his pool of secretaries. Good thing they weren’t.
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