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Title: Until the Final Hour : Hitler's Last Secretary by Traudl Junge ISBN: 1-55970-728-3 Publisher: Arcade Publishing Pub. Date: 02 April, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: If you're new to Hitler, this is good
Comment: For people who haven't read much about Hitler, this will be an interesting book. Traudl Junge was one of his secretaries from 1942 until his death three years later. She never knew him as well as Schroeder, Wolf or Gerda Christian, his other secretaries, and this is because she arrived so late on the scene. Hitler had deteriorated physically and mentally by 1942, so she was never privy to the full range of his charisma; she saw him in the period of his marked decline.

For those who think Hitler behaved as "movie Hitlers" act, then you'll be shocked to see that in private, he was a charming, fatherly fellow, at least to his inner circle. Hitler's dark, maniacal side was reserved for Himmler, Bormann and others. Junge grew attached to Hitler and enjoyed his company, even the interminable nightly monologues.

This entire book was previously published in 1989 and was called "Voices from the Bunker." Junge died in 2003 and this has been rushed out because of her recent demise. If you're well-versed in Hitler, there is nothing new here, Junge was interviewed exhaustively for years before her death. I was able to meet her, in Munich, twenty years ago, and she was a reserved, rather withdrawn woman, oppressed with guilt because she had served a mass murderer. I think anyone with an interest in Hitler will enjoy the book, but don't expect any new or revealing material.

Rating: 5
Summary: New Information--Even for those who think they've read all
Comment: What I like best about this book is that it gives new insight into the Nazi's that isn't found in other books. The author has nothing to hide (like Speer may have) and it is an incredible experience to read first hand what it was like being with Hitler socially and in the final days before his suicide.

In most books about Hitler seems to be almost an inhuman supernatural monster. In this book he is shown more as an egomaniac surrounded by people who are ineffective at advising him. His coolness and evil are even more chilling when his portrait is fully drawn and he is not simple an evil caricature as in many biographies.

The author shares how she was drawn in by Hitler and later felt betrayed.

So many books about the Nazi rehash the same facts without a personal perspective. The author had lunch and dinner with Hitler almost every day for a year!

This is a must read for anyone interested in this period of history.

Rating: 4
Summary: Hannah Arendt Was Right
Comment: Evil is banal. It also is anethesthetizing. It also has a morbid illumination (Ger. "grelles Licht") about it. The late Traudl Junge's account of her secretarial service to Adolf Hitler confirms the observations.
In her quite interesting memoir, helped along by editor Melissa Müller, we see the images of a young woman whose dream for life is so like our own that we get caught up in its hum-drum nature. But -- what, then, do many secretaries do that is not a matter of daily routine and technical correctness? Any person who took dictation and then prepared a memo knows what is needed: a perfect piece of work. Junge seems to tell us that her efforts met the mark. Banal life.
She was caught up in Hitler's informal inner circle, like it or not, and saw images of the man not many others did -- from a safe distance. She was numbed by his common nature -- a man, she states, who cared about walks in the alps, his dog (which he, a dictator seemed very good at ordering around), and his consummately bland personal lifestyle. One opines he and Eva Braun never had sex because, per Junge, he felt he would not make much of a father. How numbing.
Her report is mysteriously apart from reality. However, it may be a very correct appraisal of Adolf Hitler, from stem to stern: the monster lived in a world other than ours, at least in his head.
Traudl Junge seems to have been about as close to Hitler's personal mind as anyone except Eva Braun (who must have longed for a broader anatomical scene, but generally was unrequited) if one believes what one has read. Morbid illumination....
This is a story well worth reading and I recommend it to serious historians. Had the editor's handling of its technical aspects produced a smoother narrative, I would have gone Five-Star.