To say Adolf
Hitler is the most reviled person in modern history probably
isn’t stretching the point too far. The leader of Germany and
the Nazi party, he is responsible for the single most egregious
case of mass genocide in recorded human history, ordering the
imprisonment and slaughter of more the six million Jews. A
master of public relations, Hitler enraptured an entire country
and led his country into the morass of World War II.
This is nothing
new, nothing most of us have not heard before. Basically, long
story short, Adolf Hitler was a not very nice guy and his level
of homicidal mania and madness will hopefully never be seen
again.
But what if you
were there? What if you saw the nationalistic passion sweeping
across Germany? Would you get caught up in it, too? Could you
ignore the hateful messages dripping from every one of the
Führer’s words? And, if so, could you ever forgive yourself for
doing so once discovering the true account of all Hitler ordered
and the fates of the six million souls he passed judgment on?
Traudl Junge
could not. For 55 years she kept all she knew of Hitler to
herself, having intimate knowledge of the man himself as he was
outside of the public glare. How did she have this knowledge?
From 1942 to 1945, Junge was Adolf Hitler’s personal secretary,
and as such was witness to his final days as the Allies closed
in upon them and as the Third Reich began to crumble.
In 2001
filmmakers André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer had the
opportunity to sit down with the reclusive Junge. She was
finally ready to reveal all she knew and the documentary
Blind Spot – Hitler’s Secretary is the fruit of those
interviews. But while I would like to report that Junge’s
chronicles of her time working for the Führer is fascinating
must-see viewing, the secretary’s story only partially
resonates, most notably during the last third when recalling
those last few days before Hitler took his own life.
The entire film
is made up of face-to-face interviews of Junge at her home at
her German residence. The filmmakers distilled over ten hours of
footage into a stream lined and air tight 90-minute documentary.
There are no shots of the sites or places Junge describes, no
images of what was going on during the time, just a one camera
shot of the elderly woman as she struggles to retell her tale to
the documentarians. It is a surprisingly brave choice by the duo
to let Junge – and only Junge – tell her tale in this fashion.
But while there is undeniable power in watching the fragile
woman retell her tale through teary eyes and clenched fists, it
is also true that some of her tales are, well, boring.
In fact, the
first half of Blind Spot is quite uninteresting. Junge
tells stories of Hitler playing with his dog Blondie, about how
he was uncommonly courteous to her and the other personal
secretaries and that he treated her with such kindness she
started to look upon him as the father figure she never had.
Listening to it all, I started to think life at Hitler’s field
headquarters in East Prussia – Wolf’s Lair – was all moonlight
walks and frolicking with puppies. If only that pesky war didn’t
keep getting in the way.
Seriously,
though, Junge’s tales do soften to German leader in many
respects, and that really is horrifying. It’s hard to think of
Hitler as a human being, but with this film and the recent John
Cusack film Max it is as filmmakers are forcing the
issue. Which, really, is a good thing. Monsters do not come from
the womb fully formed, they are created over many years, and to
see Hitler in this light makes all that he did all the more
hideous. This was a man who could play with dog as easily
as ordering the slaughter of millions. It is the type of image
we like to make fun of in James Bond movies, not find out that
madman such as they really did – do – exist in our midst.
What ultimately
makes Blind Spot worth seeing and remembering are Junge’s
recollections of the final days at Wolf’s Lair. Equal parts
tragic, ugly and sickening, watching the woman painfully exhume
memories long buried makes the banality of some of what came
earlier seem so much more potent. These moments just weren’t the
last of an unhinged madman and his wife, Ava Braun; they were
also the last dying breaths of a Nazi ideology coming to a
close.
It is here that
Hitler dictates his final his final will and testament to Junge.
It is an eerie moment watching the old woman resurrect these
demons. The hate-filled vitriol she was asked to write down and
send out to the world crystallize the image of Hitler as we now
know it – an inhuman demon with a mind focused on bending the
will of all around him, even in death, to his corrupting
influence.
For Junge,
even 60 years later she still has trouble forgiving the 22-year
old woman she once was for being seduced by that influence.
Decades worth of self-loathing and feelings of responsibility so
obviously consume her. Yet, it is hard to join Junge in her own
self-condemnation. She may have been charmed by the most
abhorrent evil influence the world has ever known, but then, so
was an entire nation.
