MovieChat Forums > Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin (2002) Discussion > was hitler's secretary indicted at nurem...

was hitler's secretary indicted at nuremberg?


or was she?

can't seem to find much biography in reviews. was she let off scott free? all moot now, since the old gal's rightly dead, but i was curious if anyone knew.

many thanks

bob morris

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No. She wasn't indicted for anything. She probably didn't commit any crimes in terms of the scope of Nuremberg.

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no - right at the end of the movie they note (in brief) what happened to her after the war. she was first arrested by the soviets (who allowed her to work in a hospital) when she tried to get back to bavaria, and after escaping from them the americans arrested her. after being imprisoned for a few months, she was was subjected to "denazification" and released. from what i recall she was treated in some manner related to being a juvenile when she started her job. also i think because she never was actually a member of the nazi party, nor did she do much related to the war itself save being hitler's secretary.

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Frau Junge's obituary in the Guardian (UK) can be read at http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,649745,00.html.

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"rightly dead", bobmorris?

No sympathy for an innocent child, seduced by evil, huh?

Daily Records

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[deleted]

I thought the most important aspect of the film is not about whether German population should be blamed but about people's blind faith in authority.

If you ever took a Holocaust course, you would come across a historian called Browning who wrote a book called 'Ordinary Men'. He did a study on some middle-age, middle class, mostly married german soldiers, hence not young idealistic Nazi/SS who was brainwashed. But they too had done the most horrific crime, most of them WILLINGLY participate in the mass shooting of Jews. Read it if you have a chance, it really challenges your belief that nazi atrocity were commited by a few maniacs when in fact any ordinary people can do the same under the same circumstances.

I don't mean to blame the German people, I just find that every human being have a tendency to blindly follow authority, accept their situation without question. It's almost by thousands years of natural selection, part of human nature, that we tend to act in group/tribes, succumb to peer pressure, obey authority and sometimes don't know what we are getting ourselves into.

What I see from this movie, what Traudl Junge also said is that being young is no excuse... doing your jobs isn't either. Sometimes people just have to stop and ask themselves what they were doing. She mentioned Sophie Scholl, who was the same age as her and was exceuted for spreading anti-nazi pamphelet in '43, not much later after Junge got her job. Junge herself said she had no excuse not to seek information about what's happening, she just didn't question what was happening, she chose to be blind.

Nobody questioned the Nuremberg law, yellow star decree, crystal night, deportation or expropriation of Jewish property and business ( in fact, many Germans moved into apartments that belong to Jews the minute after they were deported, how do you explain that? state-sanctioned greed?)

Junge certainly didn't slit anybody's throat, but in context with the magnitude of the crime committed, is turning a blind eye and doing nothing good enough? I don't mean to say they are entirely responsible, but to some small degree they are. Their silence helped perpetuate an evil regime...

anyway i think there is still much for everyone to learn from WWII.

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[deleted]

No, she wasn't. She was categorized as a "young follower" meaning she was unaware of the depts of her superiors' crimes. This is mentioned at the closing of the movie Downfall.

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[deleted]

Funny how someone makes a comment like this but didn't bother watching the film. It would have answered the question and perhaps would have prevented such a silly judgement against her. Why on earth would someone be indicted FOR TAKING DICTATION? Since when is that a crime? To blindly accuse people of crimes makes you no better than the Nazis.

The people you idolize wouldn't like you.

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