Im toten Winkel - a film review

Categories: films, germany

Date: 09 October 2008 18:01:48

At the German Society in September we watched the film "Im toten Winkel". (It was actually the copy I bought in Vienna last year which I had never got round to finding the time to watch!) It is a documentary featuring Traudl Junge who, as a young woman of 22, went to Berlin in the late 1930s to seek the bright lights as a dancer and eventually found work as a secretary. To a certain Herr Hitler.

In the film, whose title is translated as "Blind Spot" (I think), Frau Junge talks about her life as one of the inner circle at Berechtsgaden where Hitler's "wolf's lair" was, one of the attempts on his life, how charming he was, the tea parties the staff would have together and how none of the secretaries or other non-military staff had any idea what was going on in the rest of Germany - not just the fact that millions were dying in concentration camps - but also she had little idea of what life was like for ordinary Germans.

She also describes the last days of the war, Hitler's last minute marriage to Eva Braun (who was a similar age to her) and their joint suicide.

It is a fascinating real life account and well worth seeing. There are subtitles in English but if you have a reasonable grasp of German you may find you don't need to switch that facility on* as Frau Junge speaks relatively slowly and very clearly.

*I shall blog about this in another post!