Watch Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary For Free

Waste of time

Sadly Over-hyped

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Taking the form of interviews with the subject Traudl Junge, this film talks back over the key story in Junge's life – the fact that she was Hitler's secretary during the war and right up till the end of it all in that bunker. The film does have moments where an older Junge is watching herself giving these interviews and adds comments but mostly it is the original series of interviews that makes up the film. For the majority of the time what the viewer is getting is recollections from the role and in this way it is fascinating viewing as it is as close to being inside the Third Reich as you are ever going to be. The way that Junge avoids judgement (more of this later), the material can serve those who respect the man and also those that abhor him. I should state that I fall firmly into the latter camp but that I did still find it interesting to hear anecdotes about him and life within the bunker.The interviewer does a good job of just letting Junge talk as this brings out good stories and overall impressions rather than specific statements. However where the interviewer doesn't have a lot of success if in exploring Junge's guilt and how she copes with her role in Hitler's government. She does talk about being in the "blind spot" and not aware of what was going on but yet also talks about how she was involved in all sorts of dictations etc and you do wonder how on earth she cannot have known what was going on. Hell, go to ANY work place and there are no secrets that can be kept so how can this be different? Anyway, the film doesn't really push this question but the bigger problem for me was the fact that it didn't push her soul, because this is the bigger question for me.I appreciate that it is interesting to hear what happened in the bunker but I felt that the film would have benefited from exploring her as a person to understand how this changed her and how it affected her life. Having said that, I don't think it was a failure of the film that it didn't get to that because it is clear that Junge is not about to explore this on camera as she is pretty guarded with her emotions throughout the interview. So maybe the film did try and probe but got blocked out and what there was just ended up on the cutting room floor.Despite this though the film is still interesting due to the insight and proximity provided by Junge. Viewers may agree that it would have been good to understand more about her as a person but it is understandable that the film doesn't manage to go down this road and at least there is plenty of other material to make this worth seeing.

If taken as a documentary about Hitler's Secretary then this is an interesting interview with someone who is trying to deal with feelings of guilt over her past ignorance and inability to think beyond her own situation.If you think you're going to be getting a history lesson or find out lots of things about Hitler then you might be disappointed. The documentary is, as stated, about Traudl Junge not Hitler.Unfortunately for me though I never really thought she opened up quite as much as you could sense she wanted to.Interesting from a historical viewpoint but as Traudl herself points out during the first 1/2 hour - much of what she recalls sounds so trivial.

I would hardly call this a film. It is at best a book on tape. While the topic is very important and interesting, the filmmakers involved show very little respect. The entire video consists of about three shots, mundanely cut together in order to tell this woman's incredible story. I think this is probably the worst documentary I've ever seen. I've never seen such a shameless attempt by a director to capitalize off of an important historical figure. There was hardly any work put into this video. All they did was tape one (maybe two) sessions with Junge, slap some titles on it and call it a film. Not to mention the filmmakers also try to take credit by calling it the first time Junge went on record, when in reality she gave a much better account, on record, in the 1970's! It comes off as being very boring and lifeless, when the story itself is amazing. I call it, at best, lazy and shameful filmmaking. Would have been much better if it was a book.

The title of this German documentary ("Im Toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretarin") would be more accurately translated as "The Dead Zone: Hitler's Secretary". An even better title would be "Dead Calm", as in the eye of a hurricane. The narrator or interviewee, Traudl Humps Junge, maintains that -- far from being at the hub of the Nazi regime and privy to sensitive political and military information -- she was actually completely out of the loop in the splendid isolation of the Wolf's Lair.But "Blind Spot" is an equally apt description of Frau Junge's vantage point on Hilter and the war years, especially at the beginning of her career. The Hitler she knew was partly a creation of her own mind. She admits that she was attracted to him as a benevolent father figure, one she needed to compensate for the shortcomings of her own parents. The Hitler she depicts in the first half of the documentary is light-years removed from the Hitler portrayed by Noah Taylor in the recent feature film "Max".Frau Junge's Hitler is almost endearing ("gentle" is her word), with his fondness for his pet dog Blondie, and his abstemious lifestyle as a vegetarian and teetotaller.Yet, in retrospect, Frau Junge wonders why she did not see Hitler for the monster he turned out to be. If nothing else, he lived in total denial of the realities of global conflict and mass genocide. He preferred to eat with his secretaries and avoid the war talk of his male staff. When travelling through a devastated Germany by train, he kept the window blinds pulled down. He was careful about his diet, yet this did not prevent him from being dyspeptic and suffering from digestive complaints.In the second half of the documentary, Frau Junge details Hitler's last days before committing suicide in his bunker. Over and over, she uses the same three adjectives like a refrain or leitmotiv: "nightmarish", "weird", "macabre". Her face shows little emotion, except when she speaks of the six Goebbels children who were injected with poison because their mother could not conceive of life after the Third Reich. Her voice is calm and strong. (Indeed, I found myself able to udnerstand much of the original German because her diction was so clear.) Her version of events does not sound rehearsed. Like anyone else recalling a distant past, she sometimes forgets to recount something and must backtrack. She is a credible witness to history -- and yet, at the same time, her story is that of someone wearing blinkers or with tunnel vision. As the old saying goes, "Hindsight is better than foresight", and "There is none so blind as he who will not see."Hitler's denial of reality, and Frau Junge's "blind spot", are the reflection in microcosm of an entire nation's unwillingness, for decades, to acknowledge its responsibility for the horrors of the Nazi regime. Frau Junge says that even the revelations of the death camps, and the Nuremberg trials, were not enough to force the German people to look themselves squarely in the face. She herself did not tell her story for almost 60 years.Just before the lights go up, we learn that Frau Junge died of cancer the day after the documentary premiered in Berlin. In her last conversation with the filmmakers, she confessed, "I think I am just now beginning to forgive myself."