Johanna Wolf

Johanna Wolf was born in Munich on 1st June, 1900. After answering an advertisement she found work with the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Her first job was to work for Dietrich Eckart. After he died in 1923 she worked for Gregor Strasser, Rudolf Hess and Wilhelm Brückner.

Adolf Hitler become Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and Wolf joined his Liaison Staff in Berlin. Hitler installed himself in the Radziwill Palace. She shared her duties with Christa Schroeder. According to Schroeder: "His study, the library, his bedroom and later, alongside it, Eva Braun's apartment were all on the first floor. Directly opposite the door to Hitler's study a couple of steps led to a long corridor, beyond which was the so-called adjutancy wing with the rooms for Hitler's aides. The first room was the Staircase Room (Treppenzimmer), where at least one of us would be permanently on standby, regardless of the hour, should Hitler need to give a dictation. Then came the rooms of Julius Schaub, Hitler's rather unprepossessing factotum, Dr Dietrich (Reich press officer), Sepp Dietrich (commander of SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, Hitler's personal bodyguard unit) and Hitler's chief adjutant, Wilhelm Brückner."

Karl Brandt claimed that Wolf was easier to work with than Christa Schroeder: "Fräulein Schroeder was a different kind of person from Fräulein Wolf. At the beginning of the war this pair alone handled all Hitler's secretarial business.... She (Schroeder) speaks her mind... Clever, critical and intelligent, Schroeder had a turnover of work which no other secretary ever matched." Hitler was very fond of her and nicknamed her "Wolferl".

On 20th April, 1945, Adolf Hitler ordered Wolf, Christa Schroeder, Traudl Junge, Dr Theodor Morell, Albert Bormann, Dr. Hugo Blaschke, Admiral Karl-Jesco von Puttkamer and several others to leave Berlin by aircraft. Wolf was arrested and taken prisoner on 23rd May in Bad Tölz when the Americans occupied Berchtesgaden. Together with Schroeder, she remained a prisoner until 14th January 1948.

Unlike other secretaries such as Schroeder and Junge, Wolf refused to give interviews about Hitler. Nor did she write her memoirs. However, she did tell Leni Riefenstahl that Hitler was not aware of all the terrible things that were happening in Nazi Germany during his period of office and blamed others such as Heinrich Himmler for the atrocities.

Johanna Wolf died in Munich on 5th June 1985.

Primary Sources

 

(1) Christa Schroeder, He Was My Chief: The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler's Secretary (1985)

We left the bunker eventually at about 1430, slowly plodding up the sixty steps into the daylight. A picture of appalling destruction greeted us. The Berghof had been badly damaged. The walls still stood (only one side had been burst open) but the metal roof hung in ribbons. Doors and windows had disappeared. Inside the house the floor was thickly covered with debris and much of the furniture had been demolished. All the ancillary buildings had been destroyed, the paths scrambled to rubble, trees felled at the root. Nothing green remained, the scene was a crater landscape.

Since there was nothing habitable, Greta Fegelein and Herta Schneider moved into Eva Braun's bunker, Johanna Wolf and I into Hitler's. A few days later Herta and Greta, after spending the intervening period packing, left by lorry and car from Hitler's ready vehicle park on the Berg for Garmisch, where Herta lived. They had filled many trunks with Eva Braun's clothing and left them at Schloss Fischhorn near Zell am See where there was an SS post. A short while before, Eva Braun had written to her sister: "We await hourly the end. We do not intend to fall alive into the hands of the enemy," and she concluded with the hope that Greta "should have no worries, she would see her husband again." Here Eva was either mistaken, or she wished to put her sister's mind at rest.

A day or so later Johanna Wolf went by car to Miesbach to ask friends if they would put us up temporarily. Two men from the SS-Hauptamt whom we had got to know at the Berghof mentioned the possibility of getting false papers for us, also possible lodgings.