Else Kruger

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Else Krüger , married Else James (born February 9, 1915 in Hamburg-Altona ; † January 24, 2005 in Germany ) was a German secretary. From late 1942 to May 1945 she was Martin Bormann's secretary and allegedly his lover .

During the Battle of Berlin at the end of World War II , she was in the Führerbunker . Krüger was there with Eva Braun , Gerda Christian , Traudl Junge and Constanze Manziarly when Adolf Hitler informed them that they should prepare to leave for the Berghof . She volunteered to stay with Hitler. Hitler gave each of the women a cyanide capsule in case they tried to commit suicide. On the afternoon of April 30, 1945, Hitler and Braun committed suicide .

Then she left the bunker on May 1, 1945 with a group around Waffen-SS Brigadefuhrer Wilhelm Mohnke . On the morning of May 2, the group was captured by Red Army soldiers . They were just hiding in the basement of the Schultheiss-Patzenhofer brewery on Prinzenallee .

After the war, Kruger was interrogated by the British. She married her interrogator Leslie James (1915-1995) on December 23, 1947 in Wallasey , Cheshire, Great Britain. She lived in Wallasey as Else James and remained married to Leslie until his death.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Uwe Bahnsen , James Preston O'Donnell : The Bunker: the history of the Reich Chancellery Group . Da Capo Press, New York, 2nd edition, 2001, ISBN 0-306-80958-3 (German: The catacomb: the end in the Reich Chancellery. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1975, ISBN 3-421-01712- 3 ). In an interview with O'Donnell, Junge and Christian claimed that Bormann was having an affair with Krüger. When O'Donnell asked Kruger if this was true, she neither confirmed nor denied these statements.
    Mazal Holocaust Collection: The last days of Hitler: the legends, the evidence, the truth . Brockhampton Press, London 1999, ISBN 1-86019-902-X , pp. 291 .
  2. ^ Antony Beevor: The fall of Berlin, 1945 . New York, ISBN 0-670-03041-4 , pp. 278 .
  3. ^ Mazal Holocaust Collection: The last days of Hitler: the legends, the evidence, the truth . Brockhampton Press, London 1999, ISBN 1-86019-902-X , pp. 160-182 . Antony Beevor: The fall of Berlin, 1945 . New York, ISBN 0-670-03041-4 , pp.
     359 .
  4. ^ Uwe Bahnsen, James P. O'Donnell: The bunker: the history of the Reich Chancellery group . Da Capo Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0-306-80958-3 , pp. 271, 274 .
  5. ^ Uwe Bahnsen, James P. O'Donnell: The bunker: the history of the Reich Chancellery group . Da Capo Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0-306-80958-3 , pp. 271, 274, 291 .
  6. ↑ Woman who worked for Nazis. In: liverpoolecho.co.uk. January 20, 2016, accessed September 9, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Kruger, Else
ALTERNATIVE NAMES James, Else (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German secretary of Martin Bormann
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg-Altona
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 2005
Place of death Germany