Gertraud “Traudl” Humps was born in Munich, the daughter of a master brewer and lieutenant in the Reserve Army, Max Humps and his wife Hildegard (née Zottmann). She had a sister, Inge, born in 1923. She once expressed her desire to become a ballerina as a teenager but was not accepted by a dance school. She then trained as a secretary. When she heard about an opening on the Chancellery staff, she applied for it.

Traudl Humps began working for Hitler in December 1942. She was the youngest of his private secretaries. “I was 22 and I didn’t know anything about politics; it didn’t interest me,” Junge said decades later, adding that she felt great guilt for “liking the greatest criminal ever to have lived”.

With Hitler’s encouragement, in June 1943, Junge married Waffen-SS officer Hans Hermann Junge (1914–1944), who had been a valet and orderly to Hitler. He died in combat in France in August 1944. She worked at Hitler’s side in Berlin, the Berghof in Berchtesgaden, at Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, and lastly back in Berlin in the Führerbunker.

In 1945, Junge was with Hitler in Berlin. During Hitler’s last days in Berlin, he would regularly eat lunch with his secretaries Junge and Gerda Christian. After the war, Junge recalled Gerda asking Hitler if he would leave Berlin. This was firmly rejected by Hitler. Both women recalled that Hitler in conversation made it clear that his body must not fall into the hands of the Soviets. He would shoot himself. Junge typed Hitler’s last private and political will and testament in the Führerbunker the day before his suicide. Junge later wrote that while she was playing with the Goebbels children on 30 April, “Suddenly […] there is the sound of a shot, so loud, so close, that we all fall silent. It echoes on through all the rooms. ‘That was a direct hit,’ cried Helmut [Goebbels] with no idea how right he is. The Führer is dead now.”

Junge was held in sundry jails, where she was often interrogated about her role in Hitler’s entourage and the events surrounding Hitler’s suicide. By December 1945, she had been released from prison but was restricted to the Soviet sector of Berlin. On New Year’s Eve 1946, she was admitted to a hospital in the British sector for diphtheria, and remained there for two months. While she was there, her mother was able to secure for Junge the paperwork required to allow her to move from the British sector in Berlin to Bavaria. Receiving these on 2 February 1946, she travelled from Berlin and across the Soviet occupation zone (which was to become East Germany) to the British zone, and from there south to Bavaria in the American Zone. Junge was held by the Americans for a short time during the first half of 1946, and interrogated about her time in the Führerbunker. She was then freed, and allowed to live in postwar West Germany.

In 1989, Junge’s manuscript about her life throughout the war was published as part of the book Voices from the Bunker by Pierre Galante and Eugene Silianoff (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons). Also in that year, she was interviewed in the BBC documentary The Fatal Attraction of Adolf Hitler and discussed at length her impressions of Hitler and the final days with him in the Führerbunker. In 1991, she appeared in the documentary series Hitler’s Henchmen produced by German television channel ZDF. The 2002 release of her memoirs Until the Final Hour, co-written with author Melissa Müller and describing the time she worked for Hitler, brought media coverage. She was also interviewed for the 2002 documentary film Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary, which drew much attention.

Junge died from cancer in Munich on 10 February 2002 at the age of 81, reportedly having said shortly before her death, “Now that I’ve let go of my story, I can let go of my life.” She is buried at Nordfriedhof München.