Goebbels' former secretary: 'I knew nothing'

18 August 2016 - 10:06 By ©The Daily Telegraph

Brunhilde Pomsel says working as Joseph Goebbels' secretary was "just another job". Pomsel is, at 105, one of the few surviving people who regularly interacted with the Nazi inner circle during World War 2.She was in the bunker in which Goebbels and Adolf Hitler committed suicide at the end of the war, making sure there was sufficient alcohol on hand to "retain the numbness" of the troglodytes as the Red Army neared.In the three years prior, Pomsel had sat just outside Goebbels' private office each day.But she says she was unaware of the mass atrocities being carried out by the regime she served."I know no one ever believes us nowadays - everyone thinks we knew everything. We knew nothing; it was all a well-kept secret," she told the UK's The Guardian ahead of the release of A German Life, a film about her life.Pomsel is unapologetic even as she recalls manipulating data about wartime casualties in Germany's favour, keeping the wheels spinning in the German propaganda machine."It is important for me, when I watch the film, to recognise that mirror image in which I can understand everything I've done wrong. But really, I didn't do anything other than type."She was thrilled to take the job, she says, noting the generous salary and describing the beautiful surroundings at the Propaganda Ministry. If others had been placed in her position, she speculates, they would have made the same decisions as she."People today who say they would have stood up against the Nazis - I believe they are sincere but, believe me, most of them wouldn't have. The whole country was as if under a spell."Pomsel spent five years in a Soviet prison camp after the war. ..

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