Traudl Junge was a well-mannered Bavarian girl raised by a single mother, who yearned, she recalls, for a father figure to enter her life. In 1942, her wish was fulfilled, and how! In Berlin, the comely 22-year-old landed a job with the Führer himself, being hired to type his speeches and correspondence. She remained in his employ until his suicide in 1945. It was to Junge that Hitler dictated his final will.

This amazing story remained hidden for almost 60 years, until, 81 and ill with terminal cancer, the conscience-struck Junge spilled all for a documentary camera set up in her Munich apartment. Behind it stood André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer, Austrian Jews. Reduced by the filmmakers from 10 hours of confessional interviews to 90 potent minutes, Im toten Winkel: Hitlers Sekretärin/Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary (which opens this week in the Coolidge Corner’s screening room) premiered at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, on February 10. The next day, Frau Junge died in a Munich hospital.

It began for Junge with a Third Reich entry-level opening: the last secretary had suffered hysteria trying to type for her VIP boss. Martin Bormann discovered Junge and brought her to his commander’s freezing-cold office. Hitler, Junge remembers, was "very friendly. He said, ‘My child, don’t be nervous. Should I get an electric heater for you?’ "

Hitler confided that he fretted about staff turnover, about how pretty young women would run off and marry. Junge persuaded him that such was not the case with her: "I’ve been without a man for 22 years."

Der Führer was a considerate employer from day one. "He didn’t want someone making coffee, or taking dictation," Junge says, and he wasn’t the type to make passes. "I felt he was uneasy about anything erotic. He wasn’t one to let himself go." And she got a look into her boss’s private life. She watched him rely on the advice of his in-house physician, who supplied him with homeopathic pills and hormone injections "for digestion, for wind." Hitler didn’t like to be touched, and he would wash his hands after petting his beloved dog, Blondie. Even in the hottest weather, he wore long pants. He admitted to her, "I can’t wear shorts because my knees are too white."

As the interview proceeds, it is Junge herself who realizes the superficiality of her testimony: "All of these stories sound so banal." The filmmakers probe deeper. How did the war outside enter the office? What about Hitler and the Jews? Hitler didn’t wish to talk about the war, especially as it began to go against Germany. In 1943, Junge was warned, "Don’t bother him with questions about Stalingrad." Later Hitler, with Junge among those accompanying him, would ride by train through Germany with the shades drawn, shrouding himself from the destruction; "He never saw a city that was bombed," Junge claims. And he almost never discussed the Jewish Question around his help. Junge was, however, witness to an argument between the Führer and a well-placed woman who challenged his ill treatment of Jews. A livid Hitler struck out: "Don’t interfere with things you don’t understand. Such mawkishness and sentimentality!" At this time, Junge had this unspoken thought: "What if he found Jewish blood in his own family? Would Hitler have gassed himself?"

This documentary is an extraordinary oral history of a witness to the inner workings of the Third Reich. Junge offers creepy remembrances of life within the Berlin bunker where Adolf and Eva hid in 1945 before ending their lives. She talks of a despondent Hitler sitting in a hallway petting puppies, then trying out cyanide on Blondie to make sure it would work for him. And then there was the time that Junge and Braun went up for air and discovered flowers growing in Berlin.

But we also see how a decent, well-behaved German dealt with being Hitler’s secretary, and how she feels now as she reflects on who she was working for. She began to see that "human life meant nothing to him," but she never challenged him, because "if you like and respect someone, you don’t want to dent the image." Her epiphany came late, when she was asked to write down his last will. Instead of showing contrition, Hitler blamed the Jews, and also the German people for being unready, "so they must perish." When he killed himself, Junge, a short distance away in the bunker, finally seethed with anger at the shortcomings of her boss.

Gerald Peary can be reached at gpeary@world.std.com