At 5am on April 21 six of the stenographers and their records flew out of Berlin with their transcripts and notes. At this point they had accumulated at least 100,000 pages of single-sided text. Late during the evening on April 20, 1945, with Allied armies approaching Berlin from all directions, Hitler ordered that all but two of the stenographers proceed to Berchtesgaden and evacuate their original notes and his copy of the transcriptions which was kept in the basement of the Reichs Chancellery. The other was kept as a working copy in a safe at Hitler respective headquarters, available to him for reference in case of questions. Walter Scherff, to be used in writing the history of the war. Of the two other copies of the transcripts, one was given to Hitler’s Military Historian, Maj. The designated “Fuehrer copy” and the two sets of original shorthand notes were collected and periodically taken to Berlin for storage in a basement vault of the Reich Chancellery. The typists furnished a final transcript made with two carbon copies. The transcriptions for long conferences would run from 100 to 150 pages. Afterwards the stenographers dictated their stenographic notes to typists brought in from the Nazi Party Headquarters.
Their only task was to take down verbatim shorthand notes of the discussions, recovering every word on both sides of steno pads (measuring 8 x 6 inches) which was spoken. Two stenographers were present at the conferences and other meetings at any one time and rotated duty as pairs. Thus would be formed the Stenographic Service at the Fuehrer’s Headquarters. He intended these notes to serve as the basic material for a history of World War II and a reference aid for his own use. He ordered that stenographers be employed to take notes of what took place at the conferences. Hitler, in September 1942, decided in to have his own record of what took place at the military conferences in order to have proof on his side of what he had ordered. I had first run across them while doing research on Adolf Hitler’s stenographers and their records. This exhibit consisted of charred fragments of German stenographic notes (see example of a page). This past spring knowing my colleague Sylvia Naylor was doing archival descriptive work on the exhibits used at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, I showed her one of the more interesting files, USA Exhibit 787.
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