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Martin Bormann
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Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery (Parteikanzlei) and private secretary to Adolf Hitler. He gained Hitler's trust and derived immense power within the Third Reich by controlling access to the Führer.
Early life and family
Bormann, born in Wegeleben (near Halberstadt) in the Kingdom of Prussia in the German Empire, was the son of post office employee Theodor Bormann (1862–1903) and his second wife, Antonie Bernhardine Mennong.
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Encyclopedia
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery (Parteikanzlei) and private secretary to Adolf Hitler. He gained Hitler's trust and derived immense power within the Third Reich by controlling access to the Führer.
Early life and family
Bormann, born in Wegeleben (near Halberstadt) in the Kingdom of Prussia in the German Empire, was the son of post office employee Theodor Bormann (1862–1903) and his second wife, Antonie Bernhardine Mennong. He had two half-siblings (Else and Walter Bormann) from his father's first marriage to Louise Grobler, who had died in 1898. Later that year, Theodor Bormann married Antonie. She gave birth to three sons, one of whom died in infancy. Martin (born 1900) and Albert (born 1902) survived to adulthood.
Bormann dropped out of school to work on a farm in Mecklenburg. After serving briefly with an artillery regiment — which never saw combat — at the end of World War I Bormann became an estate manager in Mecklenburg, which brought him into contact with the Freikorps residing on the estate. He became involved in their activities, mostly assassinations and the intimidation of trade union organisers.
In March 1924, he was sentenced to a year in prison as an accomplice to his friend Rudolf Höss in the murder of Walther Kadow, who may have betrayed Albert Leo Schlageter to the French during the occupation of the Ruhr District.
On 2 September 1929, Bormann married 19-year-old Gerda Buch, whose father, Major Walter Buch, served as a chairman of the Nazi Party Court. Bormann had recently met Hitler, who agreed to serve as a witness at their wedding. Over the years, Gerda Bormann gave birth to 10 children; one daughter died shortly after birth.
The children of Martin and Gerda Bormann were:
- Adolf Martin Bormann (born 14 April 1930; called Krönzi; named after his godfather Hitler)
- Ilse Bormann (born 9 July 1931; twin sister Ehrengard died after the birth; named after her godmother Ilse Hess)
- Irmgard Bormann (born 25 July 1933)
- Rudolf Gerhard Bormann (born 31 August 1934; named after his godfather Rudolf Hess)
- Heinrich Hugo Bormann (born 13 June 1936; named after his godfather Heinrich Himmler)
- Eva Ute Bormann (born 4 August 1938)
- Gerda Bormann (born 23 October 1940)
- Fred Hartmut Bormann (born 4 March 1942)
- Volker Bormann (born 18 September 1943)
Gerda Bormann suffered from cancer in her later years, and died of mercury poisoning on 23 March 1946, in Merano, Italy. All of Bormann's children survived the war. Most were cared for anonymously in foster homes. His oldest son Martin was Hitler's godson. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1953, but left the priesthood in the late 1960s. He married an ex-nun in 1971 and became a teacher of theology.
Rise through the Nazi party
In 1925, after his release from prison, Bormann joined the NSDAP in Thuringia. He became the party's regional press officer and business manager in 1928.
Reich Leader and Head of the Party Chancellery
In October 1933, Bormann became a Reich Leader (Reichsleiter) of the NSDAP, and in November, a member of the Reichstag. From July 1933 until 1941, Bormann served as the personal secretary for Rudolf Hess. Bormann commissioned the building of the Kehlsteinhaus. The Kehlsteinhaus was formally presented to Hitler on 20 April 1938, after 13 months of expensive construction, and is commemorated on a plaque just above the entrance to the tunnel to the lift up to the Eagles Nest. During this period, Bormann had also managed Hitler's finances through various schemes such as royalties collected on Hitler's book, his image on postage stamps, as well as setting up a Adolf Hitler Endowment Fund of German Industry which was really an thinly veiled extortion attempt on the behalf of Hitler to collect more money from German industrialists.
In May 1941, the flight of Hess to Britain cleared the way for Bormann to become Head of the Party Chancellery (Parteikanzlei) that same month. Bormann proved to be a master of intricate political infighting; his mastery of such infighting along with his access and closeness to Hitler, and because of the trust Hitler held in him, he was able to constantly and effectively check and thus make enemies of Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Alfred Rosenberg, Robert Ley, and Albert Speer in the constant infighting between them for power and Hitler's attention that was common amongst the Nazi elite during the Third Reich.
Bormann took charge of all Hitler's paperwork, appointments, and personal finances. Hitler came to have complete trust in Bormann and the view of reality he presented. During a meeting, Hitler was said to have screamed, "To win this war, I need Bormann!". Many historians have suggested Bormann held so much power that, in some respects, he became Germany's "secret leader" during the war. A collection of transcripts edited by Bormann during the war appeared in print in 1951 as Hitler's Table Talk 1941–1944, mostly a re-telling of Hitler's wartime dinner conversations. Some speculate the Table Talk may be inaccurate particularly in regards to Hitler's religious adherence, as it directly contradicts some of Hitler's publicly held positions.
Bormann's bureaucratic power and effective reach broadened considerably by 1942. Faced with the imminent demise of the Third Reich, he systematically went about the organising of German corporate flight capital, and set up off-shore holding companies and business interests in close coordination with the same Ruhr industrialists and German bankers who facilitated Hitler's explosive rise to power 10 years before. (See Ratlines)
In February 1943, the crushing German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad produced a crisis in the regime. Bormann exploited the disaster at Stalingrad, and his daily access to Hitler, to persuade him to create a three-man junta representing the State, the Army, and the Party, represented respectively by Hans Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the OKW (armed forces high command), and Bormann, who controlled the Party and access to the Führer. This Committee of Three would exercise dictatorial powers over the home front. Goebbels, Speer, Göring and Himmler all saw this proposal as a power grab by Bormann and a threat to their power, and combined to block it.
However, their alliance was shaky at best. This was mainly due to the fact that during this period Himmler was still cooperating with Bormann to gain more power at the expense of Göring and most of the traditional Reich administration; Göring's loss of power had resulted in an overindulgence in the trappings of power and his strained relations with Goebbels made it difficult for a unified coalition to be formed, despite the attempts of Speer and Göring's Luftwaffe deputy Field Marshal Erhard Milch, to reconcile the two Party comrades.
However, the result was that nothing was done—the Committee of Three declined into irrelevance due to the loss of power by Keitel and Lammers and the ascension of Bormann and the situation continued to drift, with administrative chaos increasingly undermining the war effort. The ultimate responsibility for this lay with Hitler, as Goebbels well knew, referring in his diary to a "crisis of leadership," but Goebbels was too much under Hitler’s spell ever to challenge his power.
At the Nuremberg trials, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the Reich Commissioner for The Netherlands, testified that he had called Bormann to confirm an order to deport the Dutch Jews to Auschwitz, and further testified that Bormann passed along Hitler's orders for the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust. A telephone conversation between Bormann and Heinrich Himmler, who was his main antagonist in the struggle for power within the Nazi elite, was overheard by telephone operators during which Himmler reported to Bormann about the extermination of 40,000 Jews in Poland. Himmler was sharply rebuked for using the word "exterminated" rather than the codeword "resettled," and Bormann ordered the apologetic Himmler never again to report on this by phone but through SS couriers.
Berlin
Bormann, his adjutant, SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Zander, and his secretary, Else Krüger, were with Hitler in the Führer's shelter (Führerbunker) during the Battle of Berlin. The Führerbunker was located under the Reich Chancellery (Reichskanzlei) in the center of Berlin.
On 28 April, Bormann wired the following message to German Admiral Karl Dönitz: "Situation very serious . . . Those ordered to rescue the Führer are keeping silent . . . Disloyalty seems to gain the upper hand everywhere . . . Reichskanzlei a heap of rubble."
At 04:00 on 29 April 1945, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Joseph Goebbels, Hans Krebs, and Bormann witnessed and signed Hitler's last will and testament. Hitler dictated this document to his personal private secretary, Traudl Junge. Bormann was Head of the Party Chancellery (Parteikanzlei) and was also the private secretary to Hitler. Shortly before the signing the last will and testament, Hitler married Eva Braun in a civil ceremony.
The Soviet forces continued to fight their way into the center of Berlin. Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide during the afternoon of the 30 April. Braun took cyanide and Hitler shot himself. Per instructions, their bodies were taken to the garden and burned. In accordance with Hitler's last will and testament, Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, became the new "Head of Government" and Chancellor of Germany (Reichskanzler). Martin Bormann was named as Party Minister, thus officially confirming his position as de facto General Secretary of the Party.
At 03:15 on 1 May, Reichskanzler Goebbels and Bormann sent a radio message to Dönitz informing him of Hitler's death. Per Hitler's last wishes, Dönitz was appointed as the new "President of Germany" (Reichspräsident). Goebbels committed suicide later that same day.
On 2 May, the Battle of Berlin ended when General of the Artillery Helmuth Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defence Area, unconditionally surrendered the city to General Vasily Chuikov, the commander of the Soviet 8th Guards Army. It is generally agreed that, by this day, Bormann had left the Führerbunker. It has been claimed that he left with Ludwig Stumpfegger and Artur Axmann as part of a group attempting to break out of the city.
Death, rumours of survival, discovery of remains
Axmann's account of Bormann's death
As World War II came to a close, Bormann held out with Hitler in the Führerbunker in Berlin. On 30 April 1945, just before committing suicide, Hitler urged Bormann to save himself. On 1 May, Bormann left the Führerbunker with SS doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger and Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann as part of a group attempting to break out of the Soviet encirclement. They emerged from an underground subway tunnel and quickly became disoriented among the ruins and ongoing battle. They walked for a time with some German tanks, but all three were temporarily stunned by an exploding anti-tank shell. Leaving the tanks and the rest of their group, they walked along railroad tracks to Lehrter station where Axmann decided to go alone in the opposite direction of his two companions. When he encountered a Red Army patrol, Axmann doubled back and later insisted he had seen the bodies of Bormann and Stumpfegger near the railroad switching yard with moonlight clearly illuminating their faces. He did not check the bodies, so he did not know what killed them.
Tried at Nuremberg in absentia
During the chaotic closing days of the war, there were contradictory reports as to Bormann's whereabouts. For example, Jakob Glas, Bormann's long-time chauffeur, insisted he saw Bormann in Munich weeks after 1 May 1945. The bodies were not found, and a global search followed including extensive efforts in South America. With no evidence sufficient to confirm Bormann's death, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg tried Bormann in absentia in October 1946 and sentenced him to death. His court-appointed defence attorney used the unusual and unsuccessful defence that the court could not convict Bormann because he was already dead.
In 1965, a retired postal worker named Albert Krumnow stated that he had personally buried the bodies of Bormann and Stumpfegger.
Two decades of unconfirmed sightings
Unconfirmed sightings of Bormann were reported globally for two decades, particularly in Europe, Paraguay, and elsewhere in South America. Some rumours claimed that Bormann had plastic surgery while on the run. At a 1967 press conference, Simon Wiesenthal asserted there was strong evidence that Bormann was alive and well in South America. Writer Ladislas Farago's widely-known 1974 book Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich argued that Bormann had survived the war and lived in Argentina. Farago's evidence, which drew heavily on official governmental documents, was compelling enough to persuade Dr. Robert M. W. Kempner (a lawyer at the Nuremberg Trials) to briefly re-open an active investigation in 1972, but Farago's claims were generally rejected by historians and critics. Allegations that Bormann and his organization survived the war figure prominently in the work of David Emory.
Escape to Argentina?
Juan Peron, president of Argentina, set aside more than 10,000 blank passports and identity cards for Nazi fugitives. Bormann was at the top of the list. Bormann directed a German submarine operation whose purpose was to ship treasure to Argentina. Nazi records show that as much as 550,000 ounces of gold, 3,500 ounces of platinum and of diamonds, hundreds of works of art as well as millions in gold marks, pounds, dollars and Swiss francs were sent aboard six U-boats to Argentina. Those boats supposedly landed along the coast in 1945 and the Argentine government still classifies the interrogations of the crew members.
Russian spy?
Reinhard Gehlen states in his memoirs his conviction that Bormann was in fact a Russian agent and that at the time of his 'disappearance' in Berlin he in reality went over to his Russian masters and was spirited away by them to Moscow. He bases this startling conclusion on a conversation he had with Admiral Canaris and on his conviction that there was an enemy agent at work inside the German supreme command. He deduced the latter from the fact that the Russians appeared to be able to obtain "rapid and detailed information on incidents and top-level decision-making on the German side". Of course, at the time he was writing up his memoirs (late 1960s to early 1970s), Gehlen was not aware of the British breaking of the Enigma codes. Gehlen goes on to say that he discovered that Bormann was engaged in a Funkspiel with Moscow with Hitler's express approval. He claims that in the 1950s, when he headed first the 'Gehlen Organisation' and later the Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND), the West-German Intelligence Service, he "was passed two separate reports from behind the Iron Curtain to the effect that Bormann had been a Soviet agent and had lived after the war in the Soviet Union under perfect cover as an adviser to the Moscow government. He has died in the meantime." (quotes from the 1971 ed.)
Discovery of remains
Axmann and Krumnow's accounts were bolstered in late 1972 when construction workers uncovered human remains near the Lehrter Bahnhof in West Berlin just 12 meters from the spot where Krumnow claimed he had buried them. Dental records — reconstructed from memory in 1945 by Dr. Hugo Blaschke — identified the skeleton as Bormann's, and damage to the collarbone was consistent with injuries Bormann's sons reported he had sustained in a riding accident in 1939. Fragments of glass in the jawbones of both skeletons indicated that Bormann and Stumpfegger had committed suicide by biting cyanide capsules in order to avoid capture. Soon after, in a press conference held by the West German government, Bormann was declared dead, a statement condemned by London's Daily Express as a whitewash perpetrated by the Brandt government. West German diplomatic functionaries were given the official instruction: "If anyone is arrested on suspicion that he is Bormann we will be dealing with an innocent man." Some controversy continued, however. For example, Hugh Thomas' 1995 book Doppelgängers claimed there were forensic inconsistencies suggesting Bormann died later than 1945.
The controversy ended in 1998 when German authorities ordered a genetic test on the skull. The test identified the skull as that of Bormann, using DNA from Bormann's son, Martin Bormann Jr. Bormann's remains were cremated and the ashes scattered in the Baltic Sea.
See also
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