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Martin Bormann (June 17, 1900 - c. May 2, 1945) was a prominent German National Socialist (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 Nazi dictator.

Contents 1 Early life and family 2 Rise through the Nazi party 3 Death, rumours, and remains 4 References in popular culture 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Early life and family

Bormann, born in Wegeleben (near Halberstadt) 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 aged 30 after nine years of marriage. Theodor Bormann remarried later that year to 35-year-old Antonie. She gave birth to three sons, one of whom died in infancy. Martin 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 at the end of World War I—which never saw combat—Bormann became an estate manager in Mecklenburg, which brought him into contact with the Freikorps residing on the estate. He became involved in their dubious activities, mostly assassinations and the intimidation of trade union organisers.<ref>Axis History Forum.</ref>

In March 1924, he received a one-year sentence 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.<ref>Axis History Forum.</ref>

On September 2, 1929, Bormann married 19-year-old Gerda Buch (born October 23, 1909), 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. During the following 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 April 14, 1930; called Krönzi; named after his godfather Hitler)
• Ilse Bormann (born July 9 1931; twin sister Ehrengard died after the birth; named after her godmother Ilse Hess)
• Irmgard Bormann (born July 25 1933)
• Rudolf Gerhard Bormann (born August 31 1934; named after his godfather Rudolf Hess)
• Heinrich Hugo Bormann (born June 13 1936; named after his godfather Heinrich Himmler)
• Eva Ute Bormann (born August 4 1938)
• Gerda Bormann (born October 23 1940)
• Fred Hartmut Bormann (born March 4 1942)
• Volker Bormann (born September 18 1943)

Gerda Bormann was said to be calm and friendly and devoted her whole life to her husband and children. During her later years she suffered from cancer and finally died on March 23, 1946 of mercury poisoning in Meran, Austria. She was 36 years old. 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.

[edit] Rise through the Nazi party

After his release, Bormann joined the NSDAP in Thuringia. Despite his coarse and brutal personality, he became the party's regional press officer and business manager in 1928.

In October 1933, Bormann became a Reichsleiter of the NSDAP, and in November, a member of the Reichstag. From July 1933 until 1941, Bormann served as the personal secretary of Rudolf Hess. Bormann commissioned the building of the Kehlsteinhaus, and after 13 months of expensive construction, it was formally presented to Hitler in 1939.

The flight of Rudolf Hess to Britain in May 1941 cleared the way for Bormann to become head of the Parteikanzlei (Party Chancellery) that month, and he proved to be a master of intricate political infighting. Bormann developed and administered the Adolf Hitler Endowment Fund of German Industry, a huge fund of voluntary contributions made by successful business entrepreneurs to the Führer. He re-allocated these funds as gifts to almost all of the party leadership.

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, the Führer 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. The accuracy of the Table Talk is highly disputed as it directly contradicts many of Hitler's publicly held positions, particularly in regards to religious adherence; and it is theorized that the opinions given in the Table Talk are not genuinely Hitler's, but Bormann's.^{[citation needed]} It should be noted, though, that Bormann had a very pragmatic purpose in transcribing Hitler's private conversations, and used quotes from these transcripts in operative debates with other power players to prove that his position was identical to Hitler's. Therefore, it would have been risky for him to alter Hitler's statements. The Table Talk is the only original source to claim that Hitler was an atheist. Hitler's true religious feelings are unknown. Hitler was adept at manipulating the outer trappings of the Roman Catholic religion for maximum political effect. Bormann, however, was one of the few vocal atheists in the Nazi leadership.

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.<ref name=Manning>Manning, Paul. Martin Bormann – Nazi in Exile. AnimalFarm.</ref> (See Ratlines (history))

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 the Führer's orders for the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust. A telephone conversation between Bormann and Himmler was overheard by telephone operators during which Himmler reported to Bormann about the extermination of the 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.

In his 2000 book, Hitler's Traitor: Martin Borman and the Defeat of the Reich, Louis Kilzer makes the case that Borman was the elusive Soviet spy, Werther.

[edit] Death, rumours, and remains

As World War II came to a close, Bormann held out with Hitler in the Führerbunker in Berlin. Hitler urged Bormann to save himself and after the dictator's suicide on the afternoon of April 30, Bormann left the Führerbunker on May 2 1945 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 assumed they had been shot in the back.

However, 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 May 1 1945. The bodies were not found, and a global search followed including extensive efforts in South America. With no proof of 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.

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 and that it had spoiled his face. 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 reopen 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.

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."<ref name=Manning>Manning, Paul. Martin Bormann – Nazi in Exile. AnimalFarm.</ref> In 1998, a test identified a skull as that of Bormann, using DNA from an unnamed 83-year-old relative.<ref>Bormann's body 'identified'. BBC News (May 4, 1998).</ref> Hugh Thomas' 1995 book Doppelgangers highlights forensic inconsistencies that suggest Bormann died much later than 1945.

According to Reinhard Gehlen's autobiography, The Service (1972), Bormann was a Soviet agent throughout World War II.

[edit] References in popular culture

• Bormann's photo is shown in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and is identified as a man in South America who is the winner of the last golden ticket, a ticket that is later determined to be forgery.
• In the Philip K. Dick science fiction novel The Man in the High Castle, Bormann is the current leader of Germany.
• In Don Rosa's comics series The Pertwillaby Papers (first published in 1970s, published in book form 2003, by Gazette Bok, Oslo), Bormann was, after he disappeared, in charge of hiding the art treasures the Nazis had stolen from around the Europe; he is eventually found, frozen to death, on the North Pole.
• In Torgny Lindgren's Hash (Pölsan) (2002), Bormann escapes to Sweden and attempts to integrate into the local environment of a small village. He engages school teacher Lars, with whom he sings wonderful duets, in the quest of finding the world's best hash.
• In Takao Saito's manga series Golgo 13, the Israeli government hires Golgo 13 to rescue a Mossad agent and eliminate Neo-Nazis operating in Argentina and he comes face-to-face with Nazi war criminal Martin Bormann.
• Blue Öyster Cult recorded a track called Boorman the chauffer, which appears on the re-release of the 1974 Secret Treaties Album.
• Monty Python recorded a one-off show for German TV in 1972 called Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus, which included several sketches about the Olympic Games. One of these sketches includes a sprinter in a starting line-up who is described as "Bormann of Brazil." This sketch subsequently reappeared in the 1982 concert movie Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
• Bormann, played by actor James Jeter, is shown as the bass player on the Sex Pistols' 1979 British hit The Biggest Blow (A Punk Prayer) in both the movie The Great Rock and Roll Swindle and on the single's picture sleeve. The single was recorded in Brazil with Ronnie Biggs on lead vocals, which presumably tied in with many post-war reports of Bormann's whereabouts in South America.
• In 1987, Manchester group The Fall released a single (a cover of R. Dean Taylor's There's A Ghost in My House) with the song Haf Found Bormann as the B-side.

• In 1989-1991, Bill Drummond from British dance music group The KLF allegedly wore a long brown leather jacket that (Drummond claimed) once belonged to Bormann in several of the band's videos, including Kylie Said to Jason, 3 a.m. Eternal, It's Grim Up North, and The White Room.^{[citation needed]}
• In the 2005 Rebellion Developments game Sniper Elite, the player is tasked to kill Bormann to prevent him from surrendering himself to Soviet agents.
• Henry Rowland plays Bormann in Russ Meyer's Supervixens (1975) and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979). He also plays an ex-Nazi butler in Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970); however, here he is not explicitly identified as Bormann.
• Thomas Thieme portrayed Bormann in the 2004 German movie Der Untergang about the last days of Hitler.
• Jack Higgins wrote three novels in which Martin Bormann is featured: The Valhalla Exchange (1976), Thunder Point (1993), and The Bormann Testament (2006).
• In a 'Timequake' story from the 1970s UK Sci-Fi comic Starlord, Bormann murders and then assumes the identity of a time-trooper who has time-travelled to Berlin in 1945 to study the city under siege. Bormann successfully infiltrates the organisation of Time Control and changes the outcome of WWII placing himself as the Reich's new Fuerher.
• When Hunter S. Thompson was covering the "Rumble in the Jungle" 1974 heavyweight fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali in Kinshasa, Zaire, he had the hotel bellhop page "Martin Bormann" and signed Bormann's name to a traveller's check.

[edit] See also

• Nazi Germany
• Descendants of Nazi Officials

[edit] Notes

<references/>

[edit] References

• Farago, Ladislas (1974). Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0671216767.
• de Villemarest, Pierre (2005). Untouchable: Who Protected Bormann and Gestapo Muller After 1945.... Aquilion limited. ISBN 1904997023.
• Manning, Paul (1981). Martin Bormann, Nazi in Exile. Lyle Stuart. ISBN 0818403098.
• Kilzer, Louis (2000). Hitler's Traitor: Martin Bormann and the Defeat of the Reich. Presido Press. ISBN 0891417109.
• Stevenson, William (1975). The Bormann Brotherhood. Corgi. ISBN 0552097349.
• Carrier, Richard (November 2002). On the Trail of Bogus Quotes. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc..
• Wiesenthal Center Information Page

[edit] External links

bg:Мартин Борман

cs:Martin Bormann da:Martin Bormann de:Martin Bormann es:Martin Bormann eo:Martin Bormann fr:Martin Bormann it:Martin Bormann he:מרטין בורמן ka:ბორმანი, მარტინ la:Martinus Bormann nl:Martin Bormann ja:マルティン・ボルマン no:Martin Bormann pl:Martin Bormann pt:Martin Bormann ru:Борман, Мартин fi:Martin Bormann sv:Martin Bormann tr:Martin Bormann