Martin Bormann
From Metapedia
Martin Bormann (June 17, 1900 – May 2, 1945) was a German officer and personal secretary to Hitler.
Bormann was born in 1900 in what was then called the German Empire. His father was a postal employee. Bormann had three other siblings, one of which died during infancy. During World War I, Bormann served in the Artillery unit, but never saw combat. After the war, he began a career as a real estate agent, which brought him into contact with Freikorp members who lived on some of the Estates. He quickly became involved with the organization, carrying out assassinations and assaulting Trade Union leaders and members. In 1924, he was sent to jail for 1 year in connection with the murder of the communist school teacher Walther Kadow. The actually murderer was Rudolf Höss.
1929 saw Bormann marrying a Judge's daughter, Gerda Buch. Her father was NSDAP Court Chairman Walter Buch and over the course of 15 years, Gerda would give birth to ten children.
[edit] World War 2
After his release from prison in 1925, Bormann joined the NSDAP and became the Party's Press Officer and remained involved throughout the 1930's. From 1933 until 1941 he served as Rudolf Hess's personal secretary. After Hess under took his heroic flight to Scotland, Bormann became the personal secretary to Hitler, in which Hitler had complete trust for him. His duties included all of the Fuhrer's paperwork, scheduled meeting and personal finances.
In 1945 with the Soviets in Berlin, on April 28 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."
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. Borman 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. 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.
Over the course of the following decades, there were many reported sightings of Bormann, and in 1967 Simon Wiesenthal was convinced Bormann was alive and had received facial plastic surgery and was living in South America. In 1972 construction workers in Berlin discovered remains of a body, and through memory, Bormann's dentist confirmed the teeth and jaw found, were that of Bormann. In 1998 the German government carried out DNA tests, using the skull and DNA from a relative and concluded that it was indeed Martin Bormann, and he was declared deseased.
