Martin Bormann

Secretary and chief assistant to Adolf Hitler

• Born: June 17, 1900
• Birthplace: Wegeleben, Germany
• Died: May 2, 1945
• Place of death: Berlin, Germany

Cause of notoriety: As a “model secretary” to Adolf Hitler, Bormann steadily gained influence within the Nazi apparatus, and by the end of World War II he was second only to Hitler in terms of real political power.

Active: 1933-1945

Locale: Germany

Early Life

Martin Bormann (BOHR-man), named after German theologian Martin Luther, was born near the town of Halberstadt in 1900. Educated in private schools, Bormann was a poor student. In 1918, he entered the German army, but he saw no active service during World War I. After the war, Bormann became a farm manager in Mecklenburg, where he joined a local anti-Semitic organization. In 1923, he was involved in the murder of a member of the organization and was tried for manslaughter rather than murder; he served one year in prison. In 1926, he moved to Weimar, becoming active in radical politics and officially joining Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party in February, 1927.

In 1929, he married Gerda Buch, the daughter of a fervent Nazi. Hitler and Rudolf Hess were witnesses. Gerda was the archetypal Aryan woman, five feet, eleven inches tall, while Bormann was dark, stocky, and only about five feet, seven inches in height. The marriage produced nine children. Gerda proved to be a submissive wife, in spite of Bormann’s numerous infidelities. Bormann largely cut himself off from his own family, although his younger brother, Albert, served in Hitler’s secretariat.

Nazi Career

In 1928, Bormann was summoned to Munich, the center of the Nazi movement, and was given a position in the Sturmabteilung (SA, or stormtroopers) Insurance Office. The classic bureaucratic insider, Bormann made himself indispensable. The insurance program was turned into a relief fund, and by 1930 Bormann was its administrator. The Nazi Party never gave publicity to financial matters, and Bormann, lacking any public charisma, remained a figure behind the scenes. The Great Depression gave the Nazis their opportunity to escalate their power, and in the September, 1930, elections, they became the second largest party in the Reichstag, or parliament. In late 1932, Hitler reorganized the party structure, placing the newly created Political Central Committee under Hess. On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed German chancellor, and in July Bormann became Hess’s chief of staff.

Hitler’s management style was to create rivalries intentionally among the leading Nazis, including Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Hess, and others. Hess, an incompetent idealist, would have been destroyed without Bormann, the bureaucrat. After Hess became deputy leader in late 1933, it was Bormann who dealt with Hitler on party matters rather than the distracted Hess, and it was through Bormann that Hitler issued his orders to party functionaries. However, Bormann was not just a conduit; he used his position to injure rivals and to promote loyal subordinates. He also had access to the so-called Adolf Hitler Endowment Fund, making payments as directed and liberally reallocating funds for gifts to Nazi officials. Bormann even purchased many of Hitler’s gifts for his mistress, Eva Braun, and was largely responsible for the expansion of Hitler’s mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden. Personally, Bormann was less avaricious than many in the Nazi Party, although over time, he acquired several residences and other properties.

Bormann’s attendance upon Hitler was almost constant, both before and during World War II. He approached the apex of power in May, 1941, after deputy führer Hess secretly flew to Scotland in a confused attempt to make peace with Great Britain. It is unlikely that Bormann knew of Hess’s plans, but he was the beneficiary, becoming head of the Party Chancellery after Hess’s exit from the party. In April, 1943, Bormann became the official secretary to the führer, and from then on hardly anyone saw Hitler without first going through Bormann. His influence even extended into the Germany military, or Wehrmacht; by 1943, he was attempting to apply Nazi ideological criteria in military appointments. After the failed assassination attempt on Hitler in July, 1944, the Gestapo reported directly to Bormann regarding its investigations, and he was instrumental in forcing German field marshal Erwin Rommel to commit suicide.

Although Bormann was a baptized Christian, he was among the most vehement of the anti-Christians among the Nazi leadership, and he used his position in enforcing anti-Christian policies among other party members. He was also involved in propagating the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws in 1935, as well as other discriminatory actions against the Jews. His role in the “final solution” regarding the Jews was that of the bureaucrat whose signature, along with others, facilitated the horrors of the Holocaust. He was not in attendance at the Wannsee Conference of January, 1942 (in which various Nazi deputies discussed plans for the extermination of Jews), but it is likely that knew of its decisions beforehand. Bormann was also active in decisions affecting the Slavs of Eastern Europe, whether it was in establishing nonfraternization policies, introducing German military law, or encouraging Slavs to have abortions in order to reduce the birth rate of that “inferior” race.

By late 1944, German defeat became inevitable, and the declining state of Hitler’s health raised the question of the führer’s successor. Bormann probably did not aspire to the position, preferring to operate behind the scenes. His own preference would have been for a nonpolitical figure, perhaps a military officer such as Admiral Karl Dönitz, to take the lead. Bormann was with Hitler when the führer moved into the Berlin bunker in February, 1945. Although urged by Bormann and others to flee to the south and continue the resistance, Hitler refused, committing suicide on April 30. Bormann attempted to escape the city but failed; he apparently ingested a capsule of poison early in the morning of May 2 and died.

Impact

Martin Bormann’s body disappeared in the chaos resulting from the Soviet capture of Berlin. He was condemned to death in absentia at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, and for years Bormann sightings were reported worldwide, from Australia to Argentina. In 1972, Bormann’s skeleton was discovered in Berlin and he was formally pronounced dead by a West German court in April, 1973. Bormann, like Joseph Stalin, is an example of a ruthless individual who achieved and maintained power through skills of private bureaucratic manipulation rather than through an electoral, democratic process or by use of charismatic rhetoric, like that of Hitler.

Bibliography

Bormann, Martin. The Bormann Letters. New York: AMS Press, 1981. A collection of Bormann’s letters, many of which are revealing of the man and his power.

Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin, 2005. The second volume in a major assessment of Hitler’s Third Reich, which places Bormann in the context of the Nazi state.

Kilzer, Louis. Hitler’s Traitor. Novato, Calif.: Presidio, 2000. The author, a Pulitzer Prize winner, theorizes that Bormann was a Soviet spy.

Lange, Jochen von. The Secretary. New York: Random House, 1979. A readable biography by a German journalist involved in the identification of Bormann’s body.