Bormann, Martin

Bormann, Martin (1900–45), Hitler's crude and coarse private secretary who by the end of the war had become one of the most powerful men in the Nazi regime.

Bormann, who was born at Halberstadt, was a drop-out from school. After serving briefly in the First World War he became a trainee on an estate in Mecklenburg and then a farm manager. He joined the Nazi Party in 1925 after serving a year's imprisonment as an accomplice to murder, and worked for the party's district executive in Weimar. He then rose steadily through the party hierarchy and in November 1933 was elected as a Nazi delegate to the Reichstag. From July 1933 to May 1941 he held the post of chef de cabinet in Hess's office, acting as his right-hand man and personal secretary. It was during these years that he mastered the intricacies of the Nazi bureaucratic machinery, and established Hitler's confidence in his abilities and loyalty by administering the Führer's finances.

After Hess's mysterious flight to England in May 1941 Bormann, to all intents and purposes, took his place. He was made head of the party chancellery, where his apparent self-effacement hid a vicious and remorseless ambition, and in April 1943 took over Hess's old post as Hitler's secretary. The anonymity of his position proved ideal for increasing his influence, fostering intrigue, and pushing for a hard line on the Nazi Party's most cherished policies on racial and domestic matters. He was especially keen to crush once and for all any influence the church might still wield and was as strongly anti-clerical as he was anti-Semitic.

Bormann's position enabled him to regulate who had access to Hitler, to play on his master's weaknesses and foibles, and to manipulate his rivals. Hitler called him ‘my loyal Party comrade’ and appointed him the political head of the Volkssturm (see Germany, 5) in September 1944. He also made him the witness of his political testament, in which he appointed Bormann the party minister, and of his marriage to Eva Braun. Bormann left the Führerbunker on the night of 1/2 May to try and join the new German government in Flensburg, but either committed suicide or was killed while still in Berlin. He was sentenced to death in absentia at the Nuremberg trials, and human remains, identified as his, were found in Berlin in December 1972.

Bibliography

Smelser, R., and Zitelmann, R. (eds.), The Nazi Elite (London, 1993).