70 Facts About Martin Bormann

Martin Ludwig Bormann was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery.

Martin Bormann gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information and access to Hitler.

Martin Bormann used his position to create an extensive bureaucracy and involve himself as much as possible in the decision making.

Martin Bormann served nearly a year in prison as an accomplice to his friend Rudolf Hoss in the murder of Walther Kadow.

Martin Bormann joined the Nazi Party in 1927 and the Schutzstaffel in 1937.

Martin Bormann initially worked in the party's insurance service, and transferred in July 1933 to the office of Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess, where he served as chief of staff.

Martin Bormann gained acceptance into Hitler's inner circle and accompanied him everywhere, providing briefings and summaries of events and requests.

Martin Bormann began acting as Hitler's personal secretary on 12 August 1935.

Martin Bormann had final approval over civil service appointments, reviewed and approved legislation, and by 1943 had de facto control over all domestic matters.

Martin Bormann was one of the leading proponents of the ongoing persecution of the Christian churches and favoured harsh treatment of Jews and Slavs in the areas conquered by Germany during World War II.

Martin Bormann returned with Hitler to the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin on 16 January 1945 as the Red Army approached the city.

Martin Bormann probably committed suicide on a bridge near Lehrter station.

Martin Bormann's body was buried nearby on 8 May 1945, but was not found and confirmed as Bormann's until 1973; the identification was reaffirmed in 1998 by DNA tests.

The missing Martin Bormann was tried in absentia by the International Military Tribunal in the Nuremberg trials of 1945 and 1946.

Martin Bormann was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging.

Martin Bormann had two half-siblings from his father's earlier marriage to Louise Grobler, who died in 1898.

Antonie Martin Bormann gave birth to three sons, one of whom died in infancy.

Theodor died when Martin Bormann was three, and his mother soon remarried.

Shortly after starting work at the estate, Martin Bormann joined an antisemitic landowners association.

Many estates, including Martin Bormann's, had Freikorps units stationed on site to guard the crops from pillaging.

On 17 March 1924 Martin Bormann was sentenced to a year in Elisabethstrasse Prison as an accomplice to his friend Rudolf Hoss in the murder of Walther Kadow.

Martin Bormann joined the Frontbann, a short-lived Nazi Party paramilitary organisation created to replace the Sturmabteilung, which had been banned in the aftermath of the failed Munich Putsch.

Martin Bormann returned to his job at Mecklenburg and remained there until May 1926, when he moved in with his mother in Oberweimar.

Martin Bormann joined the Schutzstaffel on 1 January 1937 with number 278,267.

Martin Bormann took a job with Der Nation zialist, a weekly paper edited by Nazi Party member Hans Severus Ziegler, who was deputy Gauleiter for Thuringia.

Martin Bormann soon put his organisational skills to use as business manager for the Gau.

Martin Bormann moved to Munich in October 1928, where he worked in the SA insurance office.

Martin Bormann began to gain a reputation as a financial expert, and many party members felt personally indebted to him after receiving benefits from the fund.

Martin Bormann worked on the staff of the SA from 1928 to 1930, and while there he founded the National Socialist Automobile Corps, precursor to the National Socialist Motor Corps.

Martin Bormann applied for a transfer and was accepted as chief of staff in the office of Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer, on 1 July 1933.

Martin Bormann served as personal secretary to Hess from July 1933 until 12 May 1941.

Martin Bormann used his position to create an extensive bureaucracy and involve himself in as much of the decision-making as possible.

In 1935, Martin Bormann was appointed as overseer of renovations at the Berghof, Hitler's property at Obersalzberg.

Martin Bormann commissioned the construction of barracks for the SS guards, roads and footpaths, garages for motor vehicles, a guesthouse, accommodation for staff, and other amenities.

Martin Bormann commissioned the building of the Kehlsteinhaus, a tea house high above the Berghof, as a gift to Hitler on his fiftieth birthday.

Hitler seldom used the building, but Martin Bormann liked to impress guests by taking them there.

Martin Bormann set up the Adolf Hitler Fund of German Trade and Industry, which collected money from German industrialists on Hitler's behalf.

Some funds received through this programme were disbursed to various party leaders, but Martin Bormann retained most of it for Hitler's personal use.

The office of the Deputy Fuhrer had final approval over civil service appointments, and Martin Bormann reviewed the personnel files and made the decisions regarding appointments.

Martin Bormann travelled everywhere with Hitler, including trips to Austria in 1938 after the Anschluss, and to the Sudetenland after the signing of the Munich Agreement later that year.

Martin Bormann was placed in charge of organising the 1938 Nuremberg Rally, a major annual party event.

Martin Bormann typically did not give written orders; instead he communicated with them verbally or had them conveyed through Bormann.

Martin Bormann proved to be a master of intricate political infighting.

Hess, not directly engaged in either of these endeavours, became increasingly sidelined from the affairs of the nation and from Hitler's attention; Martin Bormann had successfully supplanted Hess in many of his duties and usurped his position at Hitler's side.

Martin Bormann flew solo to Britain on 10 May 1941 to seek peace negotiations with the British government.

Martin Bormann simultaneously was awarded cabinet rank equivalent to a Reichsminister without portfolio.

The committee members were Hans Lammers, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, and Martin Bormann, who controlled the Party.

Martin Bormann was one of the leading proponents of the ongoing persecution of the Christian churches.

Martin Bormann's sermons led to a widespread protest movement among church leaders, the strongest protest against a Nazi policy up until that point.

Martin Bormann was invariably the advocate of extremely harsh, radical measures when it came to the treatment of Jews, the conquered eastern peoples, and prisoners of war.

Martin Bormann signed the decree of 31 May 1941 extending the 1935 Nuremberg Laws to the annexed territories of the East.

Martin Bormann lobbied for and eventually achieved a strict separate penal code that implemented martial law for the Polish and Jewish inhabitants of these areas.

Martin Bormann supported the hard-line approach of Erich Koch, Reichskommissar in Reichskommissariat Ukraine, in his brutal treatment of Slavic people.

Martin Bormann carried with him a copy of Hitler's last will and testament.

Martin Bormann saw two bodies, which he later identified as Bormann and Stumpfegger, on a bridge near the railway switching yard.

Martin Bormann did not have time to check thoroughly, so he did not know how they died.

Martin Bormann's wife was placed under surveillance in case he tried to contact her.

In case Martin Bormann was still alive, multiple public notices about the upcoming Nuremberg trials were placed in newspapers and on the radio in October and November 1945 to notify him of the proceedings against him.

Martin Bormann was charged with three counts: conspiracy to wage a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Martin Bormann's prosecution was assigned to Lieutenant Thomas F Lambert Jr.

The prosecution stated that Martin Bormann participated in planning and co-signed virtually all of the antisemitic legislation put forward by the regime.

Martin Bormann was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and acquitted of conspiracy to wage a war of aggression.

Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal believed that Martin Bormann was living in South America.

The West German government declared that its hunt for Martin Bormann was over in 1971.

Martin Bormann's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Baltic Sea on 16 August 1999.

On 2 September 1929, Martin Bormann married 19-year-old Gerda Martin Bormann, whose father, Major Walter Buch, served as a chairman of the Untersuchung und Schlichtungs-Ausschuss, which was responsible for settling disputes within the party.

Martin Bormann had a series of mistresses, including Manja Behrens, an actress.

Martin Bormann died of cancer on 23 March 1946, in Merano, Italy.

Martin Bormann's nine remaining children survived the war and were cared for in foster homes.

The eldest son Martin Bormann was ordained a Roman Catholic priest and worked in Africa as a missionary.