Bormann, Martin, born 17-06-1900, in Halberstadt,
Father Theodor Bormann was a trumpet player in a regiment and then a clerk in a post office. Martin later claimed that he was an “inspector of the postal service”. When Martin was three years old, his father died. His mother, Louise Gröbler, remarried her brother-in-law, Alfred Bormann, a bank manager. He had two half-siblings, Else and Walter Bormann, from his father’s earlier marriage to Louise Grobler, who died in 1898. Antonie Bormann gave birth to three sons, one of whom died in infancy. Martin (born 1900) and Albert
(born 1902) the later SS Gruppenführer and adjutant to Adolf Hitler survived to adulthood. Martin who had a Lutheran education and a bad relation with his father, dropped out of college and worked on a farm before volunteering in the German Army during the last few months of the First World War, but was not permitted, because of his young age and length. Later he joined the 55th Feldartillerie Regiment as a Mil Gunner, but never saw action.





From left to right: Martin Jr., Eicke, Irmgard, Gerhard, Heinrich, Eva, Little Gerda, and Fred Hartmut being held by mommy Gerda who looks like she was quite pregnant with the youngest Bormann kid, Joseph Volker, at the time. Missing from the plethora of offspring is Ehrengard-Eicke’s twin sister-who died shortly after birth.
After the war he joined the Rossbach Freikorps, where he fought with Rudolf Höss.


Gerard Rossbach.
Rudolf Höss was later the commandant of concentration camp Auschwitz and hanged, age 46, on 19-04-1946. The gallows was build near his house on the concentration camp ground. SS Hauptsturmführer, Josef Rudolf Mengele





Rudolf Höss. Albert Schlageter.
Bormann was found guilty with Höss of murdering Walter Kadow, who had been accused of betraying saboteur Albert Leo Schlageter. However, he only spent a year in prison. Bormann saw Hitler for the first time in July 1926 during a manifestation of the then forbidden NSDAP and was inmiddiately impressed by him and joined the National Socialist German Workers Party on 19-02-1927, age 27, his number 60508. On 02-09-1929, Bormann married 19-year-old Gerda Buch,
whose father, Major Walter Buch,















Martin Jr with Adolf.
Without any obvious talents Bormann rose steadily in the Nazi hierarchy. In May 1941, the flight of Hess to Britain cleared the way for Bormann to become Head of the Party Chancellery that same month, age 40. Bormann proved to be a master of intricate political infighting. He also had a lover, the actress Manja Behrens,










Else Mary Margarethe Krüger, born on 09-02-1915 in Hamburg-Altona, was Martin Bormann’s secretary (and, allegedly, mistress)
during World War II. She was in the Führerbunker during the Battle of Berlin. Krüger was with Eva Braun, Gerda Christian, Traudl Junge






Some historians have suggested Bormann held so much power that, in some respects by 1945, he became Germany’s “secret leader” during the war. Bormann was invariably the advocate of extremely harsh, radical measures when it came to the treatment of Jews, of the conquered eastern peoples or prisoners of war. He signed the decree of 09-10-1942 prescribing that “the permanent elimination of the Jews (see Anne Frank)
from the territories of Greater Germany can no longer be carried out by emigration but by the use of ruthless force in the special camps of the East.” A further decree, signed by Bormann on 01-07-1943, gave SS Obersturmbannführer, Adolf Eichmann, he was hanged in Israel, age 56, on 31-03-1962,
absolute powers over Jews, (see Simon Wiesenthal)
who now came under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Gestapo.






Death and burial ground of Bormann, Martin Ludwig.















and others followed the lead tanks as far as the Ziegelstrasse. There a panzerfaust struck the lead tank. The violent explosion stunned Bormann and Stumpfegger, and wounded Axmann. All retreated to the Weidendammer Bridge. Now it was every man for himself. Bormann, Stumpfegger, Axmann, and others followed the tracks of surface railway to the Lehrter station. There Bormann and Stumpfegger decided to follow the Invalidestrasse east. Axmann elected to go west, but encountered a Russian patrol and returned on the path Bormann and Stumpfegger had taken. He soon found them. Behind the bridge, where the Invalidestrasse crosses the railroad tracks, they lay on their backs, the moonlight on their faces. Both were dead. Axmann could see no signs of an explosion, and assumed that they had been shot in the back. He continued on his way, escaping from Berlin and spending the next six months hiding out with the Hitler Youth in the Bavarian Alps, where he was eventually captured. On 07-12-1972 when construction workers uncovered human remains, pointed out by the man who buried the two bodies on 08-05-1945, Albert Krummnow, a post office official, see position 2 on the photo below, position 1 was the suspected spot which was a mistake as Krumnow could tell. The identity papers discovered on one of the bodies identified it as Stumpfegger. The dental work and a healed broken collar bone was strong evidence that the second body was Bormann. Fragments of glass found in the two men’s jawbones led to the conclusion that they committed suicide via cyanide capsules on 02-05-1945. The sightings proved to be flights of fantasy that Bormann had flew to Argentina.










View looking north from the center of the now-deserted Invalidienstrasse bridge. Railroad tracks formerly ran through this overgrown gully. Sheds on the right (apparently post-war) sheltered waiting passengers. It was here that Artur Axmann found the bodies of Martin Bormann and Ludwig Stumpfegger.

