A biography of the man who served as head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, Hitlerβs personal secretary, and the monster who decided the fate of millions.
Born on June 17, 1900, Martin Ludwig Bormann became one of the most powerful and most feared men in the Third Reich. An obsessive bureaucrat, it was Bormann who helped steer Hitlerβs apparatus of terror so effectively that he became the clandestine ruler of Nazi Germany.
After joining the Nazi Party in 1927 Bormann rose through its ranks. Indeed, by July 1933 Bormann had maneuvered himself into the position where he became the Chief of Cabinet in the Office of the Deputy FΓΌhrer, Rudolf Hess. In this role Bormann gradually consolidated his power base, so that when Hess carried out his infamous flight to the United Kingdom in 1941, Bormann stepped into his shoes.
As the head of the Party Chancellery, Bormann took control of the Nazi Party. By the end of 1942, he was Hitlerβs deputy and his closest collaborator. With the FΓΌhrer increasingly preoccupied with military matters, Hitler came to rely more and more on Bormann to handle Germanyβs domestic affairs. On 12 April 1943, Bormann was appointed Personal Secretary to the FΓΌhrer.
Feared by ministers, Gauleiters, civil servants, judges and generals alike, Bormann identified strongly with Hitlerβs ideas on racial politics, destruction of the Jews, and forced labor, and made himself indispensable as the FΓΌhrerβs executioner. Cold as ice, he decided the fate of millions of people.
In January 1945, with the Third Reich collapsing, Bormann returned to the FΓΌhrerbunker with Hitler. Following Hitlerβs suicide on 30 April, Bormann was named as Party Minister, thus officially confirming his rise to the top of the Party. Late the following day he fled from the bunker to escape the encircling Red Army; his fate remaining a mystery for many years. In October 1946 he was found guilty in absentia by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and sentenced to death.
Drawing heavily on recently declassified documents and files, the historian and journalist Volker Koop reveals the full story of the most faithful member of Hitlerβs inner circle, an individual who, whilst little known to the German people, became the second most powerful man in the Third Reich.
Praise for Martin Bormann: Hitlerβs Executioner
βAn unbelievable monster, but people still need to know about him and what he did, here fulfilled by Volker Koop, who simply doesn't hold back.β βBooks Monthly (UK)