Foto del matrimonio tra Bormann e Gerta Buch.
All'estrema sinistra si nota Hess.

Martin Bormann
17 giugno 1900, nasce a Hakberstadt
1923 entra a far parte dei Corpi Franchi (repressione della sinistra)
1924 coinvolto in un omicidio politico di un antinazista
1927 Entra nel partito Nazionalsocialista. Tessera n. 60508. Si fidanza con Gerta.
1929 2 settembre sposa Gerta Buch, figlia del Presidente del Tribunale Supremo
1930 Entra a far parte dello Stato Maggiore
1933 Viene eletto deputato al Reichstag
1933 Stabilisce la moglie (che metterà al mondo 9 figli) in una villa all'Obersalzberg
1934 E' lui ad acquistare e a intestarsi a suo nome il "Nido d'aquila" di Hitler all'Obersalzberg
1935 Viene nominato da Hitler segretario di Rudolf Hess
1941 Diviene capo della Cancelleria del partito Nazista
1943 E' segretario personale di Hitler.

1945 Inizia il mistero nella notte tra il 1° e il 2 maggio al Quartier Generale, mentre Hitler con Eva Braun si suicida non prima di aver nominato Bormann esecutore delle sue ultime volontà. Bormann telefona dal Q.G. di Hitler, a Doenitz al Q.G. di Flensburg "Aspettami che ti raggiungo". Borman lascia il Q.G. con il segretario di Stato Naumann, l'autista di Hitler, Kempka. e il medico personale di Hitler Stumfegger. "All'uscita nell'imboccare il ponte Wiedendammer dietro una colonna di carri armati, uno di questi fu colpito. Fummo scaraventati a terra. Io svenni. Quando ripresi conoscenza non c'era più nessuno" (Dichiarazione di Kempka al processo di Norimberga).

8 Maggio. - "Mi fu ordinato dai russi di portar via i cadaveri dalle strade. Sul ponte trovammo due corpi seminudi, uno senza pantaloni e stivali, l'altro solo le mutande e la canottiera, con nessuna ferita addosso. Seppellimmo i cadaveri nel vicino parco. Non lontano a terra raccogliemmo un libretto militare, a nome di Stumfegger". (Testimonianza di Krumnow, l'addetto alla rimozione dei cadaveri pubblicata dalla rivista  Stern, che concluse  "se uno era Stumfegger, l'altro doveva essere per forza Bormann. Nessuna ferita? Scampati alla granata, si diedero alla fuga inseguiti dai russi, e per non farsi prendere si suicidarono con il cianuro. Erano svestiti? Dopo diversi giorni gli "sciacalli"  hanno avuto il tempo di togliere loro i vestiti e gli stivali". Quindi ufficialmente Bormann risulta morto il 2 maggio 1945. Con le testimonianze molto vaghe.

1946 - ore 22,30 del 23 marzo. All'ospedale militare di Merano muore di cancro Gerta Buch; viene sepolta nel cimitero germanico nella stessa città del Passirio.

1950 18 Novembre - L'ex deputato Hesslein esule in Cile dichiara "Bormann è vivo si è rifugiato in Cile. L'ho incontrato sulla strada della frontiera argentina".

1951 Luglio - Il giornale cileno El Estanquero,  diffonde la notizia  che Borman vive sotto il falso nome di Juan Keller.

1961 Maggio - L'ex ambasciatore argentino in Israele, Topolewsky dichiara "Bormann è vivo, si è fatto la plastica facciale"

1961- Gennaio - Il difensore d'ufficio di Bormann contumace, al processo di Norimberga rivela che il suo cliente è vivo e che ha inviato una lettera a Merano alla moglie non sapendo che nel frattempo è morta.

Ancora nel maggio del 1963, i due figli Gerhard e Adolf, interrogati dalla Procura Generale di Francoforte affermavano "che sia morto non siamo certi al cento per cento"

1965 - Al termine del processo, i magistrati intervistati dai giornalisti, affermavano "Le notizie del suo decesso dal 1945 al 1965 sono state tutte smentite. Segnalazione che lo indicano in vita sono state parzialmente confermate e sono degni di venir prese in considerazione".

1965 - Il Procuratore Generale di Francoforte, dichiara al giornale Frankfuerten di possedere le prove che Martin Borman è vivo. Una di queste prove è la dichiarazione del figlio di Eichmann, Horst, che ha sostenuto di essersi incontrato negli ultimi anni con Bormann e di aver appreso che vorrebbe costituirsi per dire tutta la verità sulla questione ebraica.

26 Novembre 1965 - Wiesenthal ("il cacciatore dei criminali nazisti") in una conferenza stampa ad Amsterdam dichiara "Non abbiamo alcun dubbio che Bormann è vivo. Quanto pubblicato da Stern è falso, tentativo di diversione. Ho a disposizione prove convincenti che egli si trovi nell'America del Sud".

1973 - Durante i lavori di sterro al Parco dove erano stati inumati i cadaveri quell'8 maggio, vengono alla luce diversi scheletri. Si riaprono le indagini. Si chiamano i dentisti che curavano Bormann. Uno ammette di riconoscere in una protesi una cura dentale fatta su Bormann. Il Tribunale di Francoforte chiude definitivamente la pratica con una dichiarazione di morte di Bormann avvenuta il 2 maggio 1945.

Head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary of the Fuhrer, who by the end of World War II had become second only to Hitler himself in terms of real political power, Martin Bormann was born in Halberstadt on 17 June 1900.

The son of a former Prussian regimental sergeant-major who later became a post-office employee, Bormann dropped out of school to work on a farming estate in Mecklenburg. After serving briefly as a cannoneer in a field artillery regiment at the end of World War I, Bormann subsequently joined the rightist Rossbach Freikorps in Mecklenburg and was connected with the so-called 'Feme' murders.

In March 1924 he was sentenced to one year's imprisonment as an accomplice of Rudolf Hess in the brutal, vengeance murder of Walther Kadow (his former teacher at elementary school), who had supposedly betrayed the proto-Nazi martyr Leo Schlageter to the French occupation authorities in the Ruhr.

After his release he entered the NSDAP, becoming its regional press officer in Thuringia and then business manager in 1928. From 1928 to 1930 he was attached to the SA Supreme Command and in October 1933 he became a Reichsleiter of the NSDAP. A month later he was elected as a Nazi delegate to the Reichstag. From July 1933 until 1941 Bormann was the Chief of Cabinet in the Office of the Deputy Fuhrer, Rudolf Hess , acting as his personal secretary and right-hand man.

During this period, the 'model secretary', diligent, adaptable and efficient, began his silent, imperceptible rise to the centre of the power apparatus, slowly acquiring master of the bureaucratic mechanism and Hitler's personal trust. He developed and administered the Adolf Hitler Endowment Fund of German industry, a huge fund of 'voluntary' contributions by successful business entrepreneurs to the Fuhrer, which Bormann then reallocated as gifts to almost all the top Party functionaries.

In addition to administering Hitler's personal finances, buying the Berghof at Berchtesgaden and running it as well as the whole complex of properties on the Obersalzberg, Bormann acquired the power to control the living standards of Gauleiters and Reichsleiters, not to speak of members of the Fuhrer's intimate circle. Bormann's brutality, coarseness, lack of culture and his apparent insignificance led the Nazi Old Guard to underestimate his silent persistence and ability to make himself indispensable. Rudolf Hess's flight to Britain opened the way for the 'Brown Eminence' to step into his shoes on 12 May 1941 as head of the Parteikanzlei and to gather the reins of the Party into his own hands and steadily undermine all his rivals for power. Until the end of the war, the short, squat Bormann, working in the anonymity of his seemingly unimportant office, proved himself a master of intrigue, manipulation and political in-fighting. Always the 'narrow Party man' and a fierce guardian of Nazi orthodoxy (he was an arch-fanatic when it came to racial policy, anti-semitism and the Kirchenkampf [war between the churches]), Bormann strengthened the position of the Party against the Wehrmacht and the SS, and increased his grip on domestic policy.

Increasingly he controlled all questions concerning the security of the regime, acts of legislation, appointments and promotions, especially if they concerned Party personnel. He also established espionage in the army, getting younger officers promoted to spy on the political attitudes of their colleagues. He reopened the fight against the Christian churches, declaring in a confidential memo to Gauleiters in 1942 that their power 'must absolutely and finally be broken'. Nazism, based as it was on a 'scientific' world-view, was completely incompatible with Christianity whose influence was regarded by Bormann as a serious obstacle to totalitarian rule. The sharpest anti-cleric in the Nazi leadership (he collected all the files of cases against the clergy that he could lay his hands on), Bormann was the driving force of the Kirchenkampf, which Hitler for tactical reasons had wished to postpone until after 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 9 October 1942 prescribing that 'the permanent elimination of the Jews 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 1 July 1943, gave Adolf Eichmann absolute powers over Jews, who now came under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Gestapo.

Bormann's memos concerning the Slavs make it clear that he regarded them as a 'Sovietized mass' of sub- humans who had no claim to national independence. In a brutal memo of 19 August 1942 he wrote: 'The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we do not need them, they may die. Slav fertility is not desirable.'

By the end of 1942 Bormann was virtually Hitler's deputy and his closest collaborator, showing an uncanny ability to exploit his weaknesses and personal peculiarities in order to increase his own power. Always in attendance on the Fuhrer, taking care of tiresome administrative detail and skilfully steering Hitler into approval of his own schemes, Bormann acquired the inside track for displacing dangerous rivals like Goering, Goebbels, Speer and even Himmler whose access to the Fuhrer was controlled by him.

Bormann exploited his position of trust to build a Chinese wall against reality, in which Hitler could indulge his fantasies and in which more sensible, conciliatory proposals from other members of the Party were screened from him. Bormann reduced everything to simple, administrative formulae that freed Hitler from the burdens of paper work. He drew up his appointments calendar and decided whom he should see and whom he should not. Hitler rewarded these and other services by the trust he placed in Bormann, whom he once called 'my most loyal Party comrade'. He was made executive head of the Volkssturm, the desperate levy en masse of the German civilian population organized as the Allies stood poised to invade the Reich.

By now virtually the secret ruler of Germany, Bormann did not cease his Machiavellian bureaucratic intrigues against his rivals. As a result of his machinations Hitler dismissed Goering and Himmler's influence was severely curtailed. It was the indispensable Bormann, the most mysterious and sinister figure in the Third Reich, who signed Hitler's political testament, who acted as the witness to his marriage to Eva Braun and watched his Fuhrer commit suicide in the Chancellery bunker. Ordered by Hitler 'to put the interests of the nation before his own feelings' and to save himself, Bormann left the Fuhrerbunker on 30 April 1945. Accounts of what happened afterwards vary widely.

According to Erich Kempka (Hitler's chauffeur), Bormann was killed trying to cross the Russian lines by an anti-tank shell which hit the tank in which they were trying to escape, causing it to burst into flames. Kempka, who was temporarily blinded at the time, claimed nonetheless to have seen Bormann's dead body. Hitler Youth Leader, Artur Axmann, on the other hand, believed that Bormann committed suicide and claimed to have seen Bormann's body on 2 May 1945 in the Invalidenstrasse, north of the River Spree in Berlin.

Doubts, however, have persisted and numerous sightings of Bormann have been reported, beginning in 1946 when his presence in a North Italian monastery was announced. In the same year, his wife Gerda (a rabid Nazi and daughter of Supreme Party Judge, Walter Buch) died of cancer in South Tyrol, though his ten children survived the war. It was then alleged that Bormann had escaped (like other loyal Nazis) via Rome to South America. Rumoured to have settled in Argentina where he was living secretly as a millionaire, allegedly spotted in Brazil and also in Chile, Bormann's traces proved as elusive as the anonymity in which he first rose to power.

Having been sentenced to death in absentia at Nuremberg on 1 October 1946, he was formally pronounced dead by a West German court in April 1973 but his precise fate remains unknown.