Martin Bormann: Encyclopedia II - Martin Bormann - Suicide and missing remains

Martin Bormann - Suicide and missing remains

As World War II came to a close, Bormann held out with Hitler in the Führerbunker in Berlin. Hitler urged Bormann to save himself and after the dictator's suicide on the afternoon of April 30, Bormann left the Führerbunker on May 1, 1945 with SS doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger and Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann in an attempt to break out of the Soviet encirclement. When all three were temporarily stunned by an exploding Soviet anti-tank shell, Axmann was separated from them and later insisted he had seen the bodies of Bormann and Stumpfegger near a railroad switching yard, with the moonlight clearly illuminating their faces (he assumed they had been shot in the back). However the bodies were not found and a global search followed, including exhaustive efforts in South America.

With no proof of his death, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg tried Bormann in absentia in October 1946 and sentenced him to death. His court-appointed defense attorney used the unusual and unsuccessful defense that the court could not convict Bormann because he was already dead.

Alleged "sightings" of Bormann occurred globally for two decades, particularly in Europe, Paraguay and elsewhere on the South American continent. Rumors persisted Bormann had plastic surgery while on the run and that it had spoiled his face.

In 1972 construction workers uncovered human remains near the Lehrter Bahnhof in West Berlin and dental records identified a skeleton as Bormann's. In 1999 a DNA test further confirmed the identification. Although some historians speculated Soviet troops had killed Bormann not long after he left the bunker, which would have made him the only high ranking Nazi political leader to have been killed by enemy fire (unlike Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring who committed suicide), the presence of glass fragments in the teeth suggest Bormann killed himself with a capsule of cyanide when capture became imminent. It was widely known among Nazi leaders that the Allies planned on holding war crimes trials after the end of hostilities and Bormann, who had taken a major role in the implementation of the Holocaust, likely knew he would be a major defendant and candidate for judicial execution if captured.

A collection of transcripts edited by Bormann during the war appeared in print in 1951 as Hitler's Table Talk 1941 - 1944 and is mostly a re-telling of Hitler's wartime dinner conversations.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Suicide and missing remains", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki