Martin Bormann Quotes

Martin Ludwig Bormann was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information and access to Hitler. After Hitler's suicide on 30 April 1945, he was Party Minister of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

Bormann joined a paramilitary Freikorps organisation in 1922 while working as manager of a large estate. He served nearly a year in prison as an accomplice to his friend Rudolf Höss in the murder of Walther Kadow. Bormann joined the Nazi Party in 1927 and the Schutzstaffel in 1937. He initially worked in the party's insurance service, and transferred in July 1933 to the office of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, where he served as chief of staff.

Bormann used his position to create an extensive bureaucracy and involve himself as much as possible in the decision making. He gained acceptance into Hitler's inner circle, and accompanied him everywhere, providing briefings and summaries of events and requests. He began acting as Hitler's personal secretary on 12 August 1935. Bormann assumed Hess' former duties, with the title of Head of the Parteikanzlei , after Hess' solo flight to Britain on 10 May 1941 to seek peace negotiations with the British government. He had final approval over civil service appointments, reviewed and approved legislation, and by 1943 had de facto control over all domestic matters. 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.

Bormann returned with Hitler to the Führerbunker in Berlin on 16 January 1945 as the Red Army approached the city. After Hitler committed suicide, Bormann and others attempted to flee Berlin on 2 May to avoid capture by the Soviets. Bormann probably committed suicide on a bridge near Lehrter station. His 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 Bormann was tried in absentia by the International Military Tribunal in the Nuremberg trials of 1945 and 1946. He was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. Wikipedia  

✵ 17. June 1900 – 2. May 1945
Martin Bormann photo
Martin Bormann: 6   quotes 1   like

Famous Martin Bormann Quotes

“National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable.”

Quoted in "The Third Reich Sourcebook" - Page 440 - by Sander L. Gilman and Anson Rabinbach - History - 2013.

Similar authors

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer 161
German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi
Erwin Rommel photo
Erwin Rommel 24
German field marshal of World War II
Mikhail Gorbachev photo
Mikhail Gorbachev 65
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Thomas Mann photo
Thomas Mann 159
German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
Erich von Manstein photo
Erich von Manstein 8
German general
Bertrand Russell photo
Bertrand Russell 562
logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi…
Winston S. Churchill photo
Winston S. Churchill 601
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Benito Mussolini photo
Benito Mussolini 127
Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Le…
Pope Pius XII photo
Pope Pius XII 7
260th Pope of the Catholic Church
Hannah Arendt photo
Hannah Arendt 85
Jewish-American political theorist