Telegram sent from the Führerbunker
15:15 on May 1, 1945 GRAND ADMIRAL DÖNITZ --
Most secret -- urgent -- officer only
The Führer died yesterday at 15:30 hours. Testament of April 29th appoints you as Reich President, Reich Minister Dr. Göbbels as Reich Chancellor, Reichsleiter Bormann as Party Minister, Reich Minister Seyss-Inquart as Foreign Minister. By order of the Führer, the Testament has been sent out of Berlin to you, to Field-Marshal Schörner, and for preservation and publication. Reichsleiter Bormann intends to go to you today and to inform you of the situation. Time and form of announcement to the Press and to the troops is left to you. Confirm receipt.
-- GÖBBELS
Göbbels' tenure as Reich Chancellor was brief. A few hours after sending this telegram, he poisoned his six children with cyanide capsules. At 20:30 he and his wife emerged from the Führerbunker into the chancellery garden where they were shot, at their own request, by an SS orderly. Under the subway command of Martin Bormann, they planned to follow tunnels from the chancellery to the line, and then follow the subway line north, under the Friedrichstrasse, to the Friedrichstrasse station a few hundred yards south of the river Spree. At that point they would surface, link up with what was left of Brigadeführer Möhnke's battle group, and attempt to force their way across the Weidendammer Bridge. Then they would proceed north-west, through the Russian lines, and save themselves as best they could. At 23:00 hours the mass escape began. Moving in small groups, they proceeded underground, as planned, to the Friedrichstrasse station. Here they emerged to find the ruins of Berlin in flames, and Russian shells bursting everywhere around them. The first group managed to cross the river Spree by an iron footbridge that ran parallel to the Weidendammer Bridge. The remaining groups likewise emerged at the Friedrichstrasse Station, but there became confused and disoriented. They made their way north along the Friedrichstrasse to the Weidendammer Bridge, where they found their way blocked, at the bridge's north end, by an anti-tank barrier and heavy Russian fire.
They next withdrew to the south end of the bridge, where they were soon joined by a few German tanks. Gathering about the tanks, they again pressed forward. Bormann, Artur Axmann (head of the Hitler Youth), Ludwig Stumpfegger (Hitler's surgeon), 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 the surface railway to the Lehrter station. There Bormann and Stumpfegger decided to follow the Invalidienstrasse 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 Invalidienstrasse 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. 
After supervising the corpse-disposal arrangements following on the suicide of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun on the afternoon April 30, 1945, and waiting in vain for a further twenty-four hours for a favourable reply from the Soviet commanders to the overtures made to them by Dr Josef Göbbels, Germany's new Chancellor-for-a-Day, Martin Bormann and a group of Hitler's senior colleagues made a final breakout attempt from the Berlin Bunker late on May 1. Soviet troops were closing in on the building from every quarter, but it was the Soviet national holiday. Erich Kempka, Hitler's chauffeur, was with Bormann's group, as were Hitler's last physician, Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger (who had succeeded Professor Theo Morell on April 22), and Artur Axmann, the Reichsjugendführer, who had smuggled out of the building with him the pistol with which Hitler had shot himself (according to Otto Günsche).
At the Weidendamm Bridge near Lehrte Station the group were cut off by enemy troops. Bormann and Stumpfegger made a run for it. A Soviet tank shell exploded only feet away from them -- Axmann testified that he saw it happen. Both survived the blast, but they were badly shaken and decided to swallow their cyanide capsules there and then, rather than surrender. The bodies must have lain there some time. Bormann's expensive leather greatcoat was taken off the body, and the contents of its pockets were taken to Moscow, including his pocket diary: the contents of the diary were published by the Soviet historian and former Intelligence officer Lev Bezymenski. There is no doubt as to the diary's authenticity, as crosschecks with other rare documents establish. There the story would have ended, had the controversy about Bormann not continued. Simon Wiesenthal and others continued the lucrative hunt for a live Martin Bormann years after the Reichsleiter unscrewed the cap off that lethal brass capsule. Then along came Stern journalist Jochen von Lang. Born Joachim Piechocki, he had been an SS liaison officer in Göbbels' propaganda ministry at the end of the war; to him in fact had fallen the duty of making the famous May 1, 1945 broadcast on Berlin Radio announcing that the Führer had "fallen in battle". Nonetheless, he was a fine researcher, and in 1972 Von Lang and Stern magazine persuaded the Berlin police authorities to dig up the street at the spot where the bodies of Bormann and the doctor had last been seen. It was a macabre exercise, but it came off brilliantly, when two bodies were brought to light. Forensic experts used dental pathology to identify the bodies -- hampered in Bormann’s case initially by getting his jaw upside down. In1976, the leading Scandinavian dental pathologist Reidar F Sognnaes published a lengthy disquisition in a scientific journal, Legal Medicine Annual, titled, "Dental Evidence in the Postmortem Identification of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun and Martin Bormann." This established beyond doubt that Bormann’s corpse was indeed his (his dental chart was on file). Sognnaes incidentally performed the same exercise on Hitler's dental records -- the remains of his upper and lower jaw, which the Soviets had stored away, were illustrated as photographs by Bezymenski in his book Der Tod des Adolf Hitler. As for the doctor, Stumpfegger - a gold ring had been found on the corpse, with a date engaged inside. His brother, living in Ingolstadt confirmed that it was the date of Ludwig's wedding in 1938. In 1998 DNA analysis confirmed that the body was Martin Bormann's, and the German authorities finally allowed its cremation; the ashes were buried at sea. to prevent his grave from becoming a site of neo-Nazi pilgrimage. The urn containing the Nazi's ashes was sunk in the Baltic Sea near Kiel on August 16, 1999 according to a report in Der Spiegel magazine. The report was confirmed by Bavarian officials. For a full, fascinating, lucid, and authoritative account of the fate of Messrs. Bormann, Göbbels, Hitler, and other denizens of The Bunker, consult The Last Days of Hitler by Hugh Trevor-Roper . Late in 1945, British Intelligence appointed Mr. Roper to investigate the evidence surrounding the death of Hitler. His book followed in 1946 as a result of this investigation, and was updated by him over the years as new evidence emerged. Roper left the issue of Bormann's death open in early editions of the work, because evidence of Bormann's death rested solely on the testimony of Artur Axmann. Although Axmann's testimony regarding other events was truthful so far as it could be independently verified, Roper realized that Axmann might be giving false evidence to protect Bormann from further search. In December, 1972, during construction near the Lehrter Station (near to where Bormann's diary had been found in a discarded leather jacket in 1945, and close to the spot where Axmann said he had seen Bormann's body in the moonlight of that fatal night) two skeletons were unearthed. After extensive forensic examination, using the dental records of Bormann's dentist (Prof. Hugo Blaschke, who was also Hitler's dentist) the shorter of the two skeletons was identified as that of Martin Bormann, and West German authorities officially declared him dead. The forensic identification was validated by Dr. Reidar F. Sognnaes, a celebrated U.S. expert in such matters. (Reidar F. Sognnaes, "Dental Evidence in the Postmortem Identification of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun and Martin Bormann", in Legal Medicine Annual, 1976.) This new evidence caused Roper to write in the 1978 edition of The Last Days of Hitler that "...in view of new evidence which has recently been found, I believe that it [the question of Bormann's death] can now be closed." As stated in the Final Report of the Frankfurt State Prosecution office under File Index No. Js 11/61 (GStA Ffm.) in "Criminal Action against Martin Bormann on Charge of Murder", dated April 4, 1973: XI. Result Although nature has placed limits on human powers of recognition (BGHZ Vol. 36, pp. 379-393-NJW 1962, 1505), it is proved with certainty that the two skeletons found on the Ulap fairgrounds in Berlin on December 7 and 8, 1972, are identical with the accused Martin Bormann and Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger. The accused and Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger died in Berlin in the early hours of the morning of May 2, 1945 -- sometime between 1:30 and 2:30 A.M. XII. Further Measures 1. The search for Martin Bormann is officially terminated.... (Of course, die-hard conspiracy bugs would no doubt argue that Bormann died in Paraguay, and had his remains re-interred, surreptitiously, at the Ulap fairgrounds in Berlin, where they could later be "discovered". Ordered by Hitler 'to put the interests of the nation before his own feelings' and to save himself, Martin Bormann left the Führerbunker 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. During the chaotic closing days of the war there were contradictory reports as to Bormann's whereabouts (for example, Jakob Glas, Bormann's long-time chauffer, insisted he saw Bormann in Munich weeks after May 1, 1945). The bodies were not found and a global search followed, including extensive efforts in South America. With no proof of Bormann's 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. Unconfirmed sightings of Bormann were reported globally for two decades, particularly in Europe, Paraguay and elsewhere in South America. Some rumours claimed Bormann had plastic surgery while on the run and that it had spoiled his face. At a 1967 press conference Simon Wiesenthal asserted there was strong evidence Bormann was alive and well in South America. Writer Ladislas Farago's widely known 1974 book Aftermath : Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich argued Bormann had survived the war and lived in Argentina. Farago's evidence, which drew heavily on official governmental documents, was compelling enough to persuade Dr. Robert M.W. Kempner (a lawyer at the Nuremberg Trials) to briefly reopen an active investigation in 1972 but Farago's claims were generally rejected by historians and critics. Allegations that Bormann and his organization survived the war figure prominently in the work of David Emory. Emory's primary and somewhat overburdened source is the 1981 book, Martin Bormann, Nazi in Exile by Paul Manning] though a number of books published in the years following the war corroborate details of Manning's description of German flight capital, and the postwar Nazi underground. Martin Bormann: Hitler's henchman 
More has been written about Martin Bormann since his disappearance in the dying days of World War II than during his lifetime as right-hand man to Adolf Hitler. During the war, most Germans had never even heard of this shadowy figure. Bormann joined the Nazi movement through the Freikorps and the German Nationalist Party, came to Hitler's attention early on and was rarely far from his side. In 1943 the mysterious man - described variously as "banal", "vulgar" and "a boot-licker" - became Secretary to the Führer. Unlike other prominent Nazi leaders like Göbbels, Göring and Himmler who enjoyed fame and notoriety, Bormann preferred to keep a low profile. "Figures like him are easily overlooked," wrote Jochen van Lang, Bormann's biographer. "He was never the hero of dramatic scenes, never stood in the limelight." Bormann maintained unlimited access to the Führer even when he withdrew from public life and took refuge at his country home at Berchtesgaden. Hitler's confidante took advantage of his leader's self-imposed isolation to run the Chancellery - and effectively took control of the Reich. Any minister wishing to see Hitler had to approach Bormann first. Wild goose chase He was last seen on May 2, 1945 crouching beside a German tank near the Berlin bunker. At the Nuremberg trials after the war, Bormann was condemned to death in abstentia for his leading role in the extermination of the Jews - and the long search for him began. The British and German press became obsessed in their quest for the man so close to Hitler, who was godfather to Bormann's first son, Adolf. Over the years, journalists, Nazi and bounty hunters were led from the remote jungles of South America ... to deepest Surrey. And at each turn the stories surrounding his whereabouts became more fantastical. Several would-be Bormanns were spotted and even arrested - a Guatemalan peasant in 1967, a 72-year-old German living in Colombia a few years later. Skeletons in the cupboard The wild and imaginative stories about Bormann continued even after the discovery in 1972 of two skeletons near the Lehrter railway station in Berlin. The authorities said the men were probably Bormann and Ludwig Stumpfegger, one of Hitler's doctors. Splinters of glass cyanide capsules were found in the jawbones. It is believed they escaped from Hitler's bunker, were trapped by crossfire and killed themselves. Although the German Government was satisfied with this theory, they locked up the remains in a cupboard at the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office. Family members were prevented from taking them away until there was final identification. Even the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper admitted in his book The Last Days of Hitler there was no firm evidence that Martin Bormann was dead. Three years ago, The News of the World told the story of a certain Peter Broderick-Hartley who had lived and died in Reigate, Surrey. The paper claimed he was, in fact, Martin Bormann, who had had plastic surgery. In 1996, a British publisher paid £500,000 for rights to a book claiming that Winston Churchill smuggled Hitler's lieutenant to England in 1945 to get access to Nazi gold held in Swiss bank accounts. The author of the James Bond books, Ian Fleming, was also said to be involved. Now, DNA tests seem to prove the skeleton found in Berlin is indeed that of Hitler's henchman.
Martin Bormann Has Left the Building 5/26/95--One of the enduring mysteries of World War II is the fate of Deputy Führer Martin Bormann, the only top Nazi left unaccounted for (unless you go for those "They Saved Hitler's' Brain" stories). Since 1945, Bormann has been kind of the Nazi Elvis. He's supposed to be dead, but he's been spotted everywhere from Denmark to Paraguay. No one ever found his body, after all. In 1972 a German court decide that an old skull found in Berlin belonged to Bormann, but even though the Nazi-trackers at the Simon Wiesenthal center bought the finding, other researchers say the skull was a plant to throw off those very same Nazi hunters.
Last week, according to London's Independent newspaper, a well known British journalist and former intelligence officer, 80-year-old Milton Shulman, announced during a radio interview that he knows exactly what happened to Bormann after the war. He was kicking back in a small British village, the guest of that nation's intelligence service who "rescued" the top Nazi near the end of the war.
Why? Because, according to Shulman, "Bormann had the authority to release all German funds in Swiss banks."
Well, the motivation's solid enough. But is the story that Shulman tells plausible? Four hundred commandos stage a daring raid into Deutschland, nabbing Bormann and kayak him to safety down the Rhine and over to Merry Ol' England, favorite target of the V2 rocket. Large numbers of the commando force were knocked off along the way, either by the Gestapo or by Russian troops them overwhelming the not-quite-1,000-year Reich.
Ready for the punch line? If the tale sounds like something out of James Bond that's because the raid was led by Ian Fleming, who upon retirement from Her Majesty's Secret service became the literary light who birthed the world's most famous secret agent.
Shulman took the tale from an anonymously penned book to which he wrote the preface and assumed, unsuccessfully, the responsibility of peddling to publishers. The author of the book is, Shulman says, an old intelligence man in a position to know these things. And Shulman claims to have letters signed by none other than Winston Churchill himself, as well as Lord Mountbatten, that support the book's assertions. Nonetheless, two major publishers considered the manuscript carefully then, Shulman says, "for reasons on which I can only speculate, suddenly dropped it."
Shulman also says that he has witness who remembers Bormann in the British village, which Shulman so far refuses to name, and that the manuscript's anonymous author tried to sell his story to a tabloid, News of the World in 1966 but got the kibosh courtesy Britain's Ministry of Defence.
There are big problems checking the facts of Shulman's story. The biggest, perhaps, is that more or less everyone involved is long dead. Including Bormann who Shulman says shuffled off this Nazi coil in the early 1950s. Fleming died in 1964, having barely survived to see the movie of Dr. No and without breathing a word of the Bormann affair to even his closest friends. But then, as the widow of one Fleming Confidant pointed out, the real-life superspy was a spook to the end.
"He maintained that you must never say anything more than you are morally bound to say."
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