.. man.
His statements were not used in Bormanns Nuremberg trial, as they were unverifiable. Without a body it was difficult to verify either of these claims. Those who believed Bormann dead were very interested in finding his body, if only to put the incredible stories of his post-war adventures to rest. In 1964, Jochen Von Lang and First Public Prosecutor Joachim Richter dug for the remains of Martin Bormann.A man who claimed to have been forced by the Russians to bury Bormann and Stumpfegger had identified the supposed grave.
The man knew the body had been that of Bormann because of the pocketbook found upon the body by the mans boss. Von Lang verified this story. The man led Von Lang and Richter to the spot where the bodies had lain before he had moved them to the burial site. It was the exact spot where Axmann had testified to having last seen them.
Nevertheless, the search revealed nothing. Seven years later the city of Berlin was excavating the area near the suspected grave. Von Lang attended and two bodies were discovered and were identified as those of Bormann and Stumpfegger. They were found thirty-six feet away from the site of the previous search. The dental records recreated from memory by Dr.Hugo Blaschke, in 1945, identified the bodies.
A press conference in West Germany announced the discovery of the remains. Since the dental records were recreated from memory their authenticity is questionable. Also, the pocketbook found by the Russians could have been fake or even a diversion. Interestingly enough, those who wished to discredit the find did not attack the dental records.
Instead one man wrote that the remains were a clever fake, where a man from a concentration camp had been fitted for Martin Bormanns dental work.Another disputed on the grounds that according to a Soviet source the Russians had, upon receiving instructions from Moscow, unearthed Bormann from his Berlin grave and reburied him elsewhere in East Germany in an unmarked grave. Both of these reasons seem to be speculated and generally unfounded. The remains were also often jeered at because they were found by a group of ditch diggers.
The reason behind this was that the German authorities would not have appreciated the entire area of the speculated grave excavated. The stories about Martin Bormanns survival are plentiful and in many cases are quite incredible.In 1961, Dr. Fritz Bauer, a well-known prosecutor of Nazi War Criminals, declared that he was convinced that Bormann was still alive. A flurry of stories about Martin Bormanns location came into the limelight. A man claimed that he saw Bormann inside a tank in Berlin, not beside, and another stated that he knew exactly where in Argentina that Bormann was living.
Another claimed that Bormann had been corresponding with his wife who lived in Italy after the war.These stories turned out not only to be unfounded but the absolute truth still unknown. Many more stories also surfaced. Paul Manning wrote a book about the post-war life of Bormann. He explained that Bormann had escaped to Spain via the Salzburg airport. The bishop of Munich confirmed this story.
Manning went on to explain that this living Bormann had been largely responsible for West Germanys post-war economic recovery. This story, which it ultimately must be called, becomes even more ridiculous when the author begins to speak of the harassment that he received from Martin Bormanns own private Gestapo. His proof mainly seems to be a photocopy of Bormanns Argentinean bank account, which seems rather unsubstantial. Unfortunately, Von Lang manages to almost nullify this proof with his discovery that the Argentinean Secret Service was bribed for the mere sum of fifty American dollars.
Another book tells of the theory that Bormann escaped Germany with the help of a submarine. (Coincidentally, some sources do say that Bormann was aboard a submarine sunk by the British.Perhaps this helps prove this theory.) He managed to arrive in Chile and then moved to Argentina and survived with the help of President Peron. Farago then explains to the reader how Ricther (who replaced Joachim Bauer in searching for Bormann) regarded Faragos information as vague [and] proved useless in our investigation.
The author seems to have discredited himself. The Soviet KGB assigned a Major L. Besymenski to investigate Martin Bormann. After two years of painstaking research, his report entitled On the Trail of Martin Bormann concluded that Bormann had made a successful escape to South America.This report was written during the Cold War, where, according to many sources, that both sides saw fit to implicate the other in the disappearance of Martin Bormann. Obviously it would be good propaganda to accuse the other side of helping the evil Nazi Empire.
Although many more books have been written on the fantastic adventures of Martin Bormann, after his escape from Berlin, than on his death on that night in May of 1945 the books that depict him surviving seem to be highly fictional. Each one is based upon a conspiracy and circumstantial evidence. The remains that were found in West Germany were, on the other hand, identified to be those of Martin Bormann. Since Bormann was not officially declared to be dead by a West German court but only by a press conference, the remains cannot be known to be one hundred percent truth. The fate of Martin Bormann will most likely never be completely solved but the mystery surrounding his disappearance has intrigued a great many.
The legend has been kept alive by Nazi-hunters who want to bring guilty parties to justice which is legitimate.Those who witnessed the evils of the Nazi Party cannot be free of this immorality until everyone involved has been punished. Works Cited Bormann, Martin. The Bormann Letters. Ed.
H.R. Trevor-Roper. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954.
Farago, Ladislas. Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.Manning, Paul. Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile. Secaucus: Lyle Stuart Inc.
, 1981. McGovern, James. Martin Bormann. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1968.Stevenson, William.
The Bormann Brotherhood. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1973. Telford, Taylor. The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir.New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1992. Von Lang, Jochen. Bormann: The Man Who Manipulated Hitler. Translated by Chista Armstrong and Peter White.
New York: Random House, 1979.