Martin Bormann

Biography

One of the Nazi Party's inner circle, Martin Bormann was a power-hungry racist, whose lust for power was matched only by his hatred of Jews and Slavs. The #2 man in Nazi Germany, he was always by Adolf Hitler's side, and many historians have theorized that it was he who was the de facto power in Nazi Germany from 1941-1945, as he decided who would see Hitler and what would and could be said to him. When Hitler and the remnants of his regime were being surrounded by Russian forces in Berlin at the very end, accounts differ as to Bormann's actual fate. Some say he tried to break through Soviet lines and get out of the city in a tank, but that it was hit and destroyed. Others say he took cyanide and died in the bunker with his Fuhrer. There is, however, the possibility that he actually did escape, made his way to Italy and eventually found his way to South America (there were many stories over the years that he was alive and living in Argentina, which for a long time after World War II was a well-known safe haven for escaped Nazi war criminals). Although the West German government declared that his remains had been found, this was perhaps to try to stop the Nazi hunters from looking for him.