Martin Bormann
1900 – 1945 German Head of the Party Chancellery and Hitler's private secretary
Hitler's gatekeeper secretary and a driving force behind the anti-church campaign.
- Religion
- Left the Protestant church as a Gottglaubiger; one of the most aggressively anti-Christian figures in the leadership, calling National Socialism and Christianity 'irreconcilable.'
- Affiliations
- Nazi Party; head of the Party Chancellery; Hitler's personal secretary. No occult ties; a bureaucratic power broker who controlled access to Hitler.
Bormann controlled the flow of paperwork and people around Hitler, making himself one of the most powerful men in the Reich by war's end. He pushed hardest of all the leaders to curb and ultimately destroy the churches. He died trying to flee Berlin in May 1945, though his fate was confirmed only decades later.
Connections
- associate of Adolf Hitler — Indispensable secretary who guarded access to the Fuhrer.
- ally of Alfred Rosenberg — Allied in pressing the anti-church line inside the party.
- ally of Alfred Rosenberg — Joined him in the campaign against the churches.
- rival of Baldur von Schirach — Lost influence to Bormann's party machine.
- rival of Rudolf Hess — Bormann absorbed his powers after the 1941 flight.
- successor of Rudolf Hess — Inherited Hess's party powers after the 1941 flight.