The truth about Martin Bormann: a spy in Moscow's service?

What happened to the Nazi hierarchy who escaped the Nuremberg trial? It could be counted among the questions that arouse a great interest at a distance of well 74 years. It will be because we do not give up on the idea that some of the creators of the Holocaust may have escaped the Nuremberg trial, or it will be because we always trust that justice can find space on this earth too, the news, more or less fanciful, attributable to the fate of the Nazi criminals, they always gain great popularity. Periodically sprouting articles and radio and television broadcasts with testimonies or documents, more or less likely, on the Nazis fleeing Germany at the end of the Second World War. Almost always dwellings are assumed in distant and politically hospitable countries, or geographical contexts in which anonymity is made easier and safer.

In this case the character in question is the infamous Martin Bormann, personal secretary of Hitler as well as undisputed leader of the Nazi party, officially wanted "dead or alive"From the Allies in the immediate post-war period. According to a recent statement¹ Issued by Ian Bell, a former officer of the British army during the war, Bormann fled to Argentina in the 1947, embarking on a ship in the port of Bari. In support of this thesis, he also quotes a book written by two Englishmen, Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams, entitled "Gray Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler", Which is claimed, however, the thesis that the Führer did not die suicide in the bunker of Berlin.

The theses on the epilogue of Martin Bromann are manifold. One of these is the one that claims that Hitler's right-hand man died during the fighting in Berlin on 2 May 1945, with reference to the discovery of his remains, in the 1972, occurred during some excavations near the railway station of the city of Lehrter . In this regard it is important to underline that on the real location of Bormann's body considerable doubts arose, given that the type of land that covered the bones was completely different from that in which the remains were found.

Also on the testimony of Bell hover strong doubts. The first is connected to a presumed order that he would receive from his superiors who, aware of his presence in Italy, would have ordered him not to block the Nazi hierarch when he was about to embark. The second lies in the supposed involvement of the Vatican in the operation of the flight of Bormann, and finally the third, perhaps the most emblematic, due to the incomprehensible motivations that would have prompted the Allies to flee one of the most wanted men of the Third Reich. Even the scholar and writer Pasquale Martino, in a discussion of the operation "Ratline", ie the system of escape routes from Europe of Nazi criminals, considers the story of the escape from Bari little sense.

At this point, the truth would seem to be very different. In a "declassified" document by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), dated 12 September 1971, reference is made to an article published in a newspaper of the time when the former Wehrmacht general Reinhard Gehlen (photo), one of the most authoritative global intelligence experts, as well as head of the German secret services on the Eastern front during the Second World War, he states with absolute certainty that Bormann fled to Moscow at the beginning of May of the 45. But who was Gehlen? And how reliable can your testimony be?

At the end of the conflict he was recruited by the US Army, who was well aware of the level of experience accumulated by the German officer in the field of espionage and counterintelligence and especially the amount of information accumulated by his organization over the years, he thought use it to face the growing "red danger" coming from the Eastern countries. Gehlen managed to build one of the most efficient spy and counter-espionage networks of the time, better known worldwide as "Gehlen organization", With the primary task of organizing and managing the espionage and counter-espionage activities directed against the Soviet Union. He was the head of information services in West Germany until the late sixties, giving life, as his last contribution at the end of over 26 years of activity in espionage, to the birth of Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the current federal information service of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The head of the Gehlen Organization in his memoir states: "It was only in the 1946, when I found myself in charge of my secret service organization, that I had the opportunity to investigate the mysterious escape of Bormann from Hitler's bunker in Berlin, and his subsequent disappearance. Some time later I received irrefutable proof of his movements after the end of the war. In the years 50 agents who operated beyond the Iron Curtain sent me two different reports from which it appeared that Bormann had been a Soviet agent, who after the war had lived in the Soviet Union perfectly camouflaged as a councilor of the Moscow government and which in the meantime was dead. The position of these informants, who are still alive, prevents me from spreading to other details. "

Also the journalist and writer Louis Kilzer, supports the same thesis. Winner of two Pulitzer prizes, Kilzer, in his book "Hitler's Traitor"(2000), asserts that based on extensive analysis conducted on a dense correspondence between a spy within the Nazi establishment and Moscow, has arrived at an unequivocal conclusion: only Martin Bormann could have access to the documents referred to in messages transmitted to the Soviets, so he was the spy, better known by the name of "Werther", Which nestled within the narrow entourage of Adolf Hitler. Kilzer, in a passage from his book, asserts that "Bormann had been useful to Russia as fifty divisions of the Red Army". The Werther spy provided the Soviets with invaluable and almost immediate information on German military plans, sometimes even before the commanders of the armies themselves had acquired it. An element that confirms the fact that the spy belonged to Hitler's inner circle.

Equally singular was the statement by Albert Speer (photo), Hitler's personal architect and Minister for Reich Armaments, from the cell in which he was locked up: Bormann should have been declared "hero of the Soviet Union"².

Kilzer also argues that Bormann would play a significant role in the organization "Red Orchestra”, An espionage network composed of three distinct groups of Germans which included military, political and cultural exponents who worked against the Nazi regime. The term was coined by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), the SS department dedicated to counter-intelligence, which defined the radio operators who, from multiple radio stations, transmitted all the information they came into possession to the Allies. The Schulze-Boysen / Harnack of Berlin was one of the groups and was headed by an officer who belonged to the top of the Luftwaffe, Harro Schulze-Boysen. Other members of the group were Harro's wife Libertas, a lawyer named Arvid Harnack and his wife Mildred and a few other trusted collaborators. Shulze-Boysen, always hostile to the Nazi regime, enlisted in the German air force above all to create a "cover" that could allow him to act in an undisturbed anti-Nazi function. In 1937 he also joined the Nationalsozialistische Deautsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), the German National Socialist party, to strengthen his image as a faithful servant of the Fatherland. Within the party the one who would become the future secretary already dominated unchallenged: Martin Bormann. It is very likely that a relationship between Schulze-Boysen and Bormann was born within the party, later developing into a collaboration aimed at conducting espionage activities for Moscow.

Of course, it is not known how much the ideological / political aspect of the two characters could have affected, but the fact remains that both were firmly convinced that the activation of a communication / information channel with the Soviets would prove to be very profitable in the future. To reinforce the thesis of the Shulze-Boysen / Bormann agreement, it is a document declassified by the CIA in the 2001³, where some passages of a scholar's publication were highlighted, Charles Wighton, known for the meticulousness of his research conducted on Nazism. In the document entitled "The World's Greatest Spies", It is possible to clearly deduce the existence of links between Shulze-Boysen, Bormann and the GRU, the information service of the Russian armed forces, active in Germany since 1939.

Returning to the statements of Gehlen, the hypothesis of Bormann's betrayal seems therefore likely, especially if we consider that the German general issues this declaration the 15 December 1971 and in October the 1972 are found the remains of a skeleton that, depending on the DNA analysis with a close relative, then it will actually belong to the secretary of the Nazi party. According to this, the hypothesis that the remains of the Nazi hierarch have been moved from a different place (Russia?) And subsequently reported to Germany in order to consolidate the version that Bormann wanted to kill in Berlin in '45 is not so unlikely. It is also significant that the Nazi party secretary had several German generals, indicating that he was Stalin's best ally in terms of the completely wrong tactical and strategic choices he suggested to Hitler.

For their part, the Soviets would have been happy to welcome one of the leading exponents of Hitler's narrow circle, especially for the amount of information he held and the secret correspondence that Bormann would bring as a gift. The fearsome secretary of Hitler had a particular passion for chess, an interest that certainly contributed to develop his cunning, audacity and cunning and incomparable opportunism, peculiarities that helped him to climb the top of the Third Reich, becoming the most trusted adviser to Hitler. He had certainly well understood, for a long time, the folly of the Führer's projects and the impossibility of winning such a wide-ranging war conflict. Consequently, by virtue of his marked wisdom, it is very likely that he managed, for years, relationships with those who felt, moreover, closer to his ideas of fervent anti-Semitic and atheistic banquet.

Even after decades, the Bormann case can still reserve many surprises, perhaps with the help of someone who is willing to make public some worn and dusty folder of documents abandoned in some old archive ....

The Latins asserted: "Aliquam elit tempus dicendarum yieldsRvat". We wait…