Martin Bormann

Martin Bormann was the right hand man to Hitler during his reign. Bormann is responsible for many war crimes and crimes against humanity that were addressed during the Nuremberg Trials. "Bormann is the principal Nazi unaccounted for in some manner. He was one of Hitler's most trusted advisors, head of the Nazi party and he attended most of the important policy conferences between Hitler and his military and political lieutenants"(1).

On June 17, 1900, Martin Ludwig Bormann was born in the small town of Halberstadt, Germany, to a lower-class family of civil servants. Orphaned at a young age, Bormann received a secondary education, until he withdrew from high school to enlist in the military at the end of World War I. However, due to his late enrollment, Bormann never reached the front line before the war ended in 1918. In 1920, he joined the right-wing Volkische movement, supporting anti-Semitism. In light of his beliefs, during the Weimar Republic Bormann joined the Deutsche Freikorps, an organization that committed acts of violence along the Latvian border. In 1922, at the age of 22, Bormann joined and became the District Leader of the Organization Rossbach (an illegal group promoting German military traditions).