Christa Schroeder - He Was My Chief - The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler's Secretary

At OSAF, Martin Bormann headed the SA personal injury insurance plan designed by Dr Wagener, later known as the NSDAP Hilfskasse . [18] The SA personal injury insurance scheme started with the Giesinger SA in Munich and at the beginning of 1927 was extended to cover the entire SA under the administration of OSAF in a special sub-division Versicherungswesen . By 1 January 1928 it was so well capitalised that only death and invalidity was reinsured out. When the reinsurer demanded a hefty rise in premiums at the end of 1928 for increased risk, OSAF abandoned reinsurance altogether and under the direction of Martin Bormann from 1 January 1929 the insurance was turned into a giant Party enterprise with no private involvement, being known as the NSDAP Hilfskasse from 1 September 1930. All SA men were covered by it. At their gatherings there tended to be a lot of brawling which tended to result in bodily injuries. The insurance was useful and necessary. It was created to serve the single primitive purpose which the genius of Martin Bormann could not cover. Only after beginning work on the staff of the Führer’s deputy did Bormann succeed later in proving his extraordinary qualities. His career took off in the course of the 1930s. From chief of staff to Rudolf Hess he became NSDAP Reichsleiter and then Hitler’s secretary. He expected from his staff that same enormous industriousness which distinguished himself, and this did not help to make him loved. ‘Hurry, hurry’ was his celebrated phrase. Hitler, always full of praise for Martin Bormann, once said:

Where others need all day, Bormann does it for me in two hours, and he never forgets anything!… Bormann’s reports are so precisely formulated that I only need to say Yes or No. With him I get through a pile of files in ten minutes for which other men would need hours. If I tell him, remind me of this or that in six months, I can rest assured that he will do so. He is the exact opposite of his brother [19] Albert Bormann (b. 2.9.1902 Halberstadt, d. 8.4.1989 Munich). Brother of Martin Bormann; joined NSDAP 27.4.1927; NSDAP Hilfskasse 12.5.1931; head of ‘Private Chancellery Adolf Hitler’ February 1933; from 1938 Reichstag deputy, 1934◦– 29.4.1945 personal adjutant to Hitler; in Bavaria then assumed the name Roth and worked as a farm labourer until 5.4.1949 when he surrendered to the authorities; interned; released 4.10.1949. who forgets every task I give him.

Bormann came to Hitler not only well prepared with his files but was also so in tune with Hitler’s way of thinking that he could spare him long-winded explanations. Anyone who knew how Hitler did things will realise that this was decisive for him!

Many of the rumours still current about Bormann have in my opinion no basis in fact. He was neither hungry for power nor the ‘grey eminence’ in Hitler’s entourage. To my mind he was one of the few National Socialists with clean hands, [20] Although Schroeder may have thought him to be Herr Incorruptible, the ‘clean hands’ of Martin Bormann were the result of his personal devotion to the Nazi cause. In a letter to Hess on 5 October 1932 he summed up his attitude thus: ‘For me and all true National Socialists the only thing that matters is the Movement, nothing else. Whatever or whoever is useful to the Movement is good, whoever damages it is a parasite and my enemy.’ Bormann executed all Hitler’s orders faithfully and without question, never asking if they were right, humane or serving some useful purpose. if one may put it that way, for he was incorruptible and came down hard on all corruption he discovered. For his oppressive attitude in this regard he increasingly antagonised corrupt Party members and many others.

I am of the opinion today that nobody in Hitler’s entourage save Bormann would have had the presence to run this difficult office. For sheer lack of time Hitler could not attend to all day-today affairs, and perhaps whenever possible he avoided doing so to prevent himself becoming unloved! Accordingly all the unpleasant business was left to Martin Bormann, and he was also the scapegoat. Ministers, Gauleiters and others believed that Bormann acted from his own lust for power. I remember for example that at FHQ Wolfsschanze Hitler would often say: ‘Bormann, do me a favour and keep the Gauleiters away from me.’ Bormann did this and protected Hitler. The Gauleiters were as a rule old street fighters who had known Hitler longer than Bormann and felt senior to him. If a Gauleiter then happened to cross Hitler’s path while strolling, Hitler would play the innocent and gasp: ‘What? You are here?’ When the Gauleiter then held forth on Bormann’s shortcomings, Hitler would put on his surprised face. ‘I know that Bormann is brutal,’ Hitler said once, ‘but whatever he takes on is given hands and feet, and I can rely on him absolutely and unconditionally to carry out my orders immediately and irrespective of whatever obstructions may be in the way.’ For Hitler, Martin Bormann was a better and more acceptable colleague than Rudolf Hess had been, and of whom Hitler once said: ‘I only hope that he never becomes my successor, for I do not know whom I would pity more, Hess or the Party.’

Rudolf Hess was born in Alexandria, Egypt, the son of a wholesaler. His father came from Franconia and his mother was of Swiss descent. He was brought up in Egypt until aged fourteen, when he attended a special school at Godesberg on the Rhine, took the one-year examination and then a course in business practice which took him to the French-speaking region of Switzerland and then Hamburg. At the outbreak of the First World War he volunteered for military service and in 1918 was an airman with Jagdstaffel 35 on the Western Front with the rank of lieutenant. After the 1919 revolution he joined the Thule Society [21] The Thule Society was a cornerstone of the Nazi Movement. The three co-founders were mystics. Guido von List (1865–1919) was the first popular writer to combine racial ideology with occultism. He advocated the racist State with a self-elected Führer, and saw international Jewry as the enemy of Germanism. His friend and pupil Lanz von Liebenfels (1874–1954), a former Cistercian monk, propagated racial purity in his first book in 1905. He wrote a magazine Ostara in Vienna in 1907–8. Hitler collected all issues, which von Liebenfels gave him free of charge. The third co-founder was Rudolf von Sebottendorf (1875–1945?), who had studied sufism, rosicrucianism and astrology in Turkey. Dr Wilfred Dahms, Viennese psychologist and biographer of Lanz von Liebenfels whom he knew well, stated in the biography Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab that the primary aim of the Thule Society was to create a Nordic-Aryan race of Atlanteans. All inferior races were to be exterminated. The original Thule Society was founded in 1910 by Felix Niedner, translator of the old Norse Eddas: the 1919 Thule Society was an amalgamation of the original society with the Germanen Order, a secret anti-Jewish lodge founded in 1912. The emblem of the Thule Society was a circular swastika superimposed upon a broadsword within a wreath. Amongst the members were Karl Haushofer, Rudolf Hess and Hitler’s mentor Dietrich Eckart. The Nazi swastika was designed by Dr Krohn, a Thule Society member. Hitler was not a member of the Thule Society but the link was the DAP founded on 5 January 1919 by Anton Drexler which was useful for contacts, members and the interchange of information. The DAP was the forerunner of the NSDAP. The Thule Society was still in existence in 1933 when it was probably absorbed into the SS. (Translator’s Note) in Munich and took part in the overthrow of the revolutionary councils in Munich, receiving a leg wound. Next he entered commerce and studied economics and history. One evening in 1920 he happened upon an NSDAP meeting and joined the Party immediately as an SA-man. In November 1923 Hess led the SA Student’s Group and was at Hitler’s side for the putsch attempt of 9 November 1923, being involved in the detention of the ministers at the Bürgerbräukeller. Following the failure of the putsch he spent an adventurous six months in the Bavarian mountains. Two days before the abolition of the Bavarian peoples’ court he surrendered to the police, was tried and sentenced immediately, and taken to Landsberg prison where he remained with Hitler until New Year’s Eve 1924. Later he became an assistant to the professor for geopolitics, General Haushofer, at the German Academy at Munich University. From 1925 he was Hitler’s secretary. Martin Bormann was certainly not dismayed by Rudolf Hess’s flight to Britain in 1941. I remember that on the evening of 10 May 1941, after Hitler and Eva Braun had gone upstairs, he invited a few guests sympathetic to him to his country house for a celebration. That evening everybody reported on how relieved he seemed!