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A'-R Crim"A Thethigest-Rai Still Unaccounted for Is Martin Bormann, Lg Biormanni Is Believ"

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A'-R Crim a , o- 'ORLD'S AOST WANTED CRIMINAL ; - Th- a'-r crim"a headed the staff of Rudolf H-ess, ward for Bormann. His case is spe- Thethigest-rai ar crima Hitler's deputy. After Hess flew to cial because he played a prominent : still unaccounted for is Martin Bormann, Scotland in 1941, Bormann became role in helping Hitler develop his l g chief of the party chancellery and "scorched earth" policy, directed H itlers powerful two years later attained theeonce powerful against the German people them- - - Biormanni is believ"ed to be aliv"e. H e may' \ position of secretary to the Fuhrer. selves. * Bormann made himself indis- The Reich's Minister of Arma- be anywhere. \Vest German authorities - pensable to the Reich's leader. He ment Albert Speer described the have offered a $25,000 reward - kept two stenographers at Hitler's plan at the Nurembcrg trials. 'i, be ra rd - table, taking down everything the destroyed were all industrial plants, dictator said during the meals, so he all important electrical facilities, wa- could know and filfill Hitler's every terworks, gasworks, food and cloth- < whim. IBormann never let anyone ing supplies; all bridges, all railway LW see Hitler alone, but was ahvays and communications installations; E DECLASSIFIED AND RELEASED B Y present to learn everything going on. all vatcrways, ships, freight cars and u As ,he Fiihrer's chief adviser, he locomotives. When Speer objected O CENTRAL I NT E L L 16 E NC E A6 E NC Y W hel',cd draft the laws changing that this destruction would bring j S OU RC E S ME T HO D S EXEMPTION 3c8 2 S Gr.rman justice. starvation and death to millions of c " N A Z I WA R CR I ME S D I S CL OS U R E A -- The merest summary of hiscrimes Germans, Hitler repeated the Nazi s appalling. According to the offs- belief in the survival of the fittest. cis! statement by the public prose- The German people, he said, did not W BY BLAKE CLtARK . cutor of :.3ormann-.. from 1939 dCservCe to live. "When the war is _ -.til ,. v.-- a responsible collab- lost," he declared, "the German nr". n '-: iass killings of inmates people will be lost as well. This fate U AiN BORMANN isoneofthe A short, thick-set, round-shoul-. of -r rO% i -stitutions and concen- is irrevocable." M most ruthless destroyers of dered man, he was born June 17, tration - m.s. In this weeding out On March 23, 1945, IBormann or- ' human life history hasever 9oo, son of a career soldier in the of the "t,:afit," Iormann "killed dered all food reserves destroyed N I iV.L and the entire German population recorded. Once considered dead, he German army. He attended agricul- with premeditation" at least tooooo is now believed to be living outside turnal school in Mecklenburg, then persons. From 1941 to 1945, he moved by force to central Germany. Z of women, children and his native Germany und:r an as- managed an estate north of Berlin. "authoritatively collaborated" in the Millions old people were to be sent on this sumed name. West Germany is At 20 he joined the Society extermination of Jews and such oth- er groups as Poles, Czechs and Rus- trek by foot, with no provisions of eager to bring him to justice. The Against Presumptuousness of the sian prisoners of war, all of +vhom any kind. Because advancing Allied public prosecutor of the state of Jewry, and at 23 was a party to the " Hesse has offered $25,000 for infor- murder of a man whom members the Nazis considered racially inferi- troops gave no time for such a large- way 3ormann, "with pre- scale operation, Bormann's order mation leading to his arrest. If Bor- of this society 'eat, throat-slashed or. In this and was never carried out. mann is not behind the Iron Curtain, and shot to. death. He became an meditation, for malicious, cruel the chances are excellent that same- ardent Nazi at 27 and two years later abject motives, killed at least five By revealing this murderous plan,. the West German Ministry of Justice one reading this magazine, which married a woman as dedicated to million people." hopes to destroy any remaining illu- - circulates in 14 languages in more the party as himself. Both despised Monstrous as these charges are, the West sions about Nazi 'caders and their than ioo countries, knows him. Christianity. they are not the sole reason offered a $2 ,oo re- creed. By trying 3ormann, the mm- Who is Martin Bormann? Rising in the party, Bormann Germans have 5 74 EXEMPTIONS Section 3(b) .(2)(A) privacy tr -- - (2)(G) Foreign Relations ( 76 THE READER'S DIGEST March 1965 \\'ORI.D'S AtOST I{NTE)) CRIMINAL 77 istry wants to show that Nazism was tank explosion unhurt, and the day one in the southeast of the country, Mcxico. If you ride the subway or at core a hatred for all humanity, after, when the three men went their at the Parani River, where he bus, work in a motel, hotel or room- part of a period of history that must separate ways, Bormann had been in can cross quickly into either Argen- ing house, are a doctor or nurse, be brought to a final and total con- good condition. tina or Brazil. But Paraguay has in drive a taxi, run a filling station or elusion. The prosecutor-general of Hesse, the past refused any help in trying to simply have a knack for remember- Some people believe Bormann is Fritz Bauer, a prewar anti-Nazi, locate Nazi fugitives-they would, ing faices, he alert for Martin Bor- dead. At Nuremberg in 1946, Hit- stepped up the search. After three for example, never permit Bauer to mann. ler's driver, Erich Kempka, said years, during which hundredsof wit- compare Bornann's fingerprints He is stocky and strong, not more that Bormann, with Dr. W'erner nesses were interviewed and all eye- with those on Paraguay's immigra- than five feet eight inches tall, vith Naumann, state secretary in the witness accounts sent in over the tion permits. a short thick neck and a large Slavic Reich's propaganda ministry, was past 20 years examined, the prose- Interpol, the international clear- head. lis eyes are brown. H-is dark- killed on the night of May 2, t945, cutors reconstructed Bormann's fate. inghouse for police information, re- brown hair was receding from his when a German tank exploded near Asseveralotherwell-knownNazis gards the Bormann case as political broad forehead 20 years ago; he may them. Hitler's pilot, Hans Baur, said did, Bormann may have worked on and therefore outside its concern. be practically bald now. His face is he called back to the group from a farm in Russian-occupied Ger- Theoretically, it is up to the Inter- sensual, with a wide, bulbous nose, about too yards away after the many, waiting for a chance to cross national Military Tribunal, which large mouth and full lips. A large explosion and Bormann did not over to the Western Zone. From tried Bormann at Nuremberg, to mole on his left temple is an identi- answer. The International Military there he escaped to Austria, then find the man it sentenced. The tri- fying mark; he may have had it re- Tribunal, however, was not com- used a smugglers' route across the bunal has now shrunk in scope until moved. He has short, square hands pletely convinced. Trying Bor- Dinaric Alps to Yugoslavia. He may only two functions give it meaning: and w+ears size SM shoes. He has an mann in absentia for "crimes have disguised himself as a priest One is to run the Spandau prison in alert, confident look. as if sizing up against humanity," it found him and obtained the help of the Vatican Berlin, w here three Nazi war crimi- the person with him. gui'.ty. Sentence: death. and the Red Cross to get out of nals serve out tlcir time. The other Reputedly, Bormann has a ter- in the next few years, rumors flew Yugoslavia into Italy. The fugitive is to carry out the sentence given rihle temper, but can keep it under that Bormann ws alive. One man could then have shipped out from Bormann, the only major war crimi- control. He is coid-blooded and-ag- reported seeing him in July 1945, an Italian port for any one of a num- nal still wanted. gressive. An indefatiga:blc woman- dressed in hunting clothes, on a ber of South American countries Meanwhile, possibly some average chaser, he is said never to have met train from Luneburg to Flensburg eager for European immigrants. citizen can act. Someone reading a female whom he didn't press for in Germany. In 1946, he was said to Passports were easy to come by; not this may know Bormann by another an affair. Though he was over- be in the U.S. zone of Germany; in even the money for passage was re- name. Give serious thought to the weight, Bormann looked after his 1947, in Sydney, Australia; in 1948, quired. possibility that you may have seen health, drinking neither alcohol nor in Russia, training to return one day Vhere is he now? him. No one knows for sure, he may coffee, just weak tea, and eating as a commissar. Meanwhile, his wife Strong leads come from Paraguay, be anywhere-on an lowa farm, in sparingly of meat.
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