The Secretary: Martin Bormann, the Man Who Manipulated Hitler

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Jochen von Lang, editor & reporter of Die Stern, has produced a straightforwardly factual account of the career of Martin Bormann, the bureaucrat whose inexorable rise in Nazi party ranks seemed to place him for a moment at the pinnacle of power. Despite the overblown title, Lang depicts Bormann for the most part as a pedestrian, yet ruthlessly ambitious man, in the end as much manipulated as manipulator. Indeed, there's something pathetic about his end: having at last inherited Hitler's party rank, he found he didn't have the Fuhrer's power. At last the heir to the 3rd Reich, he found the empire reduced to rubble. His instinct for power was a fawning one. Whatever terror he visited upon subordinates, his own authority resided completely in Hitler; & this account underlines Alan Bullock's conclusion that "once separated from Hitler, Bormann was a political cypher." But precisely because of his cypher's anonymity, he quickly came to be thought of both as the eminence grise of the 3rd Reich & as the one top Nazi who had escaped from Germany & survived incognito to plot for world conquest. In this respect, Lang's account offers something new, for the author claims the lion's share of the responsibility for locating Bormann's remains, proving Hitler's secretary died by suicide in the hellish days of 5/45 . The Frankfurt State Prosecutor's report, which identifies the skeleton uncovered in 1972 as Bormann's, is included here as an appendix. A drawback is the book's lack of footnotes.--Kirkus