Maybe He Was Running A Whorehouse In Buenos Aires-Not-The Strange Still Unresolved Case Of Hitler Fixer And “Hitman” Martin Bormann-A Book Commentary  

By Zack James  

Don’t ever tell that people, some people anyway, can’t get away with murder. Get away twice, twice as in separate and discreet segments without so much as by your leave. A recent reading of Dan Lewis’ The Strange Case of Martin Bormann has me in an uproar, has me ready to go down and dirty with the modern-day Nazi scum from whence he came. For those not in the know, who don’t remember or who are far too young to really do so Martin Bormann was the guy behind the guy on the throne, the fixer man, the big idea man, really in the end the hitman. His boss one Adolph Hitler who used to run Germany for about a thousand years and so it seemed to those under his bootheel and who in the process ran landlocked Europe, East and West, and other places into the ground. Yeah, and while being spoon fed by Bormann and his cadre to approving all kind of murderous projects like what is now known as the Shoal, the Holocaust and systematic mass murders of other unfavored nationalities and communities.

Make no mistake as Mr. Lewis carefully documents with extensive materials from the archives including previous inaccessible Eastern European and Soviet primary sources Martin Bormann more than Goering, Goebbels, Hess, Speer, Brandt, Brock, and the other public face of the regime boys Bormann was knee-deep, no, neck deep in every bastardly decision and evil deed.       

The guy egging Hitler on, the guy, as his private secretary and perhaps secret lover although that is far from proven even by Lewis’ well-researched work getting him worked up at late at night and into the early morning when he was in an angel drug toasted frenzy. Yeah, don’t forget this name Bormann. Forget what you heard about this guy and that guy Martin was the gatekeeper, the guy you needed to see if you wanted access to anything. The fixer man and lord high executioner all rolled into one.

Moreover, not only was Bormann spoon-feeding the boss his drug potions but as he grabbed more and more inner circle power and got his coterie in key positions he was the popular party leader architect of the various extermination campaigns, got the lower cadre fired up to burn down Europe for a totally Aryan race free from any contaminations. He had a particular hatred for Jews and Slavs which he continuously harped on to Hitler to give the word and make things right in Europe again before the fall from Eden. The best example of this badgering, this single-mindedness was his incessant plea to Hitler to strike the freaking Poles who were nothing but second-rate Slavs protecting (his term) the Warsaw Jews who had been bleeding Germany dry for centuries with their usurious interest rates and high-priced shoddy goods. It was thus no accident that a couple of days after a well-documented drug frenzy (doctor’s notes) combined with classic Borman harangue that Poland went up in flames in 1939.   

As good as Lewis’ documentation is he never claimed not is there enough evidence, at least that has surfaced until now Bormann actually personally participated at the administrative level in the extermination of the Jews, Slavs, Roma, Commies and other so-called mutants but the recently opened archives have shown that he took an interest in the campaigns and had some of his key subordinates working in the programs. (For example, Eichmann, the arch concentration camp commandant and exterminating angel was one of his pals as was Broeck, aka the Black Angel, head of SS in Occupied Poland.

Of more important later after the 1000 year Reich fell in 1945  Martin didn’t like homosexuals much either, despite persistent rumors about his relationship with Hitler where he lived in the same house from 1938 on, had according to talk at the time personally killed several for sport and would at parties of the party leadership laugh about it when drugged up or when under the influence of lanadum, a cheapjack drug mixture that fogs the brain but is said to act as something of a truth serum. Oddly, or maybe not so oddly he bragged that after he shot them he take them to some Berlin public baths, tie their hands and put their heads in a toilet bowl. Not one of nature’s noblemen, no doubt.   

That ambiguity on his personal homosexuality despite the fact that there is plenty of evidence that in the early 1920s when things were going to hell in a handbasket in Germany after the war that he had frequented along with others who would join the Nazi Party, join the SS stormtroopers and others paramilitary operations the notorious Nocturne Club, a known hang-out for tough boy homosexuals. (One of the documents Lewis produced from this period was based on a police raid of the place where Bormann, a guy named Hess, and two brothers named Eichmann were arrested after having done public homosexual sex acts allegedly as the initiation rite to join the Berlin branch of the Brawny Boys (translated from the German so I am not sure if that is what is meant) one of the founding organizations for the Berlin and later national Nazi Party.) More on this intriguing question later after the war.            

[This whole question, closeted question back then really, of homosexual activity early in life by some men who for a whole lot of defensive psychological reasons became scourges against the preference is deep in the shadows. This is the story that I tell about the way we dealt with homosexuals, not good although we learned better later. The corner boy society I grew up in was filled with fag-baiting and more. The “more” when half-drunk later in later high school we would head to Provincetown, then as now a known gay friendly town, looking to beat up “queers.”

The leader of the pack was one rugged football guy, Timmy Riley. He was merciless. We were all shocked later after high school when Timmy, mistakenly as it turned out, though it was okay to come out of the closet in the fresher airs of the late 1960s. He was hounded by relatives, including his parents who disowned him, and townspeople so badly that he left for gay-friendly San Francisco. There he was able to be his real self and also become one of the premier drag queens of North Beach (drag not always the same as gay by the way). So who knows what was up with Bormann.]    

Needless to say, that after the twelve- year run of the 1000- year Reich Bormann, if found alive, would have been a “person of interest” to operations like the Nuremburg trials. Had in fact been tried in absentia by that tribunal. Would have had a very high place on the gallows, they would have hung him high no question except they never got him, and according to Lewis’ well-researched documentation never would. I guess that I would have heard the name Martin Bormann as a young man in the 1960s as some kind of unaccounted for fugitive from justice for his role in the Nazi atrocities who had somehow escaped the Soviet dragnet entering Berlin at the end and was an Argentine without means under the protection of Juan Peron when he was king of the hill down in the Pampas.

Scandal sheets like The National Enquirer would periodically post articles about the latest Bormann sighting. At that time I also remember reading that Bormann was also supposed to be the secret lover of Peron’s estranged wife, one of the Evitas. I never thought about it much after that except every once in a while there would be some Bormann sighting. He was in some German import-export business in Paraguay. Had been seen walking toward Parliament Building in London selling newspapers, was down in Monte Carlo with some rich widow stuff like that complete with old photographs of the bugger. Then in the 1970s somebody was supposed to have found his well-decomposed body under the railroad track in Leipzig, or maybe some other town where he was last seen in 1945 and that solved the mystery of the disappearance of the man. There was later noise that some donk quack professor from Heidelberg grabbed DNA which identified this bum of the month. So everybody could rest easy now that the monster had gone to ground. Case closed.              

Bullshit, pure baloney. Here is the real if not unexpectedly gruesome story of the fate of this monster, this feign. Not everybody who was around the Hitler coterie was ready to go down in the bunker with him, was ready to fall on their swords. Sure guys like Max Baer and Gustav Kline would go the distance, would take the pills, but by early 1944 once the Soviets were on the march west and the other Allies were building a million landing craft from the east to crash the European shores plenty of those in the Chancellery were figuring the how and when of their respective escapes. There is interesting talk recorded by some snitch among those high Nazi and state officials who were being held for trial at Nuremberg about who “dropped a dime” on their whereabouts to the Allies to save their own asses. Almost universally the big wigs had Bormann’s number, had him down as a guy who would sell his grandmother for fifty marks and a meal to save his own scurvy ass.

So Bormann who held everything of value like party membership lists, the usual dirt and what these bastards had done in his grubby hands was one guy who was not going to face the hangman if he could help it. By that time, early 1944, Western intelligence, mainly the precursor to the CIA, the OSS had infiltrated deep into the Nazi headquarters infrastructure. Had guys making suggestions about how to avoid that noose. Had bought the argument to guys like Bormann that they had better play ball with the law (snitch on higher ups and those who could be directly tagged with war crime) or find their asses in stir awaiting the big step-off.    

(Here is a good place to detail how bad these scumbags were as they crawled all over each other to make the best deal they could by becoming snitches, especially their parts in the Nuremburg trials. In our old neighborhood which had as many crumb bums as in Berlin any snitch would have found himself in some muddy river facedown for such actions. I always use the example my oldest brother Alex told me about Red Riley, the leader of the bikers who hung around Harry’s Variety Store who when he saw some guys who were not from the neighborhood, were not corner boys chain-whipped one of them mercilessly for no other reason than they were not from the neighborhood and so what the hell were they doing there. Here’s the kicker. When the coppers and ambulance came neither the guy who got chain-whipped nor his partners said word one about who might have done the dastardly deed. Case put in cold storage. Don’t tell me about how tough those Nazi punks were, just don’t.)

Bormann was one such guy, one guy ready to play ball with the law. Started out claiming he was some Norwegian citizen catch in Berlin and couldn’t get out before the heavy bombing started but he soon crumbled like a million other tough guys who didn’t have state power backing them up. What the West was concerned about even then was the Soviets and so they were stockpiling guys who knew stuff who could help later in what would be the Cold War which everybody knew was coming. A guy like Bormann would be prime, would know plenty. Bormann could probably have gotten a good deal even if he had not given up names but some OSS Johnny squeezed him hard enough and he sang his song.   

According to some hoary legend always loosely rumored when the deal went down Allan Dulles’ son personally brought Bormann out via what was called the “Tunnel.” Even that was pure fluff. The guy who brought Bormann out was none other than the now fully exposed Soviet mole and then number two man to Dulles James Jesus Angleton, aka by the code names Jimmy the Angel and the Angel of Death. (The Angel was a piece of work because ever time his buddy Kim Philby was in danger of being exposed he would run some silly Bormann sighting in Norway let’s say to cool things out. Hell, one time he even floated Bormann as a Soviet agent when the heat was coming down on his own double agent role.)     

So forget that Argentine without means noise created to throw everybody off. Forget that film Hitchcock made about escaped Germans in that benighted country Notorious when he was looking for some story line that would intrigue a candid post-war audience. Bormann once he was pumped for all the information he had to give and it was plenty finally found himself in America, given immunity and allowed to settle into the country under an early witness protection program. (The Soviets dearly wanted him so much so that many in Western intelligence though like with the Argentine gag and the later DNA snafu noise he actually was a Soviet mole they were trying to save.)            

Now I have mentioned that some guys get away with murder twice and we have finished the first part, the role Bormann played in mass murder as the fixer man for every hellish Hitler scheme in his drug-addled brain. Here is the spine-tinkling part. Once they had “turned” Martin they let him loose in America, let him go to San Francisco where he begged them to let him go for protection. There according to Lewis’ records he settled in, started a wholesale meat business, prospered and mainly kept a low profile for something like ten years. No crimes or other infamies associated with his new name, Jack Davis. Then something exploded, some whacko kink kicked in from the old days, the glory days when he could have people killed at a snap of the fingers.              

What nobody knew and what the American government could give a fuck about was that Martin was up to his old tricks, was trying to resurrect that silly 1000 year Reich idea that had been played out in the 1940s. He brought a few people in from Germany and a couple from the long-time native German-American community that had been in Frisco since the Gold Rush. For what purpose? To begin a “reign of terror” essentially is what we would call it today specifically against homosexuals. See Martin had a plan, had a fixation too that it had been the rancid closet homos in the Nazi Party who had destroyed their “thing,” had caused the Reich to fall down. To salve his kill-crazy urges he would have some of the guys roundup a few gay guys in gay-friendly event then San Francisco, sexually abuse them and then kill them. Stuff their heads in the toilets of the well-known public baths.

A simple if gruesome plan I guess but one that the SFPD would have to take up as the similarly mutilated bodies complete with Nazi symbols branded on their foreheads started piling up in the North Beach section of town (before the Castro District the epicenter of closet gay-dom). That is where Detectives Dolan and Conkin come in. These were experienced investigators who nevertheless could not figure out which way this thing was heading. Who would benefit from a resurgent Nazi Party in America. They kept getting close, very close one time actually getting to a “torture chamber” just after one of the murders were committed. Eventually they did get around to the Tenderloin District, get around to the wholesale meat market area where the murders were committed and then dumped in North Beach and Jack Davis. Dolan who had been in Military Intelligence during World War II in Europe was struck by the similar photograph comparisons between this Jack Davis and the supposedly late Martin Bormann.    

    

They pursued that lead figuring they would have a great coup, a step up on the FBI which did squat to help in the case. Through forensics they were able to “prove” Davis was the notorious Nuremburg trial villain Bormann. That DNA stuff in Heidelberg was so much bad air. Then they ran smack against the government, against the FBI specifically since they had charge of the witness protection project Bormann was under. “Uncle” called no dice to the SFPD unless there was hard evidence that Davis had done the dastardly crimes. Of course with that command the cases went into cold storage and forget it. That is what the now retired Dolan told Lewis in any case.      

To finish up Jack Davis died in 1979 in his bed. His death certificate reflecting information about his birth certificate read that he was born in Prussia on June 17, 1900. The same birthday and the same birthplace as one Martin Bormann. So don’t tell me that guys can’t get away with murder-twice.