Guarding Hitler: The Secret World of the Führer

by Mark Felton

The search for Martin Bormann, considered to have been the most senior Nazi to have escaped capture and/or trial in 1945, continued for decades despite Axmann’s insistence that Bormann and Dr Stumpfegger had died during the escape from the Führerbunker. Digs were made for Bormann’s body in Paraguay in March 1964 and Berlin in July 1964 without result. The same year the West German government offered a 100,000 Mark reward for information leading to Bormann’s capture, but it remained unclaimed. In 1965 a retired postal worker named Albert Krumnow came forward to claim that on 8 May 1945, or thereabouts, he and his colleagues had been ordered by the Soviets to bury two bodies near the Lehrter Station in the exact same location as that reported by Artur Axmann. Krumnow claimed that one body was dressed in a Wehrmacht uniform – indeed Bormann had changed into nondescript dress for the breakout – while the other was an SS doctor. Krumnow stated that they found a paybook on the SS officer’s body identifying it as Ludwig Stumpfegger’s. When they gave the document to the Soviets, they destroyed it. Then, in 1972 workmen found two skeletons only 12 metres from where Krumnow stated that he had buried two bodies in May 1945. Using dental records reconstructed in Soviet captivity from memory in 1945 by SS-Brigadeführer Dr Hugo Blaschke, Hitler’s dentist, the smaller skeleton was identified as Bormann’s. The skeleton also had a damaged collarbone consistent with a 1939 riding accident s...