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.
