Martin Bormann - Silent Tyrant Online Quiz | History

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Martin Bormann is one of the less well known Nazi party members but is commonly considered to have had more power than any other Nazi except Adolf Hitler. He was, primarily, head of the party chancellery, but what position made him a close friend and confidant of Hitler?

Answer: Hitler's Private Secretary

Martin Bormann was the private secretary to the leader of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler. Bormann was left in charge of Hitler's finances and was very familiar with the leader's close inner circle. He began his rise to power as a private secretary to the deputy leader, Rudolf Hess before reaching the high echelons of infamous power and tyranny.

2. Bormann was born at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century - June 17, 1900. He was born in Halberstadt and had an early job which has close parallels to that of his future colleague in crime, Heinrich Himmler. What type of job did Bormann have?

Answer: Farming

Bormann worked on an estate after he dropped out of school. Bormann didn't remain in this job for all that long and followed his father into the army. His father was a former regimental sergeant-major who then worked for the German postal service. Bormann became a cannoneer towards the latter stages of WWI but never saw active service.

3. Bormann's 'silent' personality was his greatest tool. However, hidden beneath that dormant exterior lay a vicious murderer. He assisted in the brutal murder of his own former elementary school teacher. Who was Bormann's collaborator?

Answer: Rudolf Hoess

Rudolf Hoess or H�ss (NOT to be confused with Rudolf Hess, the deputy leader of the Nazi party) was an orchestrator of mass scale murder. In June 1940 H�ss became the founding Kommandant of the most infamous of all death camps - Auschwitz. His approach was technocratic, his conscience weak, his legacy unforgivable.

He oversaw 1.5 million deaths, and his cool recollection of these facts, first as a witness at Nuremberg, then while on trial himself in Poland, shocked millions more. It would seem that the savage vengeance on Bormann's former elementary teacher, Walther Kadow, was just the start of a life of murder on an unparalleled scale.

4. In 1924, Bormann was incarcerated for his part in the murder of Walter Kadow, but how long was his sentence?

Answer: 1 year

For the brutal murder of his former elementary school teacher, Kadow, Bormann only spent twelve months in prison. This incredibly lenient sentence was passed because it was believed that Walter Kadow had betrayed Leo Schlageter to the French during the occupation of the Ruhr.

In May 1923 the French shot Schlageter for acts of sabotage. There are still some monuments to him in Germany as he immediately became a national as well as a Nazi hero.

5. Hitler delegated considerable power to Bormann, so much so, that all promotions and appointments went through his office. He was a man obsessed with the security of the Third Reich and told regional leaders known as gauleiters, whom he also controlled, to do which of the following in 1942?

Answer: Destroy the power of the church

In 1942, Bormann sent out a confidential notice to all regional gauleiters and said that "[the power of the church] must absolutely and finally be broken". Bormann believed that totalitarianism through the medium of Fascist and Nazi ideology was inachievable with such an opposing institution as the church and, in particular, the teachings and theology of Christianity.

6. As well as his hatred of the Jews, the intense racist that was Bormann also hated the Slavs. Which of the following did he call this "inferior" race?

Answer: Sovietised mass of sub-humans

He believed that Slavs were a 'Sovietised mass of sub-humans'. He made this clear in a memo dated from August 19, 1942. He continued in this memo by saying, "the permanent elimination of the Jews from the territories of Greater Germany can no longer be carried out by emigration but by the use of ruthless force in the special camps of the East."

7. As an example of his seemingly unlimited power, Bormann signed a decree on July 1, 1943, stating that someone should have full control over the treatment of the Jews that came into contact with the Gestapo. Who was this man?

Answer: Adolf Eichmann

This "honour" was given to Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was a much feared man and was responsible, along with Rudolf H�ss, for the mass extermination of millions of Jews. Eichmann was in charge of rounding up Jews and sending them to various extermination camps around Europe. A man of intense hatred and racism escaped capture from 1945 and managed to remain free up to 1960 when he was captured in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires.
He was tried and executed in Israel, maybe justice, but nowhere near recompense for the horror and death that this one man caused.

The other three options were all doctors and physicians in Auschwitz.

8. Bormann's responsibilities within the Third Reich mounted and mounted. To what position was Bormann appointed in October, 1944?

Answer: Commander of the Volkssturm

Martin Bormann became the commander of the Volkssturm or people's army. As the date of the appointment suggests, the Allies were gaining ground and the capitulation of the Third Reich was regarded as a definite possibility. The Volkssturm was a mass of mainly elderly and very young Germans who were asked to give the last push in the defence of the Reich.

9. Martin Bormann was the witness to Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun and was present in the bunker at the subsequent suicide.

Answer: True

This shows the degree of respect and trust that Hitler gave to his personal secretary. This relatively unknown figure was, in his usual silent manner, running the Third Reich, and in his own manipulative way had done so for a long time previous to one of the most famous suicides of all time.

10. After the suicide of Adolf Hitler on April 30, 1945, the details of Martin Bormann's life became extremely dubious and for decades nobody knew for sure what had become of him. However, the ruling at Nuremberg is something that historians are certain of. What sentence was he given?

Answer: Death in absentia

October 1, 1946, Martin Bormann was sentenced to death in absentia by the War International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. 'In absentia' means 'in (his) absence'. In other words, he wasn't there to stand trial in person.

Until 1998 nobody actually knew what had happened to him. There were various stories such as he died trying to flee Berlin that he had reached South America along with people such as Adolf Eichmann and Dr. Joseph Mengele. Recent DNA evidence on a skeleton found in 1972 in Berlin however support the claim that he died near the Lehrter Bahnhof in Berlin when the Nazis made their scramble from Berlin to avoid capture.

Thank you for taking your time to play the quiz and I do hope you enjoyed!

Source: Author jonnowales

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
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Martin Bormann - Silent Tyrant Quiz

This quiz is #3 of 5 in the series on leading Nazis who achieved ultimate infamy in the years leading up to the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945. Next up, Martin Bormann. Enjoy!

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