In 1997, Martin Bormann Jr.—the son of Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi Party chancellery and Hitler‘s powerful private secretary—described to me his personal experience as a 15-year-old in the chaotic last days of the Second World War.
He had been living in Munich, in a protected compound for the families of senior Nazis. On April 23, 1945, as the mayhem of imminent defeat spread, his entire class was dressed in SS uniforms and sent to the southern front in Italy to battle the Americans—without guns or ammunition. He and his friends drove around in a panic trying not to meet the enemy. On April 30, they learned that Hitler had killed himself. Eight of the adults in their group committed suicide on the spot. The boys were ordered home to their families.
Bormann Jr. believed his father was dead—he knew he was in the...
Erna Paris was the author of many acclaimed works of literary non-fiction, including The Sun Climbs Slow: The International Criminal Court and the Search for Justice.
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