Did Martin Bormann survive the war?

[ewest89]

Hi Sid,

Read the description for the following book. I will only add that documents exist that indicate who and how National Socialist assets went to South America. They did not go to nobody.

https://www.amazon.com/Martin-Bormann-E ... 1495488144

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ewest89,

I have done so.

Being cryptic is a not very open, or helpful, conspiracy theorist trait. If you have documents, please just put them up.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ewest89]

"conspiracy theorist"? I didn't think someone like you would uncritically accept such a nonsense term.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ewest89,

That doesn't address my post - another conspiracy theorist trait.

I ask again, "If you have documents, please just put them up."

Cheers,

Sid.

[Mark in Cleveland, Tn.]

Gentlemen, obey our guidelines and rules .keep on topic, keep it civil ..stay on topic,no personal attacks, even if warranted bahahahhaha

[EditorialDreams]

Hi Sid,

Errr, no, I didn't question you about the credibility of the so-called "Archives of Terror". I asked you a question about the Bormann document allegedly in them. Specifically I suggested, "You need to be a lot more explicit for this reference to be credible." So far you haven't been.

You say, "I answered. Did you not want an answer?" Yes, I want answers but not to questions I haven't asked, just the ones that I have asked. If you want to debate yourself, feel free, but don't pretend I have asked you questions I haven't.

And yet:

The mere use of material in court means nothing if its content is not accepted. What court cases, how many is "several", what were the outcomes and was it accepted as reliable by the court or just submitted by one side?

What was that paragraph, if not a question about the overall credibility of the archives?

You say, Woods article. "confirms the existence and text of the Bormann document". No it doesn't. It reports on a claim in a fairly sceptical tone.

Yes, it does. The article was written when Graeme Wood was in Asunción examining the document. Here he is, during the same trip, talking about the Mengele document in the same archives: https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... yan/21603/
I quote -- "I've come to the Paraguayan terror archives in Asuncion to examine the documents...the Mengele document...might be one of the creepiest documents in the room. Its main rival is another document, which I shall describe in my next post." [The next post is the article I previously linked to about the Bormann document.]
This is a primary source written just under 13 years ago from a Yale lecturer, published in a reputable outlet. Your insistence on not believing the document exists is as irrational as someone refusing to believe the skull found in Berlin in 1972 belonged to Bormann because they've never seen the actual DNA test results with their own eyes.

The fact that you left out material from it that contradicts what you claimed for Wood's article because, "I did not, and do not, consider them relevant to my own interpretation of events." is basically a confession that you are Cherry-picking from his piece - another typical conspiracy theorist trait. Deliberately overlooking things because they don't suit your chosen narrative is very much worse than forgetting them.

Why do you apparently disagree with Wood? Because Wood says "There is strong evidence that Bormann died in 1945. As the infamous David Irving notes, the plundered possessions from Bormann's coat later appeared in Soviet hands, and a corpse found next to the Bormann skeleton appears to be that of Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler's last physician and Bormann's alleged getaway partner." However, this doesn't suit your narrative and so you chose not to mention it and cherry picked other bits of his article instead. This is not intellectually honest.

What I did was extract facts to reach my own interpretation. You'll find that's quite common in research of all kinds. Wood does not mention Dr Biss' testimony, so he is either unaware of it, or has no explanation for it. If it wasn't for Dr Biss' testimony, I would agree with Wood. Like most terror caches, it holds a lot of inaccurate documents, and many people aware of the Bormann document consider it to be one of the inaccurate ones. However, there are also reliable documents in the Archives of Terror, as I mentioned previously with my 'misdirection' about Operation Condor.

You ask of me "if you don't believe respected academic Graeme Wood". Errrrr..... isn't it YOU who just posted that Wood is someone, "from whose conclusions, on this matter, I happen to differ." Consistency is not your middle name!

You seem to have difficulty separating the concept of fact from the concept of interpretation. I can believe it is a fact that Graeme Wood went to Asunción and saw the document in the Archives of Terror without agreeing with his interpretation of events. Fact and interpretation are two different things. I have not 'deliberately overlooked' any of the facts in Wood's article -- you are the one deliberately overlooking the facts in his article, because they don't suit your narrative.
Your repeated conflating of fact with interpretation does not make your arguments more persuasive. In fact, it has the opposite effect.

It is now nearly 30 years since it supposedly emerged and yet nothing more seems to have been heard of it since the original claim. If there is more recent reference to it, you are not presenting it here.

Except Graeme Wood's article dated July 2009.

A quick look at your three “links”: The first is a syndicated piece taken up from another press agency. It is hearsay and removed from the original source. The second says sceptically of the report, “if accurate” and nowhere endorses it. The third is headlined “Hohenau Journal; Sure, Mengele Was at Home Here, but Bormann?”, which sounds sceptical, but I have no access to the text. Perhaps you could tell us more?
Not one of these links is based on reporting by their own journalists. All report on a claim only and none of them seem to confirm the supposed report’s existence, let alone its specific contents. They are not the work of their own “investigative journalist” but syndicated reporting.

You appear to have missed the point of those first 2 articles -- they both reported on the statement given by Dr Luis Maria Benitez Riera that the Bormann document was a genuine Archives of Terror document. Why would Dr Luis Maria Benitez Riera confirm the genuineness of a document that doesn't exist? You also conflated fact with interpretation again:

The second says sceptically of the report, “if accurate” and nowhere endorses it.

It is a fact that these outlets reported in 1993 on the statements made by Dr Luis Maria Benitez Riera. However, sentences within the articles like that one are interpretation.

Yes, I have used the formulation 'so-called "Holocaust"' dozens of times here on AHF. Easy to check - use the Search facility. Why? because it IS the so-called "Holocaust". just as the documents you refer to in Paraguay are the so-called "Archives of Terror".

That comes across as extremely disrespectful.

I am willing to believe pretty much anything providing some hard evidence is presented but, despite two previous requests, you just aren't giving us any, even though you initially claimed to have "spent some years studying this". Where's the beef?

What part of the primary, reliable source I provided don't you believe? If you believe Dr Biss was wrong, fine, if you believe the Archives of Terror document is inaccurate, fine, those are both matters of interpretation; but your insistence on not believing in the existence of the document simply comes across as a desperate attempt to transmute the focus of my post because you can't explain the facts within it. Fact 1: Dr Biss claimed to have examined Bormann in Paraguay in 1959. Fact 2: There is a document on Bormann in the Archives of Terror. The details in the claim and the document echo each other.

[EditorialDreams]

The third is headlined “Hohenau Journal; Sure, Mengele Was at Home Here, but Bormann?”, which sounds sceptical, but I have no access to the text. Perhaps you could tell us more?

Here's the text:
Hohenau Journal; Sure, Mengele Was at Home Here, but Bormann?
By James Brooke
June 1, 1993

Credit...The New York Times Archives
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

Using the early morning light to help her fading vision, Michline Reynaers sat recently in a sunny corner of the Hotel Tirol here, knitting socks for a grandchild.

"Everyone in town talked about how well he played the piano," the 72-year-old hotel keeper recalled, speaking in German of the courteous, mustachioed visitor who patronized her restaurant in 1959. "I was introduced to him as Mr. Mengele."

One year after genetic testing conclusively confirmed that Josef Mengele died in Brazil in 1979, memories seem to be sharpening here about the Auschwitz doctor. An international fugitive after Nazi Germany collapsed in 1945, Mr. Mengele lived openly in this German-speaking enclave before moving to Brazil.

Of the 37 German farming colonies in Paraguay, there was more to make a Nazi fugitive feel at home in Hohenau than the Hotel Tirol, a nostalgic Alpine transplant built with low eaves and peaked roofs to shed a snow that never fell in this remote corner of South America. 'A Proud German Colony'

"Around 1936 and later, the boys and young men began wearing the brown shirts," Ottmar Krug, now 72 years old, recalled over a stein of cold beer at a main street cafe. "We marched to the goosestep, we sang the party's songs, we used the swastika as a symbol, we were a proud German colony."

Even today, Hohenau's dusty main street is dominated by a statue of a shirtless, muscular young man holding an ax, executed in a heroic style reminiscent of 1930's Germany.

Hohenau's Nazi sympathies attracted so much attention in World War II that American diplomats pressed Paraguayan officials to turn the town into a loose detention camp for Nazi leaders from around the country.

"Signs were posted at the town entrances stating that the city was a closed camp and the people could not leave," Mr. Krug continued in German. "I remember when the American President Roosevelt died, everybody in Hohenau celebrated because he was an enemy of Germany."

Arriving in 1959, the Auschwitz doctor felt sufficiently at ease to live under his name in this town, which is 10 miles from the Argentine border and 100 miles from the Brazilian border. During the previous decade, he had lived in Argentina, apparently under an assumed name. But Paraguay in 1959 was ruled by Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, a right-wing dictator who was the son of a immigrant German brewer.

"Mengele lived with my uncle Alban," Mr. Krug said of an uncle who had a farmhouse here. "Mengele told everyone that he had a wife and children and come to Hohenau to see how things were."

Robert Dietzte, now 67 years old, agreed, saying: "I knew him as Herr Mengele. He didn't try to hide his identity. Later, when we found out about his past, we were shocked."

Beneath the guise of the pleasant family doctor, the Auschwitz "Angel of Death" was evidently nervous about his hidden past. At the concentration camp, Mr. Mengele conducted gruesome genetic experiments on thousands of inmates and sent 400,000 more to the gas chambers.

"Uncle Alban said that Mengele repeatedly told him that they would never catch him alive," recalled Mr. Krug, who estimated that the fugitive lived here for about a year. "He said Mengele carried two pistols with him all the times." Memorandum Is Disputed

With the passing of time, Nazi-hunting is fading in Paraguay.

What may be a final flurry was provoked by the discovery this year of the archives of the Stroessner-era secret police. After the dictator was deposed in a 1989 coup, Paraguayan police officials steadfastly maintained that all the files had been destroyed.

But two tons of archives were discovered last December at a police station outside of Asuncion. In February, a researcher found a 1961 report signed by the former head of the Interior Ministry's foreign affairs department.

According to the report, Martin Bormann, one of Hitler's top aides, entered Paraguay in 1956 and died in Asuncion in 1959. In Paraguay, the official wrote, he lived here, in Hohenau.

The police memorandum has been disputed by many Nazi hunters, including Simon Wiesenthal. Most historians believe that Hitler's aide committed suicide in Berlin in 1945.

"The other man -- Brommer? Bormann? -- I really don't know much about that," said Mr. Krug, studying a 50-year-old photo. "I guess my uncle had both of them in his house."

"I think my uncle knew who Mengele and Bormann were, but he never told anybody," he continued, referring to Alban Krug, a Brazilian-born farmer who died six years ago at the age of 80. "Even many years later he never talked that much about them. I think he was trying to protect them."

Up in the woods, at the Hotel Tirol, Mrs. Reynaers paused from knitting socks. Yes, she said, she recalled Martin Bormann.

"No, you do not," interrupted firmly her husband, Armand, a 74-year-old war veteran who had served on the Eastern Front before coming to Paraguay.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi EditorialDreams,

You ask, "What was that paragraph, if not a question about the overall credibility of the archives?" No, It was a specific question about a specific case and one that you failed to answer then, as you do now. I ask again, "What court cases, how many is "several", what were the outcomes and was it accepted as reliable by the court or just submitted by one side"? If you don't know, just say so and we can move on.

You are at it again. The Graeme Wood link makes absolutely no mention of Bormann at all. Not a word. It therefore, of itself, does absolutely nothing to confirm the existence of the Bormann document.

You then refer us back to the original Atlantic Article by Wood as if this confirms that Wood has seen this claimed Bormann document. It doesn't. Wood refers to the document being unearthed in 1964 by a Paraguayan researcher, presumably in a different archive, as the so-called "Archives of Terror" were yet to be opened for several decades because the "terror" they archive was still ongoing. So what relevance have the so-called "Archives of Terror" to the Bormann story? Is the Bormann actually in the "Archives of Terror"? If so, who says so? Woods doesn't appear to. It strikes me that you may be misusing the "Archives of Terror" as a device to try to give credibility to a claimed document quite possibly not actually in them, if, of course, it exists at all.

Wood nowhere says he has seen the claimed Bormann document himself. In the light of this, the fact that he may be "a Yale lecturer, published in a reputable outlet" is completely irrelevant window-dressing on your part. Wood's credibility is not in question, but yours is. You are trying to use his academic credibility as a shield to cover the lack of credibility of you belief.

You say, "What I did was extract facts to reach my own interpretation." Exactly, - Cherrypicking. The fact that others may do it doesn't in any way justify it. It has the name "Cherrypicking" precisely because it is a common device or failing.

You say. "many people aware of the Bormann document consider it to be one of the inaccurate ones." A couple of points. Firstly, we have not yet established that the so-called "Bormann document" even exists, so its accuracy or otherwise is currently irrelevant.

Secondly, What does "aware" mean? I am "aware" of the claimed Borman document but I haven't seen it and remain sceptical. You are "aware" of the Bormann document but haven't seen it, or a copy of it, or its text and yet believe in it. What is more you don't know where to find it beyond some anonymous "Paraguayan archives" sixty years ago. It strikes me, on the evidence so far available, that absolutely everyone so far mentioned is in exactly the same position. Only those accepting of an incredibly low standard of evidence would give any credibility to something so vague on the "evidence" given here.

Thirdly, who are all these "many"? Apart from brief mention by Wood, there doesn't seem to have been much public discussion of this in decades.

You post, "I can believe it is a fact that Graeme Wood went to Asunción and saw the document in the Archives of Terror....." And therein lies your problem. You are operating on belief, not evidence. Did Wood go to Asuncion and see the document in the "Archive of Terror". He doesn't say so, so why do you believe this?

You say I am "the one deliberately overlooking the facts in his article,". What "facts"? As we have seen, what you seem to "believe" are facts are apparently not, or at least not establishable as facts.

No, I repeat, Graeme Wood's article of 2009 does not anywhere say that he has seen the claimed "Borman document". He specifically refers to a 1964 report by someone else. We have had no sight or sound of this claimed document since a single unverifiable claim in 1964. We appear not to have its text and we don't seem to know where to find it. To all intents and purposes it never existed.

It appears that all your three links report a single statement by Dr Luis Maria Benitez Riera. Apparenly he "verified the document’s authenticity and reminded journalists that those files are now open to the public." OK. Back to an earlier question, so where exactly is it and what does it say? Why can you not produce its contents?

You ask, "What part of the primary, reliable source I provided don't you believe?" You produce a "primary, reliable source" (preferably the claimed "Borman document" itself) and we can have that debate. Until then it is moot.

1) You yourself accurately call Bliss's report a "claim". That is all it is.

2) We don't appear to know if the so-called "Bormann document", if it even exists, is in the so-called "Archives of Terror" because it was first reported decades before they were opened.

As I said before, "I am willing to believe pretty much anything providing some hard evidence is presented but, despite two (now three) previous requests, you just aren't giving us any."

Cheers,

Sid

P.S. Thanks for the text of the NYT article. The nub of it is this: ""The other man -- Brommer? Bormann? -- I really don't know much about that," said Mr. Krug, studying a 50-year-old photo. "I guess my uncle had both of them in his house." To put it politely, this is not exactly a smoking gun! The witness is led by being shown a photo, doesn't know Bormann's name, says "I don't know about that...." and the best that can be extracted from him is "I guess"!

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi EditorialDreams,

I emailed Graeme Wood this morning with the following question:

"I am having a discussion on line with someone who says some 13 years ago you personally saw a document in the so-called “Archives of Terror” in Paraguay that says that Bormann died in Paraguay in 1959. Did you? Many thanks"

This is Graeme Wood's unexpectedly rapid reply in full:

"No. There was clear evidence of Mengele’s open presence in Paraguay, but nothing beyond the circumstantial about Bormann."

Cheers,

Sid.

[EditorialDreams]

That's funny, because I spoke to Graeme Wood too. With it being 13 years ago, his recollection is hazy, but in his first email, he confirms that the document exists. In his second email, he stands by what he wrote in 2009.





There is a document about Martin Bormann in the Paraguayan Archives of Terror, and the content within the document (as described by Graeme Wood) mirrors Dr Biss' statement. Just like I said.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi EditorialDreamer,

That certainly got you out of bed! A bit of original research AT LAST! Well done. I am proud to have led you by the nose there.

So, Wood did not claim to have seen a Bormann document in 2009 and denies having seen one to both of us now. He answered me with a direct "No" and you with, "I do not recall the specifics of the Bormann document you mention.....". We don't, of course, know what document YOU mentioned because you have failed to put that up.

He specifically says to you, "Rather than rely on my recollection now, you should rely on what I wrote at the time - which I have not revisited and which I have no reason to doubt or retract". He did NOT mention having seen any such document at the time. Read his article again.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Mannheim]

I have many times before followed - quietly - some 'debates' about contentious issues on this site but I must say I am really enjoying this one.

[EditorialDreams]

Sid, if you want to see what I wrote to Graeme Wood, you can whistle for it.

You have never given me (or anyone else) any critical reason to disbelieve Graeme Wood (or, for that matter, Dr Benitez Riera, who confirmed the document was genuine in 1993, and who works for the Supreme Court in Paraguay). Both of these people are far more credible and informed than you.

I'm going to make this my final word on the matter, so here's a summation for anyone who doesn't want to keep pretending the document doesn't exist so they don't have to address it:

I have personally produced a credible witness to this document. The witness said on the 09th of July 2022 that he remembered seeing the document, but could not recall the specific details ("I don't recall the details of the document you mention, only that it was"). The witness said that he stood by the article he wrote in 2009. The article written in 2009 contained the details of the document.

Here is what Graeme Wood said about the Archives of Terror document:



And here is Dr Otto Biss' testimony, given decades before the Archives of Terror were made open to the public (as reported by Gerald Posner, who interviewed Dr Biss personally in December 1984 to confirm the story told here):



[The television documentary was a Time-Life production called "The Search for Vengeance" from 1966; the authors mentioned are Michael Bar-Zohar in 1968 and the previously-mentioned Farago in 1973.]

So the common ground between them is:
Martin Bormann was ill/dying in Paraguay in early 1959.
Martin Bormann was under the care of another German-speaking doctor/Josef Mengele.
Martin Bormann was staying with Werner Jung.

Two points to make:
1. I apologise -- I previously said that Dr Biss mentioned the guest had stomach cancer, but as you can see in the testimony above, he didn't. When I checked my notes, Dr Biss diagnosing the stomach cancer was actually something I got from Hugh Thomas, so can't be taken as credible.
2. Dr Biss dated the visit as Spring 1959, and the Archives of Terror document states that Bormann died in February 1959. I don't think the fact that Dr Biss was a month out is of any significance.

In my time researching Bormann, I have never been able to find that Dr Biss had any axe to grind, or any connection with the instruments of repression.

My personal interpretation, as I expressed in my original post, is that the most credible explanation for how Dr Biss and the Archives of Terror document tell the same story is that they're true. But that's just my interpretation, not a fact.

The fact, however, remains that Dr Biss gave this testimony repeatedly from the 1960s onwards, and the Archives of Terror document found in 1993 has the same details.

You know what the really funny thing is? When I submitted my first post, I didn't describe the contents of the Archives of Terror document, because I assumed without question that anyone who presented themselves as an authority on Bormann on a forum like this would already be entirely familiar with it.

What, "Bormann document in the Archives of Terror"? I have Googled "Archives of Terror Borman" and other combinations and found only one relevant reference - your post above. You need to be a lot more explicit for this reference to be credible.

Oh, the irony.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ED,

You say, "Sid, if you want to see what I wrote to Graeme Wood, you can whistle for it." So, you are now adding witholding evidence to your misdemeanours here? Not a good look.

You say I, "have never given me (or anyone else) any critical reason to disbelieve Graeme Wood". (1) I don't disbelieve Wood. (2) In any case, the onus is not on me to prove anything. It is you making the claims. It is therefore entirely up to you to prove your case. Nobody else needs to be "pretending the document doesn't exist". The default position is that it doesn't exist until proven otherwise.

The simplest way would be for you to produce the document concerned. Not only haven't you done that, but you apparently haven't seen a reproduction of it, or a copy of its text, and are unable to lay out any viable route to it. "Somewhere in the Paraguayan archives" doesn't really cut it, does it?

No, I produced Graeme Wood here, not you. He gave an unequivocal answer to my question, It was "No". The article from 2009 nowhere says he had seen such a document. If it did, you would have quoted the sentence concerned, but you haven't. He simply says in the article that there is such a document, without ever claiming to have seen it himself. As we know, there was another, earlier and, as yet, unsubstantiated, claim for such a document's existence. And no, nowhere does Wood sensationalize his place of research as the "Archives of Terror". That is a piece of capitalized sensationalism on your part. Please stick to what he actually wrote.

As regards Bliss, I repeat, "You have now added a detail not in you original account abvout Biss: You originally said, "Shortly afterwards, Dr Biss saw a photograph of Bormann: he said there was no doubt that he and the man he'd examined were one and the same." You now say, "Dr Biss said that, a few days after the consultation, a friend told him it was Martin Bormann that was staying at Werner Jung's house, and after that, Dr Biss got hold of a photograph to compare." So, Bliss did not come up with the theory himself. Rather it was suggested to him by a third party. He then went looking for photographic confirmation. In the trade this is known as Confirmation Bias."

Bliss doesn't have to have any "axe to grind" simply to be wrong in identifying a previously unknown, terminally ill and presumably seriously deteriorated, strange, patient he saw only once from a 20 year old photo after it was retrospectively suggested to him by a third party that it had been Bormann.

There is no surprise if there is common ground for the three tales you reference, if they are from the same flawed story in the first place.

A very minor detail. Paraguay is in the southern hemisphere and February is not a month away from the spring, but at least half a year. Spring there is from September to November. This is not of itself very important, but it is indicative of your sloppy "research" generally.

The fact that Bliss may have repeated the story doesn't reinforce it in any way. It remains the same story. Indeed, if it was his only claim to fame, he might have become wedded to it.

You post, "You know what the really funny thing is? When I submitted my first post, I didn't describe the contents of the Archives of Terror document, because I assumed without question that anyone who presented themselves as an authority on Bormann on a forum like this would already be entirely familiar with it." Well, that certainly doesn't include me! I claim no expertise in Bormann. I am just a layman in this instance questioning someone who claims to have ".....spent some years studying this".

It is YOU who are claiming to be an an authority on Bormann and yet failing to provide any substantive evidence at all! It would appear from your contribution here that your "some years studying this" have been largely unproductive.

You say, "When I submitted my first post, I didn't describe the contents of the Archives of Terror document." You still haven't!

If that really was your last post, (which I doubt), thank you for the entertainment.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Max]

For what it's worth.
another news piece on the document.
By Katherine Ellison and Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Chicago Tribune
May 30, 1993 at 12:00 am

-faded two-page, 1961 document .
- authored by former piano tuner and Nazi SS intelligence captain named Pedro J. Prokopchuk, who was later shot and killed at a movie theater by a Croatian named Batric Kotric.-assisted by Juan Erasmo Candia, then chief of the investigative police.

Quoting The Miami Herald
Otto Biss' wife says he saw the Bormann photo shortly after the medical consultation.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct- ... story.html