He served nearly a year in prison as an accomplice to his friend Rudolf Höss (later commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp) in the murder of Walther Kadow.

He initially worked in the party's insurance service, and transferred in July 1933 to the office of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, where he served as chief of staff.

Bormann was one of the leading proponents of the ongoing persecution of the Christian churches and favoured harsh treatment of Jews and Slavs in the areas conquered by Germany during World War II.

[4] Bormann's studies at an agricultural trade high school were interrupted when he joined the 55th Field Artillery Regiment as a gunner in June 1918, in the final months of World War I.

[10][a] He joined the Frontbann, a short-lived Nazi Party paramilitary organisation created to replace the Sturmabteilung (SA; storm detachment or assault division), which had been banned in the aftermath of the failed Munich Putsch.

After joining the Nazi Party in 1927, Bormann began duties as regional press officer, but his lack of public-speaking skills made him ill-suited to this position.

[25] After the Machtergreifung (Nazi Party seizure of power) in January 1933, the relief fund was repurposed to provide general accident and property insurance, so Bormann resigned from its administration.

Bormann commissioned the construction of barracks for the SS guards, roads and footpaths, garages for motor vehicles, a guesthouse, accommodation for staff, and other amenities.

Retaining title in his own name, Bormann bought up adjacent farms until the entire complex covered 10 square kilometres (3.9 sq mi).

[33][34][c] Bormann commissioned the building of the Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle's Nest), a tea house high above the Berghof, as a gift to Hitler on his fiftieth birthday (20 April 1939).

In addition to salaries as chancellor and president, Hitler's income included money raised through royalties collected on his book Mein Kampf and the use of his image on postage stamps.

[39][40] Historian Mikael Nilsson contends that Bormann and his editors distorted the table talks so that the material would be useful to help him win disagreements within the Nazi leadership.

Along with his ability to control access to Hitler, this enabled him to curtail the power of Joseph Goebbels, Göring, Himmler, Alfred Rosenberg, Robert Ley, Hans Frank, Speer, and other high-ranking officials, many of whom became his enemies.

Hess was concerned that Germany would face a war on two fronts as plans progressed for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union scheduled to take place later that year.

[55] By a Führer decree (Führererlass) on 29 May, Bormann also succeeded Hess on the six-member Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich, which operated as a war cabinet.

The committee members were Hans Lammers (head of the Reich Chancellery), Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command; OKW), and Bormann, who controlled the Party.

[66] While Bormann's push to force the closure of theological departments at Reich universities was unsuccessful, he was able to reduce the amount of religious instruction provided in public schools to two hours per week and mandated the removal of crucifixes from classrooms.

[70] In 1941 the Catholic Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Graf von Galen, publicly protested against this persecution and against Action T4, the Nazi involuntary euthanasia programme under which the mentally ill, physically deformed, and incurably sick were to be killed.

[71] George Mosse wrote of Bormann's beliefs: [He believed that] God is present, but as a world-force which presides over the laws of life which the Nazis alone have understood.

The Gauleiters are advised to conquer the influence of the Christian Churches by keeping them divided, encouraging particularism among them...[72] Richard Overy describes Bormann as an atheist.

[74] Bormann was invariably the advocate of extremely harsh, radical measures when it came to the treatment of Jews, the conquered eastern peoples, and prisoners of war.

[75] Historian Richard J. Evans estimates that 5.5 to 6 million Jews, representing two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, were exterminated by the Nazi regime in the course of The Holocaust.

He lobbied for and eventually achieved a strict separate penal code that implemented martial law for the Polish and Jewish inhabitants of these areas.

The "Edict on Criminal Law Practices against Poles and Jews in the Incorporated Eastern Territories", promulgated 4 December 1941, permitted corporal punishment and death sentences for even the most trivial of offences.

[84] In the early morning hours of 29 April 1945 Wilhelm Burgdorf, Goebbels, Hans Krebs and Bormann witnessed and signed Hitler's last will and testament.

[107] In case Bormann was still alive, multiple public notices about the upcoming Nuremberg trials were placed in newspapers and on the radio in October and November 1945 to notify him of the proceedings against him.

Due to the shadowy nature of Bormann's activities, Bergold was unable to refute the prosecution's assertions as to the extent of his involvement in decision making.

[119] In 1963, a retired postal worker named Albert Krumnow told police that around 8 May 1945, the Soviets had ordered him and his colleagues to bury two bodies found near a railway bridge near Lehrter station (now Berlin Hauptbahnhof).

[123] However, on 7 December 1972, construction workers uncovered human remains near Lehrter station in West Berlin, only 12 m (39 ft) from the spot where Krumnow claimed to have buried them.

[124] At the subsequent autopsies, fragments of glass were found in the jaws of both skeletons, suggesting that the men had committed suicide[125][126] by biting cyanide capsules to avoid capture.