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Martin Baumann was an important figure during the Nazi Germany period, and in the later stages of the war he had effectively become the main leader of the Nazi Party and Hitler's personal chief secretary and governor. After Hitler committed suicide, he escaped from the chancellor's bunker with the breakout team, but inexplicably, he disappeared without a dead body, and later the Nuremberg tribunal prosecuted him for war crimes against humanity, but had to hang him in absentia. Did Bauman die or flee? Let's go back to the smoke-filled night of May 1, 1945, and explore the mystery of Martin Bowman's life and death, based on the memories of many parties involved.
At 11:00 p.m. on May 1, William Munch led the first breakout group out of the bunker, originally Munch asked Bowman to join his group to break through, but the cunning Bowman thought that it was too risky to serve as a pathfinder, so he chose the third breakout group. Led by Goebbels's secretary, Werner Naumann, the group consisted of Hitler's pilot Hans Bauer, the captain of the convoy, Kempka, the leader of the Youth League, Axmann, the SS doctor Stenpffeiger, and others, Baumann took Hitler's will and followed them out of the subway tunnel, and when they arrived at Friedrichstrasse Station, the tunnel was impassable and had to climb to the ground, and the ruined streets also disoriented the old driver Kempka.
In sporadic street fighting, a German Tiger tank served as their cover, and the group intended to cross the River Spree from the Wedendam Bridge, but the bridge had been blocked by the Soviets, and a shell hit the Tiger tank, and the shock wave of the explosion threw Baumann and Stemphfeiger to the ground, and Kempka's recollection was that Martin Baumann was "thrown out", where Baumann may have been injured.
After three attempts, Baumann, Stepffer, and several others finally crossed the river, and they slowly advanced along the railroad toward Lylt Station, at which point Axman, for some reason, chose to flee in the opposite direction of Bauman, but he did not go far before he found a Soviet force, and as a last resort, Axman had to turn around and return. When he returned to a bridge near the railway shunting yard, he saw two bodies, and in the moonlight he recognized them as the bodies of Bauman and Stepffer. In this case, Axman was only concerned with fleeing for his life, and he could not have carefully examined the cause of Bowman's death, but he was quite certain in the later interrogation that it was Bowman's body.
Since Bowman's body was not found, it was impossible to determine Bowman's death, the Nuremberg court could only pronounce a verdict in absentia after the war, the US military intelligence department also monitored Bowman's relatives, and the West German government even offered a reward of 100,000 German marks to search for Bowman's whereabouts, hoping to find some useful clues, but the results were always disappointing. Regarding the life and death of Baumann, there are many opinions and versions, some say that he defected to the Soviet Union, some say that he fled to South America, some say that he reached a secret agreement with the West German government, hidden, anyway, there is no exact evidence, how to say how to say, and after the war, the Allies also searched for or arrested more than a dozen "Bauman", and afterwards confirmed that it was not Bauman himself, and the mystery of Bauman's whereabouts did not begin to appear until 1963.
In 1963, a retired postal worker named Albert Krumno revealed to the police that on May 8, 1945, the Soviets had ordered him to bury two bodies found near The Leerte station along with his colleague Wagenfell. The two bodies, one in a Wehrmacht uniform and the other in only underwear, were found on the body in lingerie A SS pay slip whose name and position proved to be SS doctor Ludwig Stenpffeiger. Wagenfell gave the payroll to postmaster Berndt, who in turn forwarded it to the Soviets. Krumno also said that on August 14, he also wrote to Mr. Stenpfeiger's wife, telling her that her husband, along with other fallen soldiers, was buried near the disabled soldier's apartment at 63 Alpendorfplatz, northwest of Berlin.
On July 20 and 21, 1965, two days of excavations were carried out at the site designated by Axeman and Krumno, but nothing was found, and the incident was regarded as another rumor among many rumors about Bauman's whereabouts, with no result other than an increase in the sales of the newspapers of those days and an after-dinner conversation.
On December 7, 1972, construction workers excavated two remains in the ground near the Leirt station in West Berlin, which was only 12 meters away from the site that Krumno had identified, that is, what Krumno said at the beginning may have been true, but it was too long, and the location he identified was deviated.
The West German government immediately organized experts to identify the two remains, and glass fragments were found on the jaws of the remains, concluding that they had committed suicide by biting through glass bottles and swallowing cyanide. According to a 1945 reconstruction of dentist records by Hitler's dentist Dr. Hugo Brashk, the teeth of the remains were analyzed, and the teeth of one of the remains were highly consistent with Martin Baumann. Experts also identified the skull and collarbone of the remains, and found marks of fractures on the collarbone, which bauman once fell off his horse in 1939 and injured the collarbone, which is also consistent with this. The facial restoration based on the skull is very similar to Bauman's, and all the evidence proves that the remains are Martin Baumann, and the other remains have been identified as Stampffeiger. In 1973, the West German government declared Martin Baumann dead, but Baumann's family demanded that the remains not be cremated in order to allow for more scientific forensic examinations in the future.
In 1998, the German government again conducted genetic testing on the skull of Baumann's remains, this time led by Wolfgang Essenmenger, a forensic science professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, which genetically compared Bauman's skull with one of Baumann's relatives, and finally confirmed that the skull was indeed Martin Baumann.
On August 16, 1999, Baumann's remains were cremated, and the ashes were scattered into the Baltic Sea, and the mystery of Baumann's life and death, which had been tossed for more than fifty years, finally came out, that is, Martin Baumann had died in Berlin in the early morning of May 2, 1945. Close the case!
But wait! There are still some details that cannot be explained. According to some sources, when baumann's skeleton was examined, a special soil composition was found, which was not berlin or even German soil at all, but a soil unique to Uruguay in South America. This left the whole affair confusing again, and according to this analysis, it is very likely that Baumann did not die on the night of the breakout, but fled to Uruguay through other channels. So what happened to the remains dug up in Berlin? It is likely that after Bowman's death in South America, the mysterious organization smuggled his skeleton back to Berlin and buried it in the place where it was believed to be buried at the time, making people think that Bowman had been buried in 1945. Since Baumann died in South America, he was buried in South America, so why did he have to smuggle it back to Germany for burial? This is completely redundant, and wouldn't burying the remains near the train station in peacetime alarm the surrounding residents? It is also necessary to accurately bury Bowman's skeleton with the skeleton of Stepferger, which seems to be a relatively technical work, so this legend seems to be unreliable.
There is also a mystery that remains unsolved, where did Baumann carry Hitler's will with him when he broke through the bunker? Was it taken by the Soviets? How did he put on the Wehrmacht uniform again? If the Soviet army searched for Hitler's will from his body, it would definitely be able to judge that he was a key figure, and he would definitely save the body for a thorough investigation, and it would never be possible to bury him casually. Or was it Bowman who hid or destroyed his will before committing suicide? It is said that the Soviet army once found a diary on Baumann, and later a Soviet writer wrote a book about Baumann based on this diary, and the Chinese edition in 2003 was called "Hitler and the Man Behind Him - Martin Baumann and His Diary".
All of this, it seems that there is no reasonable explanation, the mystery of Martin Bowman's life and death seems to have not been fully solved, when will it be fully declassified? You can only wait for time to answer.