Göbbels' tenure as Reich Chancellor was brief. A few hours after sending this telegram, he poisoned his six children with cyanide capsules. At 20:30 he and his wife emerged from the Führerbunker into the chancellery garden where they were shot, at their own request, by an SS orderly. Under the command of Martin Bormann, several of the Bunker inhabitants planned to follow tunnels from the chancellery to the subway line, and then follow the line north, under the Friedrichstrasse, to the Friedrichstrasse station a few hundred yards south of the river Spree. At that point they would surface, link up with what was left of Brigadeführer Möhnke's battle group, and attempt to force their way across the Weidendammer Bridge. Then they would proceed north-west, through the Russian lines, and save themselves as best they could. At 23:00 hours the mass escape began. Moving in small groups, they proceeded underground, as planned, to the Friedrichstrasse station. Here they emerged to find the ruins of Berlin in flames, and Russian shells bursting everywhere around them. The first group managed to cross the river Spree by an iron footbridge that ran parallel to the Weidendammer Bridge. The remaining groups likewise emerged at the Friedrichstrasse Station, but there became confused and disoriented. They made their way north along the Friedrichstrasse to the Weidendammer Bridge, where they found their way blocked, at the bridge's north end, by an anti-tank barrier and heavy Russian fire. They next withdrew to the south end of the bridge, where they were soon joined by a few German tanks. Gathering about the tanks, they again pressed forward. Bormann, Artur Axmann (head of the Hitler Youth), Ludwig Stumpfegger (Hitler's surgeon), and others followed the lead tanks as far as the Ziegelstrasse. There a Panzerfaust struck the lead tank. The violent explosion stunned Bormann and Stumpfegger, and wounded Axmann. All retreated to the Weidendammer Bridge. Now it was every man for himself. Bormann, Stumpfegger, Axmann, and others followed the tracks of the surface railway to the Lehrter station. There Bormann and Stumpfegger decided to follow the Invalidienstrasse east. Axmann elected to go west, but encountered a Russian patrol and returned on the path Bormann and Stumpfegger had taken. He soon found them. Behind the bridge, where the Invalidienstrasse crosses the railroad tracks, they lay on their backs, the moonlight on their faces. Both were dead. Axmann could see no signs of an explosion, and assumed that they had been shot in the back. He continued on his way, escaping from Berlin and spending the next six months hiding out with the Hitler Youth in the Bavarian Alps, where he was eventually captured.

After supervising the corpse-disposal arrangements following on the suicide of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun on the afternoon April 30, 1945, and waiting in vain for a further twenty-four hours for a favourable reply from the Soviet commanders to the overtures made to them by Dr Josef Göbbels, Germany's new Chancellor-for-a-Day, Martin Bormann and a group of Hitler's senior colleagues made a final breakout attempt from the Berlin Bunker late on May 1. Soviet troops were closing in on the building from every quarter, but it was the Soviet national holiday. Erich Kempka, Hitler's chauffeur, was with Bormann's group, as were Hitler's last physician, Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger (who had succeeded Professor Theo Morell on April 22), and Artur Axmann, the Reichsjugendführer, who had smuggled out of the building with him the pistol with which Hitler had shot himself (according to Otto Günsche). At the Weidendamm Bridge near Lehrte Station the group were cut off by enemy troops. Bormann and Stumpfegger made a run for it. A Soviet tank shell exploded only feet away from them -- Axmann testified that he saw it happen. Both survived the blast, but they were badly shaken and decided to swallow their cyanide capsules there and then, rather than surrender. The bodies must have lain there some time. Bormann's expensive leather greatcoat was taken off the body, and the contents of its pockets were taken to Moscow, including his pocket diary: the contents of the diary were published by the Soviet historian and former Intelligence officer Lev Bezymenski. There is no doubt as to the diary's authenticity, as crosschecks with other rare documents establish. There the story would have ended, had the controversy about Bormann  not continued. Simon Wiesenthal  and others continued the lucrative hunt for a live Martin Bormann years after the Reichsleiter unscrewed the cap off that lethal brass capsule. Then along came Stern journalist Jochen von Lang. Born Joachim Piechocki, he had been an SS liaison officer in Göbbels' propaganda ministry at the end of the war; to him in fact had fallen the duty of making the famous May 1, 1945 broadcast on Berlin Radio announcing that the Führer had "fallen in battle". Nonetheless, he was a fine researcher, and in 1972 Von Lang and Stern magazine persuaded the Berlin police authorities to dig up the street at the spot where the bodies of Bormann and the doctor had last been seen. It was a macabre exercise, but it came off brilliantly, when two bodies were brought to light. Forensic experts used dental pathology to identify the bodies -- hampered in Bormann’s case initially by getting his jaw upside down. In1976, the leading Scandinavian dental pathologist Reidar F Sognnaes published a lengthy disquisition in a scientific journal, Legal Medicine Annual, titled, "Dental Evidence in the Postmortem Identification of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun and Martin Bormann." This established beyond doubt that Bormann’s corpse was indeed his (his dental chart was on file). Sognnaes incidentally performed the same exercise on Hitler's dental records -- the remains of his upper and lower jaw, which the Soviets had stored away, were illustrated as photographs by Bezymenski in his book Der Tod des Adolf Hitler. As for the doctor, Stumpfegger - a gold ring had been found on the corpse, with a date engaged inside. His brother, living in Ingolstadt confirmed that it was the date of Ludwig's wedding in 1938. In 1998 DNA analysis confirmed that the body was Martin Bormann's, and the German authorities finally allowed its cremation; the ashes were buried at sea. to prevent his grave from becoming a site of neo-Nazi pilgrimage. The urn containing the Nazi's ashes was sunk in the Baltic Sea near Kiel on August 16, 1999 according to a report in Der Spiegel magazine. The report was confirmed by Bavarian officials.

For a full, fascinating, lucid, and authoritative account of the fate of Messrs. Bormann, Göbbels, Hitler, and other denizens of The Bunker, consult The Last Days of Hitler by Hugh Trevor-Roper . Late in 1945, British Intelligence appointed Mr. Roper to investigate the evidence surrounding the death of Hitler. His book followed in 1946 as a result of this investigation, and was updated by him over the years as new evidence emerged. Roper left the issue of Bormann's death open in early editions of the work, because evidence of Bormann's death rested solely on the testimony of Artur Axmann. Although Axmann's testimony regarding other events was truthful so far as it could be independently verified, Roper realized that Axmann might be giving false evidence to protect Bormann from further search.   In December, 1972, during construction near the Lehrter Station (near to where Bormann's diary had been found in a discarded leather jacket in 1945, and close to the spot where Axmann said he had seen Bormann's body in the moonlight of that fatal night) two skeletons were unearthed. After extensive forensic examination, using the dental records of Bormann's dentist (Prof. Hugo Blaschke, who was also Hitler's dentist) the shorter of the two skeletons was identified as that of Martin Bormann, and West German authorities officially declared him dead. The forensic identification was validated by Dr. Reidar F. Sognnaes, a celebrated U.S. expert in such matters. (Reidar F. Sognnaes, "Dental Evidence in the Postmortem Identification of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun and Martin Bormann", in Legal Medicine Annual, 1976.) This new evidence caused Roper to write in the 1978 edition of The Last Days of Hitler that "...in view of new evidence which has recently been found, I believe that it [the question of Bormann's death] can now be closed." As stated in the Final Report of the Frankfurt State Prosecution office under File Index No. Js 11/61 (GStA Ffm.) in "Criminal Action against Martin Bormann on Charge of Murder", dated April 4, 1973: XI. Result Although nature has placed limits on human powers of recognition (BGHZ Vol. 36, pp. 379-393-NJW 1962, 1505), it is proved with certainty that the two skeletons found on the Ulap fairgrounds in Berlin on December 7 and 8, 1972, are identical with the accused Martin Bormann and Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger. The accused and Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger died in Berlin in the early hours of the morning of May 2, 1945 -- sometime between 1:30 and 2:30 A.M. XII. Further Measures 1. The search for Martin Bormann is officially terminated.... Of course, die-hard conspiracy bugs would no doubt argue that Bormann died in Paraguay, and had his remains re-interred, surreptitiously, at the Ulap fairgrounds in Berlin, where they could later be "discovered".

During the chaotic closing days of the war there were contradictory reports as to Bormann's whereabouts (for example, Jakob Glas, Bormann's long-time chauffer, insisted he saw Bormann in Munich weeks after May 1, 1945). The bodies were not found and a global search followed, including extensive efforts in South America. With no proof of Bormann's death the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg tried Bormann in absentia in October 1946 and sentenced him to death. His court-appointed defense attorney used the unusual and unsuccessful defense that the court could not convict Bormann because he was already dead. Unconfirmed sightings of Bormann were reported globally for two decades, particularly in Europe, Paraguay and elsewhere in South America. Some rumours claimed Bormann had plastic surgery while on the run and that it had spoiled his face. At a 1967 press conference Simon Wiesenthal asserted there was strong evidence Bormann was alive and well in South America. Writer Ladislas Farago's widely known 1974 book Aftermath : Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich argued Bormann had survived the war and lived in Argentina. Farago's evidence, which drew heavily on official governmental documents, was compelling enough to persuade Dr. Robert M.W. Kempner (a lawyer at the Nuremberg Trials) to briefly reopen an active investigation in 1972 but Farago's claims were generally rejected by historians and critics. Allegations that Bormann and his organization survived the war figure prominently in the work of David Emory. Another source is the 1981 book, Martin Bormann, Nazi in Exile by Paul Manning and a number of books published in the years following the war corroborate details of Manning's description of German flight capital, and the postwar Nazi underground.