Martin Bormann
Martin Bormann (born 17 June 1900) is a German politician currently serving as Deputy Führer and Adolf Hitler's Parteikanzlei. Since he controls the flow of information to the Führer, he is Hitler's most trusted man and is seen by many to be the de facto successor to take over as Führer.
Biography
Bormann joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party in it's early days. He became Hitler's secretary in 1935. Following Rudolf Hess' flight to Britain, Bormann took over the powers of the Deputy Führer , effectively becoming second in command of Germany. Following the end of World War II and the subsequent economic collapse, Bormann became the leader of the loyalist faction within the NSDAP, believing that National Socialism was working and did not need reform. Bormann has been steadfast in this belief despite the German economic collapse. As Hitler's health grows worse, questions abound over whether Bormann is capable of keeping the Reich together in these trying times.
In-game
As one of the four possible candidates to succeed Hitler (the other 3 being Albert Speer, Reinhard Heydrich and Hermann Göring), Bormann will ally himself with the conservative faction of the Reich. Aside from not facing the threats that Heydrich will face if he starts to do well (Goring, Speer and Heydrich will not team up against Bormann; additionally, Hans Speidel will not declare war on Bormann), he is also the most likely to win the civil war.
After winning the war, he mainly focuses on attempting to get things back to normal, while slightly reforming the system (although not nearly to the same extent Speer would reform things if put in charge). He will meet with the United States president in one of his focuses (he cannot meet with any candidates who first ran in 1972; currently, he can only meet with candidates elected in 1964 or 1968; if he attempts to meet with any candidate elected in 1972, the event for meeting Wallace F. Bennett will play), with the outcome differing depending on who was elected (ranging from being directly snubbed by Michael Harrington, to getting in a fierce argument with Curtis LeMay, to being outright refused a meeting by the Jewish Barry Goldwater). His gameplay is dominated by political maneuvering, or "Der Wilde Ritt", trying to pacify and purge reformist and militarist factions of Germany whilst ensuring stability and that his conservatives win out.
Bormann is shown to be a rather hedonistic individual. He smokes cigars constantly, and one of his first acts as Führer will be to roll back Germany's anti-smoking policies, claiming that Hitler planned to do the same and confessed as such to Bormann on the latter's deathbed (which is obviously a lie; in real life, Hitler hated smoking so much that he offered a gold watch to any of his friends that quit smoking). Additionally, he will legalize polygamy in what is obviously an attempt to legalize his habit of sexually extorting young actresses and secretaries, and in the event where he does so, he will get into an argument with Reinhard Gehlen. However, his act of rolling back restrictions on tobacco comes back to bite him hard, as near the end of the first decade, he will be diagnosed with cancer. This comes at the same time as a period of unrest for Germany known as the "Herbst."
Trivia
- The event that had Bormann legalize polygamy, "The Court of the Brown Kaiser," originally was vastly different from what it currently is. Due to the original event in question causing many to portray Bormann as a rapist in memes, this led to the developers, who were sick of the memes that had originated from it, to change the event to what it currently is.
- Prior to the developers scrapping the canon for the 1972 start date, Bormann was the one who emerged victorious from the German Civil War (although Reinhard Heydrich was the one who Hitler chose, on account of his brutality).
