Martin Bormann

Martin Bormann (born 17 June 1900) is a German politician currently serving as Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler and Party Chancellor of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. 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 most likely successor to take over as Führer. 

Background

Bormann joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party in its early days. He became Hitler's secretary and leader of the Control Faction in 1935. Following Rudolf Hess' ill-fated flight to Britain, Bormann took over the position of Deputy Führer, effectively becoming second in command of Germany. Following the end of World War II and the Lost Decade of the 1950s, Bormann believed that partification was the way for National Socialism to survive by bringing every institution under its thumb to create the perfect party-state. 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.

Involvement

Bormann is the primary leader of the Reich's Control Faction. Among the four possible candidates to succeed Hitler (the others being Albert Speer, Reinhard Heydrich and Hermann Göring), Bormann is the most likely to win the Second Kampfzeit.

After winning the Second Kampfzeit, 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). 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 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). 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."