32 Gabcik, threw an antitank grenade at Heydrich’s open-top Mercedes in a Prague street on May 27, 1942. Several fragments and bits of horsehair seat upholstery entered Heydrich’s back. He was at first expected to recover from the operation to extract the debris, but the wounds became infected and he died a week later. The death of the central architect of the “Final Solution”— which he had unveiled at the Wannsee conference that January—led to mass reprisals that killed about 5,000 Czech men, women, and children. AMONG THE ABHORRENT FIGURES at the pinnacle of the Nazi hierarchy, popular history recalls in particular the flamboyant, drug-addicted Luftwaffe commander in chief Hermann Göring, the occultist security overlord Heinrich Himmler, and the odious propaganda minister and de facto interior minister Joseph Goebbels. In truth, however, the most devious of them all, and the master of palace intrigue, was the relatively faceless party chief Martin Bormann. Hitler’s shadow and gatekeeper for much of the Third Reich, Bormann was a figure forever lurking in the background at the Führer’s elbow. His battlegrounds were the card-index file and the doubleentry ledger. His principal weapon was the teleprinter, through which he issued a torrent of instructions to his ubiquitous regional gauleiters (district leaders). To these party officials, Bormann was known behind his back as the “Telex General.” [6] Bormann had come to the Nazi Party relatively late, joining only in 1926, so the Alte Kämpfer (“Old Fighters”) who had supported Hitler in the Munich putsch attempt tended to dismiss him. Nevertheless, he held the party membership number 6088 and was therefore eligible for the Gold Party Badge, awarded to party members with a registration number under 100,000. Bormann’s first job was to run the relief fund for the storm troopers of the Sturmabteilungen (SA—the party’s brown-shirted uniformed part-time activists) who were injured in brawls and riots. He cannily negotiated reduced premiums to the insurance company concerned while at the same time increasing the contributions from NSDAP members by 50 percent; furthermore, the payment of dues was now compulsory, while any payment of benefits was at Bormann’s sole discretion. In short order, this scheme raised 1.4 million reichsmarks in a single year—much to Hitler’s delight. The Führer moved Bormann and the SA fund into the NSDAP proper. Bormann now worked at the Brown House, the party headquarters in Munich, where he aspired to taking over the post of party treasurer from Franz Xaver Schwarz. Meanwhile, he progressed to controlling the finances of the Adolf Hitler Spende der Deutsche Wirtschaft, the “Adolf Hitler Fund of German Business.” This AH Fund was originally established as “a token of gratitude to the leader” in order to provide campaign funds and finance for cultural activities within the NSDAP. In reality it became Hitler’s personal treasure chest, with revenues gathered from many sources. The most important were the contributions made by industrialists—such as Krupp and Thyssen and of course IG Farben—who were benefiting
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