The End Of Martin Bormann?

The remains of Adolf Hitler's secretary and top aide, Martin Bormann, were buried in the Baltic Sea two weeks ago to prevent a memorial site in Germany, Der Spiegel magazine said Sunday.

Bormann, who was sentenced to death in absentia for war crimes by the military tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946, was long rumored to have escaped after the war and still be alive. But genetic tests last year on a skeleton dug up in Berlin in 1972 proved beyond doubt that it was Bormann.

A prosecutor's investigation in 1973 concluded that Bormann committed suicide by taking poison on May 2, 1945. But rumors that he had been seen in South America and elsewhere continued until the genetic tests.

In an early release of a report that appears in the weekly's Monday edition, Spiegel quoted Frankfurt prosecutor Hildegard Becker-Toussaint as saying, "We wanted in all cases to prevent a memorial being erected anywhere."

Spiegel said that since Bormann's family members wanted nothing to do with the remains, Frankfurt prosecutors had the skeleton cremated at an undisclosed site in Bavaria and on Aug. 16, they were sunk in the Baltic Sea outside territorial waters.