Werner Naumann

Naumann was born in Guhrau in Silesia, Prussia, Germany (today Góra, Lower Silesian Voivodship, Poland). After finishing school, he studied political economics. Naumann joined the Nazi Party in 1928. Naumann became a member of the SA where he rose to the rank of SA-Brigadeführer by 1933. Thereafter, Naumann transferred to the SS as an SS-Brigadeführer. In 1937 he became Chief of the Propaganda Office in Breslau.

Naumann participated in the German invasion of France and later transferred to Yugoslavia and Greece. He fought in the eastern front as a colonel of the Waffen-SS before being wounded in 1942. He was made the personal aide of Joseph Goebbels and became his assistant secretary in 1942. His official title was "Undersecretary and Chief of the Minister's Office in the Propaganda Ministry". In April 1944 Naumann was named State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry. Rudolf Semmler stated that Naumann was Goebbels' right-hand man.

In the final days of Nazi Germany as Soviet forces took Berlin, he was appointed Propaganda Minister in the Goebbels cabinet by Hitler's Testament of 29 April 1945. After the suicide of Goebbels on 1 May, new Reich President Karl Dönitz asked Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk to form a new cabinet. This became known as the Flensburg government and it did not contain a Ministry of Propaganda.

On 1 May 1945, Naumann was the leader of break-out group number 3 from the Führerbunker in Berlin. The group included Martin Bormann, Hans Baur, Ludwig Stumpfegger and Artur Axmann. Erich Kempka testified at Nuremberg that he had last seen Naumann walking a metre (a yard) in front of Bormann when a Soviet rocket exploded by Bormann while crossing the Weidendammer Bridge under heavy fire in Berlin. According to Axmann, the group followed a Tiger tank that spearheaded the first attempt to storm across the bridge, but it was destroyed. Bormann, Stumpfegger and himself were "knocked over" when the tank was hit. Axmann crawled to a shellhole where he met up again with Naumann, Bormann, Baur, and Stumpfegger; they all made it across the bridge. From that group, only Naumann and Axmann escaped from the Soviet Red Army encirclement of Berlin and made it to western Germany. Naumann, having removed all materials identifying him as a SS member and posing as a regular soldier, was captured by the Soviets at the Elbe and escaped after being imprisoned for four weeks.

It is in part due to rumors later spread by Naumann that the belief arose that Martin Bormann had survived the Second World War. According to Naumann, Bormann was not only still alive but, in his words, "was a Soviet spy and he must have arranged beforehand where to meet the Red Army advance units... Bormann now lives in Moscow". This led to shock waves within the CIA.