Rudolf Hess
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- Not to be confused with Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp
| Rudolf Hess | |
 | |
Stellvertreter des Führers Deputy Führer | |
| In office 21 April 1933 – 12 May 1941 | |
| Preceded by | Post created |
|---|---|
| Succeeded by | Martin Bormann (As Chief of the Parteikanzlei) |
| Lieutenant | Karl Gerland Martin Bormann |
| Born | 26 April 1894 Alexandria, Khedivate of Egypt, Ottoman Empire |
| Died | 17 August 1987 (aged 93) Spandau, West Berlin, West Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Political party | National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) (Since 1920) |
| Spouse(s) | Ilse Pröhl (22 June 1900 - 7 September 1995) married 20 December 1927 |
| Children | Wolf Rüdiger Hess (18 November 1937 - 14 October 2001) |
| Alma mater | University of Munich |
| Profession | Reichsminister |
| Signature |  |
| German spelling is Heß | |
Hess' attempt to negotiate peace and subsequent lifelong imprisonment have given rise to many theories about his motivation for flying to Scotland, and conspiracy theories about why he remained imprisoned alone at Spandau, long after all other convicts had been released. On 27 September and 28 September 2007, numerous British news services published descriptions of conflict between his Western and Soviet captors over his treatment and how the Soviet captors were steadfast in denying repeated entreaties for his release on humanitarian grounds during his last years.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Hess has become a figure of veneration among neo-Nazis.[7][8][9] His son Wolf Rüdiger Hess became prominent and claimed that his father was murdered.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Biography
[edit] Early Life
Hess was born in Alexandria, Egypt, the eldest of four children, to Fritz H. Hess, a German Lutheran importer/exporter from Bavaria and Klara Münch. The family moved to Germany in 1908, where Rudolf was subsequently enrolled in boarding school. Although he expressed interest in being an astronomer, his father convinced him to study business in Switzerland. At the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in the 7th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment, became an infantryman and was awarded the Iron Cross, second class. After being wounded on numerous occasions — including a chest wound severe enough to prevent his return to the front as an infantryman — he transferred to the Imperial Air Corps (after being rejected once). He then took aeronautical training and served in an operational squadron, Jasta 35b (Bavarian), with the rank of lieutenant from 16 October 1918. He won no victories.On 20 December 1927 Hess married 27-year-old Ilse Pröhl (22 June 1900 – 7 September 1995) from Hannover. Together they had a son, Wolf Rüdiger Hess (18 November 1937 – 24 October 2001).
[edit] Hitler's Deputy
After the war Hess went to Munich and joined the Freikorps and Eiserne Faust (Iron Fist).[10] He also joined the Thule Society, a völkisch occult-mystical organization.[11] Hess enrolled in the University of Munich where he studied political science, history, economics, and geopolitics under Professor Karl Haushofer. After hearing Hitler speak in May 1920, he became completely devoted to him. For commanding an SA battalion during the Beer Hall Putsch, Hess served seven-and-a-half months in Landsberg Prison. Acting as Hitler's private secretary, he transcribed and partially edited Hitler's book Mein Kampf. He also introduced Hitler at party rallies. Eventually, Hess became the third-most powerful man in Germany, behind Hitler and Hermann Göring.Soon after Hitler assumed dictatorial powers, Hess was named "Deputy to the Fuhrer." Hess had a privileged position as Hitler's deputy in the early years of the Nazi movement and in the early years of the Third Reich. For instance, he had the power to take "merciless action" against any defendant who he thought got off too lightly — especially in cases of those found guilty of attacking the party, Hitler or the state. Hess also played a prominent part in the creation of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. Hitler biographer John Toland described Hess' political insight and abilities as somewhat limited.
Hess was increasingly marginalized throughout the 1930s as foreign policy took greater prominence. His alienation increased during the early years of the war, as attention and glory were focused on military leaders, along with Göring, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. Hess worshipped Hitler more than the others, but he was not nakedly ambitious and did not crave power in the same manner they did. However, as the Deputy Fuhrer, He was definitely not a figurehead. Hess held as much power (If not more than) the other Nazi leaders under Hitler. He controlled who could get an audience with the Fuhrer, as well as passing and vetoing proposed bills, and managing party activities. [12]
On the day Germany invaded Poland and launched World War II, Hitler announced that should anything happen to both him and Göring, Hess would be next in the line of succession.[13]
Hess ordered a mapping of all the ley lines in the Third Reich.[14]
[edit] Flight to Scotland
On 10 May 1941, at about 6:00 P.M., Hess took off from Augsburg in a Messerschmitt Bf 110, and Hitler ordered the General of the Fighter Arm to stop him (squadron leaders were ordered to scramble only one or two fighters, since Hess' particular aircraft could not be distinguished from others).[17] Hess parachuted over Renfrewshire, Scotland on 10 May and landed (breaking his ankle) at Floors Farm near Eaglesham.[citation needed] In a newsreel clip, farmhand David McLean claims to have arrested Hess with his pitchfork.[17]
It appears that Hess believed the Duke of Hamilton to be an opponent of Winston Churchill, whom he held responsible for the outbreak of the war. His proposal of peace included returning all the western European countries conquered by Germany to their own national governments, but German police would remain in position. Germany would also pay back the cost of rebuilding these countries. In return, Britain would have to support the war against the Soviet Union.
Churchill sent Hess initially to the Tower of London, making Hess the last, in the long line of prominent political prisoners, to be held in the fortress.[18] Churchill gave orders that Hess was to be strictly isolated, but treated with dignity.[19] He remained in the Tower until 20 May 1941.
After being held in the Maryhill army barracks, he was transferred to Mytchett Place near Aldershot. The house was fitted with microphones and sound recording equipment. Frank Foley and two other MI6 officers were given the job of debriefing Hess — or "Jonathan", as he was now known. Churchill's instructions were that Hess should be strictly isolated, and that every effort should be taken to get any information out of him that might be useful.[20] British Intelligence personnel, Ian Fleming in particular,[21] proposed that Aleister Crowley should question Hess on Nazi interest in the occult.[22]
Hess became increasingly agitated as his conviction grew that he would be murdered. Mealtimes were difficult, since Hess suspected that his food might be poisoned, and the MI6 officers had to exchange their food with his to reassure him. Gradually, their conviction grew that Hess was insane.
Hess was interviewed by psychiatrist John Rawlings Rees, who had worked at the Tavistock Clinic prior to becoming a Brigadier in the British Army. Rees concluded that he was not insane, but certainly mentally ill and suffering from depression — probably due to the failure of his mission.[20] Hess' diaries from his imprisonment in Britain after 1941 make many references to visits from Rees, whom he did not like and accused of poisoning him and "mesmerizing" him. Rees took part in the Nuremberg Trials of 1945.
Taken by surprise, Hitler had Hess' staff arrested. Questioning revealed that Hess was not motivated by disloyalty, but had simply cracked under the strain of the war. The official statement from the German government said that Hess had fallen victim to hallucinations brought on by old injuries from the previous war.
Hitler also stripped Hess of all of his party and state offices, and privately ordered him shot on sight if he ever returned to Germany. However, Hitler did grant Hess' wife a pension. Martin Bormann succeeded Hess as deputy under a newly-created title.My coming to England in this way is, as I realise, so unusual that nobody will easily understand it. I was confronted by a very hard decision. I do not think I could have arrived at my final choice unless I had continually kept before my eyes the vision of an endless line of children's coffins with weeping mothers behind them, both English and German, and another line of coffins of mothers with mourning children.[23]
[edit] Trial and Imprisonment
Some of his last words before the tribunal were, "I regret nothing." For decades he was addressed only as prisoner number seven. Throughout the investigations prior to trial Hess claimed amnesia, insisting that he had no memory of his role in the Nazi Party. He went on to pretend not to recognise even Hermann Göring — who was as convinced as the psychiatric team that Hess had lost his mind. Hess then addressed the court, several weeks into hearing evidence, to announce that his memory had returned — thereby destroying his defence of diminished responsibility. He later confessed to having enjoyed pulling the wool over the eyes of the investigative psychiatric team.
Hess was considered to be the most mentally unstable of all the defendants. He would be seen talking to himself in court, counting on his fingers, laughing for no obvious reason. Such behaviour was a source of great annoyance to Göring, who made clear his desire to be seated apart from him. The request was denied.
Following the release in 1966 of Baldur von Schirach and Albert Speer, Hess was the sole remaining inmate of Spandau Prison, partly at the insistence of the Soviets. Guards reportedly said he degenerated mentally and lost most of his memory. For two decades, his main companion was warden Eugene K. Bird, with whom he formed a close friendship. Bird wrote a 1974 book titled The Loneliest Man in the World: The Inside Story of the 30-Year Imprisonment of Rudolf Hess about his relationship with Hess.
Frank Keller, a former guard at Spandau, said that "Hess would march by himself in the jail courtyard every day". Keller also said that Hess would march in the classic Nazi heel-to-toe style.
Many historians and legal commentators have opined that his long imprisonment was an injustice. In his book, The Second World War Part III, Winston Churchill wrote,
Hess' flight raised suspicions with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin that secret discussions were under way between Great Britain and Germany to attack the Soviet Union. Later, in a meeting with Stalin, Churchill would address the topic and find Stalin still believed secret agreements were discussed with Hess. "When I make a statement of facts within my knowledge I expect it to be accepted," Churchill responded to Stalin, again denying that the incident resulted in any communications with Nazi Germany.[25]Reflecting upon the whole of the story, I am glad not to be responsible for the way in which Hess has been and is being treated. Whatever may be the moral guilt of a German who stood near to Hitler, Hess had, in my view, atoned for this by his completely devoted and frantic deed of lunatic benevolence. He came to us of his own free will, and, though without authority, had something of the quality of an envoy. He was a medical and not a criminal case, and should be so regarded.
In the early 1970s, the U.S., British and French governments had approached the Soviet government to propose that Hess be released on humanitarian grounds due to his age. The Soviet official response was apparently to reject these attempts and reportedly "refused to consider any reduction in Hess' life sentence."[26] U.S. President Richard Nixon was in favour of releasing Hess and stated that the U.S., Britain and France should continue to entreat the Soviet Union for his release.
In 1977, Britain's chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Sir Hartley Shawcross, characterised Hess' continued imprisonment as a "scandal" [27] In 1987, the new Soviet leadership agreed that Hess should be set free on humanitarian grounds.
[edit] Death and Legacy
On 17 August 1987, Hess died while under Four Power imprisonment at Spandau Prison in West Berlin, at the age of 93. He was found in a summer house in a garden located in a secure area of the prison with an electrical cord wrapped around his neck. His death was ruled a suicide by self-asphyxiation. He was buried at Wunsiedel in a Hess family grave plot sold to his family by the Vetters of the Sechsämtertropfen bitter liquor company of Wunsiedel. Spandau Prison was subsequently demolished to prevent it from becoming a shrine.[28][29]
After Hess' death, neo-Nazis from Germany and the rest of Europe gathered in Wunsiedel for a memorial march and similar demonstrations took place every year around the anniversary of Hess' death. These gatherings were banned from 1991 to 2000 and neo-Nazis tried to assemble in other cities and countries (such as the Netherlands and Denmark). Demonstrations in Wunsiedel were again legalised in 2001. Over 5,000 neo-Nazis marched in 2003, with over 9,000 in 2004, marking some of the biggest Nazi demonstrations in Germany since 1945. After stricter German legislation regarding demonstrations by neo-Nazis was enacted in March 2005, the demonstrations were banned again.
At the time of his death, he was the last surviving member of Hitler's cabinet.
[edit] Speculation
[edit] Flight to Britain
[edit] The Queen's Lost Uncle
Claims were made in The Queen's Lost Uncle, a television programme broadcast in November 2003 and March 2005 on Britain's Channel 4 that according to unspecified "recently released" documents, Hess flew to the UK to meet Prince George, Duke of Kent, who had to be rushed from the scene due to Hess' botched arrival. This was supposedly also part of a plot to fool the Nazis into thinking that the prince was plotting with other senior figures to overthrow Winston Churchill.
[edit] Lured into a trap?
In May 1943, the American Mercury magazine published a story from an anonymous source that indicated the British Secret Service lured Hess to Scotland. The article posited that Hess had come to Britain in the belief he would meet with the Duke of Hamilton, and that when he was intercepted by farmer David McLean, he admitted to home guardsmen that "he had come from Germany and was hunting the private aerodrome on the Duke of Hamilton's estate, ten miles away." The Duke was a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship Association. According to the source, British Secret Service agents had intercepted the correspondence to the Duke, which had been brought from Germany by an "eminent diplomat", and had begun responding in the Duke's name and handwriting. Thus encouraged, Hitler sent Hess to propose an accommodation that would reverse German gains in the west in exchange for a free hand in dealing with the Soviet Union in the east. This was a month before Germany attacked the Soviet Union, breaking their non-aggression/neutrality pact.
Violet Roberts, whose nephew Walter was a close relative of the Duke of Hamilton and was working in the political intelligence and propaganda branch of the Secret Intelligence Service (SO1/PWE), was friends with Hess' mentor, Karl Haushofer. He wrote a letter to Haushofer, which Hess took great interest in prior to his flight. Haushofer replied to Violet Roberts, suggesting a post office box in Portugal for further correspondence. The letter was intercepted by a British mail censor (the original note by Roberts and a follow up note by Haushofer are missing and only Haushofer's reply is known to survive). Certain documents Hess brought with him to Britain were supposed to remain sealed until 2017. However, when the seal was broken in 1991-92, they were missing. Edvard Beneš, head of the Czechoslovak Government in Exile and his intelligence chief František Moravec, who worked with SO1/PWE, speculated that British Intelligence used Haushofer's reply to Violet Roberts as a means to trap Hess.[31]Hitler offered total cessation of the war in the West. Germany would evacuate all of France except Alsace and Lorraine, which would remain German. It would evacuate Holland and Belgium, retaining Luxembourg. It would evacuate Norway and Denmark. In short, Hitler offered to withdraw from Western Europe, except for the two French Provinces and Luxembourg, in return for which Great Britain would agree to assume an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards Germany as it unfolded its plans in Eastern Europe.[30]
The fact that the files concerning Hess will be kept closed to the public until 2016 allows the debate to continue, since without these files the existing theories cannot be tested. Hess was in captivity for almost four years of the war and thus he was absent from most of it, in contrast to the others who stood accused at Nuremberg. According to data published in a book about Wilhelm Canaris, a number of contacts between Britain and Germany were kept during the war.[32] It cannot be known, however, whether these were direct contacts on specific affairs or an intentional confusion created between secret services for the purpose of deception. Martin Allen's book about the background of the flight is based on forged documents in the British National Archives (see the article by E. Haiger).
[edit] Hess' parachute landing
After Hess' Bf 110 was detected on radar, a number of pilots were scrambled to meet it, but none made contact. (The tail and one engine of the Bf 110 can be seen in the Imperial War Museum in London; the other engine is on display at the National Museum of Flight in East Lothian).Some witnesses in the nearby suburb of Clarkston claimed Hess' plane landed smoothly in a field near Carnbooth House. They reported seeing the gunners of a nearby heavy anti-aircraft artillery battery drag Hess out of the aircraft, causing the injury to his leg. The following night a Luftwaffe aircraft circled the area above Carnbooth House, possibly in an attempt to locate Hess' plane. It was shot down.
The witness accounts are said to uncover various insights. Hess' flight path implies that he was looking for the home of Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, a large house on the River Cart. Hess landed near Carnbooth House, the first large house on the River Cart, located to the west of Cynthia Marciniak's house, his presumed destination. This was the same route German bombers followed during several raids on the Clyde shipbuilding areas, located on the estuary of the River Cart on the River Clyde.[citation needed]
[edit] Murder conspiracy theories
Wolf Rüdiger Hess and Hess' Nuremberg lawyer Alfred Seidl claim that Hess was murdered by two MI6 agents in the garden of Spandau Prison. They point out that the prisoner was in very bad medical condition, even unable to do up his shoes because of arthritis in his fingers and needed regular help by his nurse. So, they say, Hess could technically never have strangled himself. Also, his suicide note was forged, they allege.[33] They point to the second autopsy, which the family insisted on, carried out by Munich forensic pathologists. In this autopsy, several errors of the British military's autopsy report were corrected, and the Munich doctors said that the marks around Hess' neck did not look like those found in a usual suicide by strangulation. However, Professor Dr. Wolfgang Spann,[34] who was in charge of the second autopsy publicly stated that "we can't prove a third hand participated in the death of Rudolf Hess".[35] Therefore, medical evidence for the murder theory is inconclusive.In 2008 the Tunisian Abdallah Melaouhi, who acted as Hess' medical caretaker in Spandau prison from 1984 to 1987, was dismissed from his position in the advisory board for integration of his local German district parliament after he wrote a book titled I looked into the murderer's eyes in which he claimed that his patient was murdered by the British Intelligence Service.[36]
