Rudolf Hess
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Rudolph Hess)
- Not to be confused with Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (written
Heß in
German) (26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987) was a prominent
Nazi official acting as
Adolf Hitler's
Deputy in the
Nazi Party. On the eve of war with the
Soviet Union, he flew solo to
Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the
United Kingdom, but instead was arrested. He was
tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to
life in prison at
Spandau Prison,
Berlin, where he died in 1987.
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.
[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
The wreckage of Hess' Bf 110
Like Goebbels, Hess was privately distressed by the war with the United Kingdom because he, like almost all other Nazis, hoped that Britain would accept Germany as an ally. Hess may have hoped to score a diplomatic victory by sealing a peace between the Third Reich and Britain,
[15] e.g., by implementing the behind-the-scenes move of the
Haushofers[clarification needed] in Nazi Germany to contact
Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton.
[16]
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.
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]
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.
[edit] Trial and Imprisonment
Rudolf Hess (first row, second from left), in the defendants' box at the Nuremberg Trials.
Hess in his cell at the Nuremberg prison while on trial.
Hess was detained by the British for the remainder of the war, for most of the time at Maindiff Court Military Hospital in
Abergavenny,
Wales, where he would often be taken to the White Castle on Offa's Dyke Path. It was rumoured that he was befriended by the local populace.
[24] He was also held just outside
Lostwithiel in
Cornwall for six months, in a large property aptly named 'Castle'. He then became a defendant at the
Nuremberg Trials of the International Military Tribunal, where, in 1946, he was found guilty on two of four counts: crimes against peace (planning and preparation of aggressive war) and
conspiracy with other German leaders to commit crimes. He was found not guilty of
war crimes or
crimes against humanity. He was given a
life sentence.
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,
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.
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]
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.
[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.
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]
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]
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]
[edit] Prisoner at Spandau a double?
According to Dr. Hugh Thomas' book
The Murder of Rudolf Hess (1979), the prisoner tried at Nuremberg and incarcerated in Spandau as Rudolf Hess was actually a double who was willingly impersonating him. Thomas examined the prisoner in 1973 as a physician of the
British Army attached to Spandau Prison and writes that the man had no scarring that would indicate a bullet wound whatsoever. The real Hess was shot through the left
lung, the bullet entering just above the left armpit and exiting between the
spine and left shoulder blade, during
World War I. This finding appeared to be confirmed when the prisoner's body was given two separate autopsies after his death in 1987 neither of which reported finding scarring that would indicate such a wound; however, when Hess' full medical records were released it was revealed that the bullet wound was in a different place than Thomas had claimed, and that scarring from the clean shot was likely to have been minimal.
[citation needed]
[edit] In popular culture
