German politician, Hitler's deputy as Nazi Party leader, born in Alexandria, N Egypt. Educated at Bad Godesberg, he fought in World War 1, then studied at Munich. He joined the Nazi Party in 1920, and became Hitler's close friend and (in 1934) deputy. In 1941, on the eve of Germany's attack on Russia, he flew alone to Scotland to plead the cause of a negotiated Anglo-German peace. He was temporarily imprisoned in the Tower of London, then placed under psychiatric care near Aldershot. At the Nuremberg Trials (1946) he was sentenced to life imprisonment, and remained in Spandau prison, Berlin (after 1966, as the only prisoner) until his death.
Walter Richard Rudolf Hess (Heß in German) (April 26, 1894 – August 17, 1987) was a prominent figure in Nazi Germany, acting as Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party.
Early life
Hess was born in Alexandria, Egypt as the eldest of the four children of Fritz H. Hess, a Bavarian Lutheran importer/exporter. Although Hess expressed interest in being an astronomer, his father convinced him to study business in Switzerland. Rudolf Hess was also a figure head of SS troops and extremely important figure to the NSDAP from its beginning.
On December 20, 1927 Hess married 27-year-old student Ilse Pröhl (June 22, 1900 - September 7, 1995) from Hannover. Together they had a son, Wolf-Rüdiger Hess (November 18, 1937 - October 24, 2001).
Hitler's deputy
After the war he went to Munich and joined the Thule Society, assisting the Freikorps in their struggle against Communism.
Hess had a privileged position as Hitler's deputy in the early years of the Nazi movement but was increasingly marginalized throughout the 1930s as Hitler and other Nazi leaders consolidated political power.
Flight to Britain
Like Joseph Goebbels, Hess was privately distressed by the war with Britain. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Hess may have hoped to score a stunning diplomatic victory by sealing a peace between the Reich and Britain. The contemporary story of Hess at the time was that he flew to Britain in May 1941 to meet the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, parachuting from his Messerschmitt Bf 110 over Renfrewshire on May 10 and landing (though breaking his ankle) at Floors Farm near Eaglesham, just south of Glasgow. In one newsreel clip, farmer David McLean claims to have arrested Rudolf Hess with his pitchfork, but he is apparently reading from cue cards.
Apparently, Hess believed Hamilton was an opponent of Winston Churchill, whom he held responsible for the outbreak of war.
Hess's strange behaviour and unilateral proposals quickly discredited him as a serious negotiator (especially after it became obvious he did not officially represent the German government) and he was briefly imprisoned by the British in the Tower of London. Taken by surprise, Hitler had Hess' staff arrested, then spread word throughout Germany that Hess had gone insane and acted of his own accord. Hearing this, Hess began claiming to his interrogators that as part of a pre-arranged diplomatic cover story, Hitler had agreed to announce to the German people that his deputy Führer was insane.
Trial and life imprisonment
Hess was detained by the British for the remaining duration of the war. Throughout the investigations prior to trial Hess faked amnesia, claiming he had no memory of his role in the Nazi Party. He went on to pretend not to recognise even Hermann Goring - who was as convinced as the psychiatric team that Hess had lost his mind. In a remarkably bizarre moment Hess then addressed the court, several weeks into hearing evidence, to announce that his memory had returned - thereby destroying what was likely to have been a strong defence of diminished responsibility.
Yet Hess was considered to be the most mentally unstable of all the defendants.
Following the 1966 releases of Baldur von Schirach and Albert Speer he was the lone remaining inmate of Spandau Prison, partly at the insistence of the Soviets. 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. 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. Hess had attempted suicide at least twice before, in 1941 at Mytchett Place by
flinging himself from a balcony, and in 1977 by cutting his wrists with a table knife.Wolf Rüdiger Hess
His son Wolf Rüdiger Hess, a Nazi sympathizer and fervent supporter of Adolf Hitler, maintained until his own death that his father was murdered by British SAS soldiers. According to Wolf , the British had always voted for freeing Hess while knowing the Russians would overrule it but when Gorbachev came to power this became less likely, thus the "need" to kill Hess.
Wunsiedel
After Hess's 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. 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.
June 10, 1941 (from Rudolf Hess: Prisoner of Peace by his wife Ilse Hess)Speculation on his flight to Britain
The Queen's Lost Uncle
Related claims were made in The Queen's Lost Uncle, a television programme produced by Flame and broadcast in November 2003 and March 2005 on Britain's Channel 4. This programme reported 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's botched arrival.
There is circumstantial evidence which suggests that Hess was lured to Scotland by the British secret service. Violet Roberts, whose nephew, Walter Roberts 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 and wrote a letter to Haushofer, which Hess took great interest in prior to his flight. Certain documents Hess brought with him to Britain were sealed until 2017 but when the seal was broken in 1991-92 they were missing. Edvard Beneš, head of the Czech government in exile and his intelligence chief Frantisek Moravec, who worked with SO1/PWE, speculated that British Intelligence used Haushofer's reply to Violet Roberts as a means to trap Hess (see Hess: the British Conspiracy, by McBlain and Trow, 2000).
The fact that the files concerning Hess will be kept closed to the public until 2016 does allow the debate to continue, since without these files the existing theories cannot be fully verified. Hess was in captivity for almost 4 years of the war and thus he was basically absent from it, in contrast to the others who stood accused at Nuremberg.
Hess' landing
After Hess' Bf 110 was detected on Radar, a number of pilots were scrambled to meet it, (including ace Alan Deere), but none made contact.
Some witnesses in the nearby suburb of Clarkston claimed Rudolf Hess' plane landed smoothly in a field near Carnbooth House. They reported seeing the gunners of a nearby heavy anti-aircraft artillery battery drag Rudolf Hess out of the aircraft, causing the injury to Hess' leg. The following night a Luftwaffe aircraft circled the area above Carnbooth House, possibly in an attempt to locate Hess' plane or recover Hess. However 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.
Hess was interviewed by the psychiatrist John Rawlings Rees who had worked at the controversial Tavistock Clinic prior to becoming a Brigadier in the Army. Hess's 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 "mesmerising" (hypnotising) him.
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