Profile of Rudolf Hess on Famous Like Me

Rudolf Hess should not be confused with another prominent Nazi, Rudolf Höß (also spelled Höss or Hoess.)

Walter Richard Rudolf Hess (Heß in German) (April 26, 1894–August 17, 1987) was a prominent figure in Nazi Germany as Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party. On the eve of war with the Soviet Union, he flew to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace. He was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to life in prison. He has become a figure of veneration among neo-Nazis.

Early life

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, to a Bavarian Lutheran importer/exporter who thought the school in their little German community was not strict enough, Rudolf was educated by private tutors. The family moved back to Germany in 1908 and he enrolled in boarding school there. Although Hess expressed interest in being an astrologer, his father convinced him to study business in Switzerland. At the onset of World War I he enlisted in the 7th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment, became an infantryman and was awarded the Iron Cross, second class. He transferred to the Imperial Air Corps (after being rejected once), took aeronautical training and served in an operational squadron at the rank of lieutenant.

Hitler's deputy

After the war he went to Munich and joined the Thule Society, assisting the Freikorps in their struggle against Communism. He 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 his leadership. For commanding an SA battalion during the Beer Hall Putsch, he served seven and a half months in Landsberg prison. Acting as Hitler's private secretary, he edited Hitler's book Mein Kampf and eventually rose to deputy party leader and third in leadership of Germany, after Hitler and Hermann Göring.

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. Hitler biographer John Toland described Hess' political insight and abilities as somewhat limited and his alienation increased during the early years of the war as attention and glory were focused on the generals along with Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. Several historians have characterised Hess' personality as "neurotic."

Flight to Scotland

Like Joseph Goebbels, Hess was privately distressed by the declaration of war on England. According to William L. 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. 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 (which broke his ankle) at Floors Farm near Eaglesham, just south of Glasgow. He was quickly arrested, although the details of how this happened are somewhat unclear and remain controversial. The British government may still hold records pertaining to the incident and if so, their eventual release may help more fully explain it.

Apparently, Hess believed Hamilton was an opponent of Winston Churchill, whom he held responsible for the outbreak of war. His proposal for peace was similar to the bargain Hitler had tried to make with Neville Chamberlain prior to the invasion of Poland: Very broadly put, Germany would help protect the British Empire so long as Britain did not oppose Germany in Europe.

Hess's strange behavior 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 fuhrer was insane. Meanwhile Hitler granted Hess' wife a pension, Martin Bormann succeeded him as deputy under a newly created title and (very notably) turned that position into the second most powerful in Germany.

Trial and life imprisonment

Hess was detained by the British for the duration of the war, then was a defendant at the Nuremberg Trials for crimes against peace and given a life sentence. His last words before the tribunal were, "I have no regrets." For decades he was addressed only as prisoner number seven. Following the 1966 releases of Baldur von Schirach and Albert Speer he was the lone remaining inmate of Spandau Prison. Guards reportedly said he degenerated mentally and lost most of his memory. Many historians and legal commentators have expressed opinions that his long imprisonment was an injustice. In 1950, 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."

In 1977 Britain's chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Sir Hartley Shawcross, characterized Hess' continued imprisonment as a "scandal."

On 17 August 1987 he died under Four Power imprisonment at Spandau Prison in West Berlin. By all accounts he was found in a "summer house" in a garden located in a secure area of the prison with an electrical cord (an extension for a reading lamp) wrapped around his neck. His death was ruled a suicide by self-asphixiation, accomplished by tying the cord to a window latch in the summer house. Hess had attempted suicide at least twice before, in 1941 at Mytchett Place and in 1977 by cutting his wrists with a table knife. He was buried in Wunsiedel.

His son, Wolf Rüdiger Hess, an unapologetic Nazi and fervent believer in Adolf Hitler, maintained until his own death that his father was murdered by serving members of the British SAS.

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's 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 around 7,000 in 2004, marking some of the biggest Nazi demonstrations in Germany since 1945. After stricter German legislation regarding demonstations by neo-Nazis was enacted in March 2005 the demonstrations were banned again.

Speculation on his flight to Britain

Hess's journey to Britain was one of the odder events of World War II. In The Man Who Was M: The Life of Charles Henry Maxwell Knight (ISBN 0-631-13392-5) Anthony Masters claims it was a scheme conceived by British Intelligence officer Ian Fleming (who later gained fame as the creator of James Bond). According to Masters the trap was laid in 1940 after Fleming read about the Anglo-German organization The Link in the intelligence file of its founder Admiral Sir Barry Domvile. Through an agent, Fleming fed Hess disinformation that The Link had been driven underground and was in a position to overthrow Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and negotiate peace, with the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon prepared to be a negotiator.

Masters also claimed Hess selected the date of his flight after astrologer Ernst Schulter-Strathaus informed him there would be a rare alignment of six planets in the astrological sign of Taurus during the full moon on May 11, 1941, one day after his landing in Scotland. Hess was born with the Sun in Taurus (Taurus being his Sun Sign, also called the Star Sign) and he apparently believed this system of prediction (called electional astrology) would somehow increase his chances for success. The Man Who Was M is the only known source of these claims, which also assert his astrologer may have been bribed by the British Intelligence.

Related claims were made in The Queen's Lost Uncle, a television program produced by Flame broadcast in November 2003 and March 2005 on Britain's Channel 4. This program 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. This was supposedly also part of a plot to fool the Nazis into thinking the prince was plotting with other senior figures to overthrow Winston Churchill.

There is circumstantial evidence 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. 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 followup note by Haushofer are missing and only Haushofer's reply is extant). Certain documents Hess brought with him to Britain were sealed until 2017 but when the seal was broken in 1991-92 the documents were missing. Speculation from Edvard Benes, head of the Czech government in exile and his intelligence chief Frantisek Moravetz, who worked with SO1/PWE, was 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).

Hess in popular culture

Various conspiracy theories have suggested the man imprisoned at Spandau was not Hess, but a double acting as a political decoy but these claims are generally discounted by serious historians. This has been the theme of at least two novels. Spandau Phoenix by Greg Iles features this idea and The Separation by Christopher Priest considers an alternate history wherein Hess' peace mission was a success.

The song Warsaw by the band Joy Division begins with "350125 Go!" and "31G" appears in the chorus. These numbers likely refer to Rudolf Hess' prisoner of war number 31G 350125. Around the time this song was written there was much public interest in how he had been kept in more or less solitary confinement at Spandau prison for several decades.

Quote

My coming to England in this way is, as I realize, 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.

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