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Yet he was totally unqualified for the job. Treated with some respect by other leading Nazi’s because of the closeness of his relationship with Hitler he was nevertheless ill-considered. He was, it was said detached from reality, utterly incapable of wielding power or taking on any responsibility, and he was to take no active part in the war. Yet he was to serve 47 years in prison, twice the number of years served by any other Nazi. Why?

He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on 26 April, 1894, and didn’t visit Germany for the first time until he was 12 years old. Upon completion of his education he was expected to follow in the family business, something he only did with great reluctance for his ambitions lay elsewhere. So when war broke out in July, 1914, he greeted it with enthusiasm, it was his opportunity to break away from the humdrum of everyday life and indulge his patriotism, for he was very patriotic. In August he enlisted in the 1st Bavarian Regiment. He was to have a distinguished war record, and was twice wounded, once seriously when a bullet punctured his lung just missing his spine. Deemed unfit for the trenches he transferred to the Luftwaffe where he trained as a pilot but never got to fly a combat mission.

Following the end of the war, Hess, like many other ex-soldiers found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that Germany had been defeated and was thrashing around for someone to blame. It was for him the Communists and in 1919 he joined the right-wing Freikorps and helped crush the Spartakist revolt in Berlin. Soon after, he enrolled at the University of Munich where he came under the influence of Karl Haushofer, the German philosopher and imperialist, who taught that the State is a biological organism which grows or contracts, and in the struggle for space strong countries must take from the weak. This was to form the basis for the Nazi doctrine of Lebensraum, or living space. Hess fell utterly under the sway of Haushofer, and began himself to seek the man who would restore Germany to greatness, the one ” who when necessity commands it does not shrink from bloodshed.”  In July, 1920, he found him when he heard Adolf Hitler speak at a small beer hall in Munich. The following day he joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party becoming its 16th member.

In the meantime he had joined the Thule Society, a secret organisation that had been founded by Walter

Image via Wikipedia Walter Eckart

 Nauhaus an ex-soldier and art student, to study the origins of the Germanic Race. In 1918, he had been contacted by Rudolf von Sebbottendorf, the occultist, who wanted an organisation through which to peddle his own spurious ideas. Together they created the myth of a German Master-race that had emanated from the lost continent of Atlantis. The name Thule derived from the name of a land they believed had existed in northern Scandinavia and where the survivors of Atlantis had settled. It has been suggested that the Thule Society wielded great influence within the Nazi Party and certainly it boasted a number of leading Nazi’s amongst its membership, besides Hess, these included Anton Drexler, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, and Dietrich Eckart. But Hitler is never known to have attended a meeting or to have displayed any interest in their meanderings. Even so, Eckart, who had tutored Hitler in public speaking, is reported to have said just prior to his death in 1923, ” Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune! I have initiated him into the secret doctrine, opened his centres of vision and given him the means to communicate with the Powers. Do not mourn for me, I have influenced history more than any other German.” For all its philosophical mumbo-jumbo and high-blown rhetoric the Thule Society was little more than an elite group of bigots and anti-Semites, and their jaundiced history, petty prejudices and crackpot schemes filled the head of Rudolf Hess.

For Hess, his life now had a purpose, and he became utterly devoted to the person of Adolf Hitler. He participated in Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923, for which he served 7 months in Landsberg Prison where he acted as Hitler’s personal secretary and transcribed and edited his Mein Kampf. For his unwavering loyalty he was rewarded with the title of Deputy Fuhrer, but it was a role without any real power, but then Hess was not an ambitious man and did not crave power for its own sake, he merely wished to serve the Fuhrer. He was an essentially unworldly man and something of a crank. He had a deep interest in astrology and was a student of aryan mysticism, he was a vegetarian, a practitioner of homeopathic medicine, a conservationist and a strong advocate of animal welfare who loved nothing more than to be able to tend to his organic garden. In a political arena that was a ferment of ruthless ego and naked ambition, Hess quickly found himself alienated from the centres of political power and an increasingly marginalised figure. Goebbels described him as, ” the most decent, quiet, friendly, clever and reserved man, a kind fellow.” He was viewed by many as the conscience of the Party. But we shouldn’t be fooled by this picture of Hess. He was a National Socialist who adhered to Nazi doctrine, an anti-Semite, and a violent man. He was the first into the fray if a fist fight ensued and his main role during the 1930’s was to introduce Hitler at Party Rallies with a wild-eyed millenarianism.

After the outbreak of war in September, 1939, Hess became an increasingly irrelevant figure. He took no part in the planning or operation of the war and was not asked to do so. His colleagues were more than happy to leave him to potter in his organic garden or indulge his fantasies about an aryan master-race. It was well-known, however, how unhappy he was that Germany should be at war with Britain. Even so, what happened next took everyone by surprise, or so it seemed.

On 10 May, 1941, Hess stole a Messerschmidt 110 from Augsburg Airfield and flew to Scotland. He was heading for the Estate of the Duke of Hamilton whom he believed, as did many others, to be a Nazi sympathiser. With his plane stalling as it ran out of fuel, he was forced to bail out. It was not a clean bail-out as he became tangled up on the wing before struggling free and landing some ten miles short of his destination breaking his ankle in the process. He was discovered by a local farmer and marched off into captivity at the point of his pitchfork.

Just how much of a surprise were Hess’s actions? In Germany, Hitler was furious. Fighter planes had been scrambled to try and intercept Hess, but their efforts were half-hearted at best. Hess was stripped of all his titles, his staff were arrested but later released, and his family were quietly granted a pension. So just how genuine was Hitler’s fury? Hess’s capture was embarrassing for the Nazi regime no doubt, but it was no more than that. Hitler knew he had no tales to tell. Churchill, likewise, seemed strangely unfazed by events. Not a bit excited at his great catch he refused to cancel a scheduled visit to a local cinema to watch the latest Marx Brothers movie.

At his initial interrogation Hess asked, ” Are you friends of the Duke of Hamilton? I have an important message for him.”  He claimed to be the bearer of peace terms. If Britain would give Germany a free hand in Europe and support her in her coming conflict with the Soviet Union, Germany would allow Britain to retain her Empire with German support. But he was speaking for no one but himself.

Surprisingly little was made of the propaganda value of his capture. He was interrogated, kept in isolation, and quietly spirited away. He ended up being detained in a military hospital near Abergavenny in Wales where he would go for walks around the town, drink in the local pubs, and became popular with the locals. 

But why was this mentally unstable, semi-detached man, who played no active role in the worse atrocities of World War II, imprisoned for 47 years? At the Nuremberg Trial his behaviour was eccentric to say the least. He would constantly fiddle with his headphones, talk to himself, and would often fall asleep during proceedings. Goering who was sat next to him requested to be moved away from this madman. Hess later claimed that he was just pulling the wool over the eyes of his psychiatrists. Whether he was playing a game or not it made no difference; he was sentenced to life imprisonment, and in his case life would mean life.

There were many attempts over the next five decades to have Hess released from incarceration in Spandau Prison, each was blocked by either the Soviet or British Governments. In the meantime various Nazi’s who had played active and pivotal roles in the events of World War II were released before him. Albert Speer, who had been Minister for Munitions and had used slave labour; Karl Doenitz, the head of the U Boat fleet and the last leader of the Third Reich; and Baldur von Shirach, who as leader of the Hitler Youth had corrupted young minds to fight and die for a murderous regime. All were released but not Rudolf Hess, did he have a tale to tell after all.

In February, 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader announced that he would be willing to permit the release of Rudolf Hess. He would be released on 26 April, the date of his 94th birthday. On hearing of this news, Hess remarked to his nurse, ” the English will kill me before I am released.” Margaret Thatcher’s Government tried to block the release. In response to this Gorbachev threatened to remove the Soviet guards and simply allow Hess to walk free. Even so, the release was delayed. On 17 August, Hess was found dead. He had hanged himself in a garden shed from an electrical cord. Many have cast doubt as to whether a 94 year old man with arthritis in his hands and who was unable to tie his own shoe laces could have done so without help.

Doubts persisit over the death of Hess. The family insisted on having a second independent autopsy, this failed to find any scarring from the wounds he received in World War One or from operations he had been known to have had subsequently. This confirmed his son, Wolf Rudiger Hess, in his view that the man imprisoned in Spandau was not his father. 

The response to his defection in 1941, had been strangely muted and has since led to rumours  that peace negotiations between Germany and a faction within the British Establishment with links to the Royal Family had already been underway. Disloyalty amongst some of the ruling elite was well known at the time and when a Labour member of Churchill’s Cabinet suggested that these collaborators should be arrested, Churchill replied that this could not be done because there were simply too many of them.

Did Rudolf Hess pay the price required to prevent British humiliation. Was this the reason a sad, half-crazed old man had to spend the rest of his life in prison, later to die in suspicious circumstances.