Wolf Rüdiger Hess
Source: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n1p24_Hess.html
·
Presented by videotape at the
Eleventh IHR Conference, 1992.
When my
father flew to Scotland on May 10, 1941, I was three-and-a-half years old. As a
result, I have only very few personal memories of him in freedom. One of them
is a memory of him pulling me out of the garden pond. On another occasion, when
I was screaming because a bat had somehow gotten into the house. I can still
recall his comforting voice as he carried it to the window and released it into
the night.
In the years that followed, I
learned who my father was, and about his role in history, only bit by bit.
Slowly, I came to understand the martyrdom he urged as a prisoner in the Allied
Military Prison in Berlin-Spandau for 40 long years -- half a life-time.
Growing Up in Egypt and Germany
My father was born in Alexandria,
Egypt, on April 26, 1894, the first son of Fritz Hess, a respected and
well-to-do merchant. The Hess family personified the prosperity, standing and
self-assurance of the German Reich of that period. They also personified all
those things that aroused envy, fear and a combative spirit on the part of
Britain and other great powers.
Fritz Hess owned an imposing house
with a beautiful garden on the Mediterranean coast. His family, which came from
Wunsiedel in the Fichtelgebirge region of Germany, owned another house in
Reicholdsgrün, in Bavaria, where they regularly spent their summer holidays.
The source of this wealth was a trading firm, Hess & Co., that Fritz Hess
had inherited from his father, and which he managed with considerable success.
His eldest son, Rudolf, was a pupil
at the German Protestant School in Alexandria. His future appeared to be
determined by both family tradition and his father's strong hand: he would
inherit the property and the firm, and would, accordingly, become a merchant.
Young Rudolf, though, was not very inclined toward this kind of life.
Instead, he felt drawn toward the
sciences, above all physics and mathematics. His abilities in these fields
became obvious as a student at the Bad Godesberg Educational Institute, a
boarding school for boys in Germany that he atted between September 15, 1908,
and Easter, 1911. In spite of this, his father insisted that he complete his
secondary school education by passing an examination that would permit him to
enter the École Supérieur de Commerce at Neuchâtel in Switzerland, after which
he became an apprentice in a Hamburg trading company.
Front Line Combat Service
These well-laid plans were soon to
change. The start of the First World War in 1914 found the family at its
vacation home in Bavaria. Rudolf Hess, then 20 years of age, did not hesitate
for a moment before reporting as a volunteer with the Bavarian Field Artillery.
A short time later, he was transferred to the infantry, and by November 4,
1914, he was serving as a poorly trained recruit at the front, where he took
part in the trench warfare of the first battle of the Somme.
Along with most young Germans of
that time, Rudolf Hess went to the front as a fervent patriot acutely conscious
of Germany's cause, which he regarded as entirely just, and determined to
defeat the British-French arch-enemy. After six months of front-line service,
my father was promoted to lance corporal. To his men he was an exemplary
comrade, always the first to volunteer for raids and reconnaissance patrols. In
bloody battles among the barbed wire, trenches and shell craters, he
distinguished himself by his cheerful composure, courage and bravery.
By 1917 he had been promoted to the
rank of Lieutenant. But he also paid the price of this "career"
advancement: He was gravely wounded in 1916, and again in 1917 when a rifle
bullet pierced his left lung.
A Humiliating and Vengeful Peace
Scarred by the hardships and wounds
of front line duty, on December 12, 1918 -- that is, after the humiliating
armistice of Compiègne -- Rudolf Hess was "discharged from active military
service to Reicholdsgrün without maintenance," as the official army record
rather baldly puts it. That is, without pay, pension or disability allowance.
Already during the war, the family
had lost its considerable holdings in Egypt as a result of British
expropriation. Now the defeat of the German Empire in the First World War
brought wrenching, even catastrophic changes in the life of the Hess family.
For Rudolf Hess, though, the grim
fate suffered by his fatherland in defeat and revolution weighed more heavily
than this private misfortune. In spite of the military armistice, the
victorious powers maintained a starvation blockade against Germany until the
imposition of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919. The Treaty itself was
little more than a vengeful "peace of annihilation" dictated by the
victorious powers and accepted by the German National Assembly only under
protest and the threat of further force.
On May 12, 1919, in a moving address
that has since become famous, Reich Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann, a Social
Democrat, declared:
... Allow me to speak entirely
without tactical considerations. What our discussions are concerned with, this
thick book in which a hundred paragraphs begin with "Germany renounces,
renounces," this most atrocious and murderous hammer of evil by which a great
people is extorted and black mailed into acknowledging its own unworthiness,
accepting its merciless dismemberment, consenting to enslavement and serfdom,
this book must not become the statute book of the future ... I ask you: Who, as
an honest man -- I will not even say as a German, only as an honest man loyal
to the terms of a treaty -- can submit to such conditions? What hand that
submits itself and us to such shackles would not wither? Moreover, we must
exert ourselves, we must toil, work as slaves for international capitalism,
work unpaid for the entire world!
... If this treaty is actually
signed, it will not be just Germany's corpse that remains on the battlefield of
Versailles. Beside it will lie equally noble corpses: the right of
self-determination of peoples, the indepence of free nations, belief in all the
fine ideals under whose banner the Allies claimed to fight, and, above all,
belief in loyalty to the terms of a treaty.
Scheidemann's words leave scarcely
any doubt that as a result of the "vae victis" of the governments of
the Allied and Associated powers, Germany's very existence as a prosperous and
unified nation was brought into question. As far-sighted men of the time
correctly observed, the Constitution of the "Weimar Republic" (1919-1933)
was, in a real sense, not the one that the German parliament formally adopted
on August 11, 1919. It was rather, imposed by the dictated Treaty of Versailles
on June 28, 1919. As a result of the Treaty, each of the numerous governments
of the "Weimar Republic" was inevitably faced with the same
insurmountable problem. Each administration was obliged to carry out the
Treaty's countless oppressive and devastating conditions, and thus act as an
"agent" of the victorious powers. Each new government thus unavoidably
discredited itself in the eyes of the people it represented, and therefore
committed a kind of political suicide.
Meeting with Hitler
One political leader, though,
defiantly vowed from the outset never to permit himself or his party to be blackmailed.
This man was Adolf Hitler, and his party was the National Socialist German
Workers' Party. Like many of his fellow citizens, my father was appalled and
deeply shocked by the conditions that had developed in Germany, and he resolved
to fight against the "Diktat" of Versailles. The catastrophic state
of affairs he found in Munich after his return from the front defied his
ability to describe them. Like most of his comrades, Hess was drawn into the
war in 1914 to fight for a free, strong and proud Germany. Now, in 1919, the
26-year-old had to witness the establishment in Bavaria of a "Soviet
republic" headed by communists and Jews. In his eyes, military defeat had
given way to national catastrophe.
In a letter written to a cousin some
time later, he graphically described his feelings at the time:
You know how I suffer under the
situation to which our once proud nation has been brought. I have fought for
the honor of our flag where a man of my age had of course to fight, where
conditions were at their worst, in dirt and mud, in the hell of Verdun, Artois
and elsewhere. I have witnessed the horror of death in all its forms, been
hammered for days under heavy bombardment, slept in a dugout in which lay half
of a Frenchman's dead body. I have hungered and suffered, as indeed have all
frontline soldiers. And is all this to be in vain, the suffering of the good
people at home all for nothing? I have learned from you what you women have had
to live through! No, if all this has been in vain, I would still today regret
that I did not put a bullet through my brain on the day the monstrous armistice
conditions and their acceptance were published. I did not do it at the time
solely in the hope that in one way or another I might still be able to do
something to reverse fate.
From then on, he was consumed by the
conviction that he could "reverse fate," and by the determination to
act on this conviction. During the winter of 1918-19, in a humiliated Germany
shaken by communist riots, tormented by ad hoc governments of "workers'
and soldiers' soviets," he still recognized -- in spite of his
discouragement -- the possibility of renewal for the people for whom he had
been ready to lay down his life.
Now determined to fight against the
obvious efforts to subjugate Germany, his feelings of despair turned into
burning indignation and motivating rage.
As a result, he was almost
inevitably drawn to the one political force that, as he had correctly sensed
from the outset, was in a position to break the shackles imposed upon the
German people at Versailles. Like millions of other Germans, he followed this
movement's leader -- but he did so earlier and with greater dedication than
most of the others. Along with his fellow citizens, he was convinced of the
justice of the cause for which he fought -- restoration of Germany's national
rights and standing by breaking the chains of Versailles.
The National Socialist German
Workers' Party was founded in Munich in January 1919. Hitler joined a few
months later, and quickly became its most prominent speaker. It was sometime in
May 1920, at an evening meeting of this small group in a room adjoining the
Sternecker brewery in Munich, when Hess first heard Hitler speak. When he
returned home that evening to the small guest house where he was living, he
enthusiastically told the girl who lived in the adjacent room, Ilse Pröh --
whom he was later to marry:
The day after tomorrow you must come
with me to a meeting of the National Socialist Workers' Party. Someone unknown
will be speaking; I can't remember his name. But if anyone can free us from
Versailles, he is the man. This unknown man will restore our honor.
My father became member number
sixteen of the group on July 1, 1920. From that time on he was slowly but
steadily drawn to its leader. There were several reasons for his enthusiasm for
Hitler. First, there were reasons of practical policy, which Hess formulated in
these words in a letter written in 1921:
The core of the matter is that
Hitler is convinced that [national] resurrection is possible only if we can
succeed in leading the great mass of people, in particular the workers, back to
national awareness. But this is possible only in the context of reasonable,
honest socialism.
Second, Hess had a personal reason,
which was Hitler's eloquence. In a letter to a friend written in 1924, my
father described the effect of this gift:
You won't find more than once a man
who at a mass meeting can enrapture the most left-wing lathe operator just as
much as the right-wing senior executive. This man, within two hours, made the
thousand communists who had come to break up [the meeting] stand and join in
the national anthem at the [as in Munich in 1921], and this man, within three
hours, in a special address to a few hundred industrialists and the Minister
President [or provincial governor], who had come more or less to oppose him,
secured their full approval or speechless astonishment.
Rudolf Hess was convinced that
Hitler could not fail to break the chains of Versailles and then carry out a
political change of direction that promised a better future.
In the years before it gained
large-scale support from voters, the National Socialist party was a small
Bavarian phenomenon, and Hitler's place in national politics was insignificant.
Not even Hitler's recognized ability as an speaker was at first able to change
this. During the period from 1924 until 1929, when normal conditions seemed to
return in Germany, despite Versailles, Hitler was not well known. The only
exception was in 1923, when he gained brief notoriety for his role in the
November 9th "March on the Feldherrnhalle" in Munich, and the
ill-fated attempt to overthrow the government there. In the course of this
unsuccessful putsch, my father arrested three ministers of the Bavarian state
government. For his role in the coup attempt, Hitler was punished with
imprisonment in the Landsberg fortress, where my father later joined him.
Victory in Political Struggle
It was during that time of
incarceration that Hitler and my father established the special relationship of
trust and mutual confidence that stamped the image of the party's leadership in
later years. It was also in Landsberg that Hitler wrote his well-known, seminal
work, Mein Kampf. My father edited the pages of the manuscript and checked them
for errors. Hitler was released early on December 20, 1924. Four months later,
in April 1925 my father became Adolf Hitler's private secretary, at a monthly
salary of 500 marks.
In the first years of the 1930s, the
impact of the Great Depression and the political disintegration of the Weimar
Republic set the stage for Hitler's seizure of power in January 1933. As a
result of its well-organized propaganda campaigns, which were in turn due to
its quasi-military cohesion and discipline, the National Socialist party gained
greater and greater electoral support from ever broader segments of the
population. And as employment increased, more and more jobless workers also
turned to the National Socialists, many of them defecting directly from
Germany's large Communist Party.
During the hectic days of January
1933, my father never left Hitler's side. In a hand-written letter to his wife,
dated January 31, 1933 -- that is, the day after Hitler became Chancellor --
the 38-year-old Rudolf Hess recorded his feelings during this moment of
triumph:
Am I dreaming or am I awake -- that
is the question of the moment! I am sitting in the Chancellor's office in the
Wilhelmsplatz. Senior civil servants approach noiselessly on soft carpets to
submit documents "for the Reich Chancellor," who is at the moment
chairing a Cabinet meeting and preparing the government's initial measures.
Outside, the public stands patiently, packed together and waiting for 'him' to
drive away -- they start to sing the national anthem and shout "Heil"
to the "Führer" or to the "Reich Chancellor." And then I
start to shake and I have to clench my teeth -- just as I did yesterday when
the "Führer" returned from [his meeting with] the Reich President as
"Reich Chancellor," and summoned me to his bedroom in the Kaiserhof
hotel from among the mass of leaders waiting in the reception room -- when what
I had considered impossible right up to the last moment became reality.
I was firmly convinced that
everything would, of course, go wrong at the last moment. And the Chief also
admitted to me that a few times things were on a knife-edge because of the
intransigence of the old weasel in the Cabinet [a reference to Alfred
Hugenberg, coalition partner and chairman of the German National People's
Party].
The evening torchlight procession
marched before the delighted old gentleman [President von Hindenburg], who bore
it until the last SA man [stormtrooper] had passed at about midnight ... Then
came the jubilation directed to the Führer, mixing with that directed to the
Reich President. The hours of men and women pushing past, holding up their
children facing the Führer, young girls and boys, their faces radiant when they
recognized "him" at the window of the Reich Chancellery -- how sorry
I was that you were not there!
The Chief behaves with incredible
assurance. And the punctuality!!!! Always a few minutes ahead of time!!! I have
even had to make up my mind to buy a watch. A new era and a new time schedule
has dawned!
All this was written on a sheet of
paper with a letterhead reading "The Reich Chancellor." Hess had,
however, crossed out the Gothic lettering with his pen. The next day, in a
follow up letter dated February 1, he concluded with the words: "One stage
towards victory is now, I hope, finally behind us. The second difficult period
of the struggle has begun!"
On April 21, 1933, Hitler appointed
Hess as Deputy Führer of the National Socialist party. His job was to lead the
governing party as Hitler's representative, and to uphold its national and
social principles. Eight months later, on December 1, 1933, Reich President
Hindenburg -- acting on Hitler's proposal -- appointed Hess as Reich Minister
without Portfolio. At the outbreak of war in September 1939, Hitler named Reich
Marshal Hermann Göring as deputy head of state. But this does not alter the
fact that Hess remained Hitler's close confidant, and a man he could trust
without reservation.
Gathering Clouds of War
The most important result of the
European political developments of 1937 and 1938, which reached a climax in the
"Sudeten crisis" of 1938, was that Britain continued to strengthen
its ties with the United States. As a condition of US assistance in the event
of war, President Roosevelt demanded from British premier Chamberlain certain
commitments in the field of political stability. It was under this pressure
that Britain and France then concluded a military agreement in February 1939.
In addition, the two western European democracies, bowing to Roosevelt's claim
to lead world policy, gave guarantees to Holland, Switzerland, Poland, Romania,
Greece and Turkey -- in other words, to all of Germany's neighbors in the West
and East -- which Hitler considered Germany's rightful domain.
From this point on, Britain, France
and Poland -- with America behind them -- decided which of Hitler's revisions
of the conditions imposed by Versailles they would regard as reason for, or
even merely a pretext for, war against the German Reich. Even if Hitler
refrained from further revisionist policies, from now on the question of war or
peace was no longer solely in his own hands.
At the time of Britain's "blank
check" guarantee to Poland in March 1939, Hitler had not yet finally
resolved to attack Poland. But every western political leader was aware that
this fateful guarantee was an significant step closer to war. Indeed, important
figures in western circles and among the anti-Hitler opposition in Germany
calculated that Hitler would react to this new Polish depence on Britain,
France and the USA with military action. It was hoped that this would mean not
only war, but Hitler's own downfall. This was confirmed by Chamberlain in his
diary entry of September 10, 1939: "My hope is not a military victory -- I
doubt very much whether that is possible -- but a collapse on the German home
front."
On September 1, 1939, the German
armed forces commenced the attack against Poland. Two days later, Britain and
France declared war against the German Reich. The fact that these governments
did not also declare war against Soviet Russia, which invaded Poland on
September 17, 1939 (in accord with the provisions of the German-Soviet pact of
August 23, 1939), clearly shows that the British guarantee to Poland -- like
the British-French declaration of war against Germany -- was motivated not by
concern for Poland but rather was directed against Germany.
Four weeks later, Poland was
shattered and the country was divided between Germany and Russia -- without a
single shot being fired in the West. Britain and France had done nothing for
their Polish ally, and now Hitler began to plan an attack against France. At
the same time, he hoped that Britain would make peace with him, while accepting
the hegemony of a now-powerful Germany in eastern Europe. He believed that
Britain would agree to this now that Poland was prostrate, or at the latest after
a German victory over France.
After Germany's lightning victory
over Poland, and before the German attack on France in May 1940, Hitler made
the first of his numerous attempts to the war in the West. His peace offer of
September 12, 1939, accompanied by the assurance that under his leadership
Germany would never capitulate, was a feeler. It was supported by Stalin, but
rejected by Chamberlain and French premier Daladier.
Only after all hopes of peace with
France and Britain were dashed did Hitler order an attack against France. It
commenced on May 10, 1940, and France collapsed on June 21, 1940. The
Franco-German armistice was signed on June 22 in the same railway dining car in
Compiègne in which the Germans had signed the humiliating armistice of November
1918.
No one had foreseen such a swift
German victory over France. As a result of this stunning achievement, Hitler
had made himself ruler of the continent of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Bug
river [in Poland], and from the North Cape to Sicily. But Britain still stood
in the way of his goal of a free hand on the continent. Accordingly, during his
visit in June 1940 to the sites of Germany's successful military campaigns,
Hitler once again expressed his desire to reach a comprehensive peace agreement
with Britain. It was at that time that his Deputy, Rudolf Hess, decided that --
if it became necessary -- he would make a personal effort to achieve a vital
peace with Britain.
Flight for Peace
What really happened between June
1940 and May 10, 1941, the day my father took off in a Messerschmitt 110 to
Scotland, is known only in outline because the relevant British documents still
remain classified. The Hess papers that were released in Britain with great
fanfare in June 1992 proved to be disappointing. Among these approximately two
thousand pages was absolutely nothing of real substance about the secret
contacts that existed between Britain and Germany, about the British peace
group (which included members of the royal family) and its peace feelers to Germany,
or about the role played by the British secret service prior to the flight. In
short, these papers contained nothing that would show why my father seriously
hoped that his mission might well turn out successfully.
In any case, it can be said with certainty
that the still-classified British documents contain nothing that will reflect
badly on Rudolf Hess or the policies of the German government of that time.
Moreover, it can be stated with certainty that the documents that the British
government continues to keep secret will reflect badly on the wartime British
government of Winston Churchill. I will go further to say that these suppressed
documents confirm that Churchill sought to prolong the war, with all the
suffering, destruction and death that implies.
Some may dismiss this statement as
unjustified and self-serving. In this regard, I would therefore like to cite
the words of a British historian who has carried out extensive research on
precisely this aspect of that dreadful conflict. In Ten Days To Destiny: The
Secret Story of the Hess Peace Initiative and British Efforts to Strike a Deal
with Hitler (New York: W. Morrow, 1991) [available from the IHR], John Costello
concludes that it would have been quite possible to bring the European war to an
before it turned into a world war, if only the British government had made even
the slightest move to do so.
In Ten Days To Destiny [on pages 17
to 19], Costello writes the following revealing sentences:
Until the British government
reverses current policy and releases the relevant section of its historic
intelligence service archives, it may be impossible to determine whether the
clandestine contacts with Germany that evidently played a part in bringing Hess
to Scotland on the night of May 10 were a secret service triumph or part of a
sinister peace plot that ran out of control. What is now indisputable is that
the Hess mission was very far from being the "brainstorm" of Hitler's
deluded deputy that it is still being portrayed as by distinguished British historians.
The documentary evidence that has now come to light [which, I might add
parenthetically, is only the tip of the iceberg] shows that it was the outcome
of an interlocking sequence of secret British and German peace manoeuvres that
can be tracked right back to the summer of 1940. The pieces of this jigsaw
puzzle are now falling into place to show that: [...]
·
Hitler's order halting the Panzer
advance on Dunkirk was a carefully timed stratagem to persuade the British and
French governments to seek a compromise peace.
·
A majority of the [Churchill] War
Cabinet had decided to trade off Gibraltar and Malta in return for keeping
control of the Empire.
·
An alarmed President Roosevelt
secretly sought Canadian help to stop the British accepting a "soft peace"
deal with Hitler.
·
French leaders believed on May 24,
1940, that Britain would not fight on but accept a joint peace deal brokered by
Mussolini at the of May 1940.
·
Churchill -- and Britain -- survived
only because the Prime Minister resorted to ruthless Machiavellian intrigue and
a high-stakes bluff to stop a wobbly Foreign Secretary talking the War Cabinet
into a peace deal engineered by R.A. Butler. When France fell, Lord Halifax's
Under Secretary actually passed a message to Berlin that "common sense and
not bravado" dictated that Britain should negotiate, not fight Hitler.
[...]
·
Two days after Churchill had
promised "we shall never surrer," Lord Halifax and R.A. Butler
signalled to Berlin via Sweden that a British peace proposal would be made
after the French armistice on June 18, 1940.
·
Ambassador Kennedy had been in
clandestine contact with Hitler's emissaries trying to stop the war while the
British government suspected him of illegally profiting from Treasury
information to make a killing in international stock and securities dealings.
[...]
·
The Duke of Windsor and other
members of the Royal Family encouraged German expectations that peace would
eventually be negotiable.
·
Hess' plan to fly to Scotland took
shape in the final days of the battle for France and was encouraged in
September 1940 by his discovery that Britain continued putting out peace
feelers via Switzerland and Spain.
·
MI5 [the British secret service]
intercepted Hess' first peace initiative and then turned it into a
"double-cross" operation to snare Hess into a trap baited by the Duke
of Hamilton and the British Ambassadors in Switzerland and Madrid.
·
Hess' dramatic arrival left
Churchill with no choice but to bury the affair in distortion and official
silence in order to protect not only the Duke of Hamilton but senior Tory
colleagues who even in 1941 remained convinced that an honorable peace could be
struck with Hitler.
For more than fifty years the cloak
of British secrecy has clouded and distorted the record. The official histories
carefully masked the roles played by the key players in the year-long effort to
strike a deal with Hitler behind Churchill's back. Just how close this peace plotting
came to succeeding has been concealed to protect the reputations of the British
politicians and diplomats who had believed that Hitler was less of a menace to
the Empire than Stalin ...
Churchill also had his own reasons
for burying his wartime quarrels with other leading members of the Conservative
Party. He did not want any scandal to sully the glory of his leadership during
the Battle of Britain and the "white glow, overpowering and sublime, which
ran through our Island from end to end."
Britain's "Finest Hour"
and Churchill's own role in forging it were enshrined as one of the most
illustrious chapters in British history. His visionary courage had created, by
words rather than military substance, the British people's belief that, against
the overwhelming odds, they could defy Hitler in 1940.
No one knows for sure whether my
father undertook his flight with the knowledge and blessing of Adolf Hitler.
Both men are now dead. All the available evidence, though, suggests that Hitler
knew in advance of the flight:
First: Just a few days before his
flight, my father had a private meeting with Hitler that lasted four hours. It
is known that the two men raised their voices during portions of their talk,
and that when they were finished, Hitler accompanied his Deputy to the
ante-room, put his arm soothingly around his shoulder, and said: "Hess,
you really are stubborn."
Second: The relationship between
Hitler and Hess was so close and intimate that one can logically assume that
Hess would not have undertaken such an important step in the middle of a war
without first informing Hitler.
Third: Although Hess' adjutants and
secretaries were imprisoned after the flight, Hitler intervened to protect
Hess' family. He saw to it that a pension was paid to Hess' wife, and he sent a
personal telegram of condolence to Hess' mother when her husband died in
October 1941.
Fourth: Among the papers released in
June 1992 by the British authorities are two farewell letters my father wrote
on June 14, 1941, the day before he tried to commit suicide in Mytchett Place,
in England. The letters were written after he realized that his peace mission
had definitely failed. One was addressed to Hitler and the other to his family.
Both clearly confirm that his close relationship with Hitler still existed. If
he had undertaken his now-obviously failed mission without Hitler's prior
knowledge, his relationship with Hitler clearly would no longer still have been
one of trust.
And, fifth: Gauleiter Ernst Bohle,
the Hess confident and high-ranking official who had helped my father to
translate some papers into English, remained convinced until his death that all
this was done with Hitler's knowledge and approval.
Suppressing Historical Evidence
A general comment on the information
available about my father's peace proposals is in order: During the entire
forty-year period of his imprisonment in Spandau, he was prohibited from
speaking openly about his mission. This "gag order" was obviously
imposed because he knew things that, if publicly known, would be highly
embarrassing to the British government, and possibly to the US and Soviet
governments as well.
As a result, contemporary historical
research remains entirely depent on the British documents. British authorities
have announced that many important documents from the Hess files will remain
under lock and key until the year 2017. The entire matter was handled so
secretly that no more than a handful of individuals around Churchill were
really in the know. The proposals, plans or offers brought by Hess have
remained secret in the archives right up to the present. As long as these
documents remain secret, the world will not know the precise nature of the
peace proposals that my father brought with him to present to the British
government in May 1941. All this must, of course, be taken into consideration
in any serious assessment of my father's historic flight.
One indication that Hess said more
than is now known is contained in a note prepared on June 3, 1941, by Ralph
Murray of the "Political Warfare Executive" -- a top secret British
government agency -- for Sir Reginald Leeper, head of the secret service
section of the Foreign Office. This document suggests that Secretary of State
Cadogan also had a conversation with Rudolf Hess.
The purpose and context of this
conversation still cannot be determined: The available information is still not
complete. Nevertheless, it appears that during the course of this conversation
the Deputy Führer was even more specific and detailed about his proposals than
he was in some later conversations.
These were Hess' proposals:
One: Germany and Britain would reach
a compromise on world-wide policy based on the status quo. That is, Germany
would not attack Russia to secure German Lebensraum ["living space"].
Two: Germany would drop its claims
to its former colonies, and would acknowledge British hegemony at sea. In
return, Britain would acknowledge continental Europe as a German sphere of
interest.
Three: The then-current relationship
of military strength between Germany and Britain in the air and on the sea
would be maintained. That is, Britain would not receive any reinforcements from
the United States. Although there was no mention of land forces, it can be
assumed that this balance of forces would be maintained in this regard as well.
Four: Germany would withdraw from
"Metropolitan France" [European France] after the total disarmament
of the French army and navy. German commissioners would remain in French North
Africa, and German troops would remain in Libya for five years after the
conclusion of peace.
Five: Within two years after the
conclusion of peace, Germany would establish satellite states in Poland,
Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Serbia. However, Germany would withdraw
from Norway, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece (except for Crete, which German
parachutists had taken at the of May, 1941). After some rounding-off in the
East, North, West and South (Austria and Bohemia-Moravia were apparently to
remain within the Reich), Germany would thus concede Britain's position in the
eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Six: Germany would recognize
Ethiopia and the Red Sea as a British sphere of influence.
Seven: The person to whom the Deputy
Führer was speaking was somewhat confused about whether Italy had approved
Hess' peace proposals. Hess himself said nothing about this, although points
four and six would have considerably affected Italian interests.
Eight: Rudolf Hess admitted that
Hitler had agreed in advance to the official "cover story" put out in
Germany that he was of "unsound mind."
This peace proposal would indeed
have brought peace to the world in 1941. If Britain had negotiated with Germany
on this basis, the German attack against Russia -- which began less than three
weeks later, on June 22, 1941 -- would not have taken place, because Hitler
would have obtained what he needed for survival: control of the continent. The
war would have withered away on all fronts.
Instead, as we know, the war
continued -- bringing destruction, suffering and death on an almost
unimaginable scale -- because the outstretched hand of peace was rejected by
Churchill and Roosevelt. The peace they sought was a Carthaginian one. Their
sole war aim was the destruction of Germany.
After initial interviews with Rudolf
Hess conducted by the Duke of Hamilton and Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick in Glasgow, my
father was interviewed on June 9, 1941, by Lord Simon, the Lord Chancellor, and
on September 9, 1941, by Lord Beaverbrook, Minister for Aircraft Production. A
few days later, Beaverbrook flew to Moscow to arrange for military aid to the
Soviet Union. These two interviews were motivated not by any desire for peace,
but were instead merely to pry out any possible military secrets from Hess.
Nuremberg
After September 1941 my father was
completely isolated. On June 25, 1942, he was transferred to Abergavenny in
south Wales, where he was kept prisoner until he was flown to Nuremberg on
October 8, 1945, to stand trial as a "major war criminal" and as the
second-ranking defant in the so-called "International Military
Tribunal."
I will not go into detail here about
this shameful "victors' trial of the vanquished," except to note that
even the Tribunal's Allied judges had to exonerate my father of the charges of
"war crimes" and "crimes against humanity," but ruled that
he -- the one man who had risked his life to secure peace -- was guilty of
"crimes against peace," and, on that basis, sentenced him to life
imprisonment! The court's treatment of Hess is alone more than enough to
dismiss the Nuremberg Tribunal as a vengeful victors' kangaroo court that
merely preted to be a genuine forum of justice.
Spandau Prison
Along with six Nuremberg co-defants,
my father was transferred on July 18, 1947, to the grim fortress in the Spandau
district of Berlin that was designated the Allied Military Prison.
The regulations under which the
seven prisoners were held were so severe that even the French prison chaplain,
Casalis, protested (in 1948) against their outrageous treatment. He went on to
describe Spandau as a place of mental torture. In October 1952, after two years
of protracted discussion between the custodial powers, the Soviets agreed to
following so-called "special privileges": One visit of thirty minutes
a month. One letter a week of no more than 1,300 words. Medical attention in
the prison. And, in the event of death, interment of the ashes in the prison
instead of scattering in the wind.
After the release of Albert Speer
and Baldur von Schirach on October 1, 1966, Rudolf Hess was the only remaining
inmate. For more than twenty years, my father was the sole prisoner in a prison
designed for about six hundred.
After a further revision of
regulations in the early 1970s, one member of the family was permitted to visit
the prisoner for one hour once a month. The prisoner was now also permitted to
receive four books each month. As before, visits, letters and books were
strictly censored. No reference to the events of the 1933 to 1945 period was
permitted. No mention of the Tribunal's sentence, or matters related to it, was
permitted. Family visits were monitored by authorities of each of the four
powers, as well as by at least two guards. No physical contact -- not even a
handshake -- was permitted. The visits took place in a special "Visitor's
Room," which had a partition with an open "window.'
My father was allowed to receive
four daily newspapers, and after the mid-1970s, he was allowed to watch
television. However, newspapers and television were censored along the lines
mentioned above. My father was not permitted to watch any television news
reports.
For many years my father refused
visits from members of his family on the grounds that because of the conditions
under which such visits were permitted, they were an offense to his honor and
dignity, and were more aggravating than pleasurable. He changed his mind in
November 1969, when he became severely ill and had to struggle to stay alive.
Under these circumstances, and because of new conditions for visits, he agreed
to a visit by my mother, Ilse Hess, and myself in the British Military Hospital
in Berlin. Thus, on December 24, 1969, my mother and I visited him for the
first time since my childhood. This was the only occasion when two persons were
permitted to visit him at the same time.
After being returned to the Allied
Military Prison in Spandau, he agreed to further visits. In the years that
followed, members of the family visited Rudolf Hess 232 times altogether. Only
the closest members of his family were allowed to meet with him: that is, his
wife, his sister, his niece, his nephew, my wife and myself. It was forbidden
to shake hands or embrace. Presents were also forbidden, even on birthdays or
at Christmas.
My father's attorney, retired
Bavarian state minister Dr. Alfred Seidl, was permitted to meet with his client
only six times in all during the forty year period from July 1947 to August
1987. Dr. Seidl was also subjected to the strict censorship regulations: That
is, he was warned before each visit that he was not allowed to discuss with his
client the trial, the reasons for his imprisonment or the efforts that were
being made to secure his release. The custodial Allied Governments had always
refused to bear the costs for the prison. After October 1, 1966, when my father
became the prison's sole prisoner, the German federal government spent around
40 million marks to run the prison. This included salaries for a staff of more
than a hundred persons employed to guard and run this prison for a single
elderly man.
Rudolf Hess in his Spandau prison
cell. On the wall hang maps of the moon, reflecting his keen interest in
astronomy.
Soviet Inklings
In 1986, Soviet policy toward the
West showed obvious signs of rapprochement and d_tente. In spite of so many earlier
failures, I decided to act on a hint received in December 1986 from the East to
directly approach the Soviets to discuss with them my father's release.
In January 1987, I wrote a letter to
the Soviet embassy in Bonn. For the first time in 20 years, I received a reply.
Officials there suggested that I visit the Soviet embassy in East Berlin for a
detailed discussion with Soviet representatives about my father's situation. We
finally agreed to a meeting at the Soviet consulate in West Berlin on March 31,
1987, at 2:00 p.m. As the embassy officials were certainly aware, this would be
on the same day as my next visit with my father.
That morning, I visited my father in
Spandau prison for the very last time. I found him to be mentally alert, quite
up to par, but physically very weak. He could walk only when supporting himself
with a cane on one side, and with help from a guard on the other. Sitting down
with his feet propped on a chair had become a tedious procedure which he could
not manage without help. Even though I found the temperature in the visitor's
room to be quite normal, he felt cold and asked for his coat and an additional
blanket.
My father opened our conversation
with an interesting piece of news, the details of which he asked me to set down
in writing: He had sent a new application to the heads of state of the four
occupation powers, requesting release from his 46 years imprisonment. I was
particularly struck by one point. He told me that he had appealed especially to
the Soviet head of state to support his request with the other three custodial
powers. "Did I get that right?," I asked. My father nodded. So he
knew -- obviously from the Russians themselves -- that they were considering
approving his release.
After our meeting, I drove from Spandau
prison directly to the Soviet consulate. Embassy Counselor Grinin, the official
I spoke with there, began by explaining that it was not the Soviet embassy in
Bonn, but rather the embassy in East Berlin that was responsible for all Soviet
rights and responsibilities in West Berlin. One of these responsibilities, he
said -- and his words deserve to be repeated verbatim -- was "the
unpleasant legacy of Spandau." Anyone who had inherited a legacy like the
"Allied Military Prison" on German soil, as the Soviet Union had at
the of the war, Grinin said, should certainly want to get rid of it.
I had not expected any sensational
outcome from this meeting. It had been a mutual sounding-out, and I believe
that it came off positively for each side. It also became clear to me during
the course of this meeting that there were conflicting views in Moscow about
how to deal with the "Hess case." Those who were sympathetic to us,
led by Secretary General Gorbachev, were clearly gaining the upper hand.
This evaluation was confirmed a
short time later in a report published in the German news magazine Der Spiegel
(April 13, 1987). The article, which appeared under the headline "Will
Gorbachev release Hess?," reported on a fundamental change in the attitude
of the Soviet party leader toward the "Hess case." Gorbachev, it went
on, took the view that the
release of Spandau's last prisoner
would be an action "that would be accepted worldwide as a gesture of
humanity," and which "could also be justified to the Soviet
people." In this regard, the news weekly also mentioned the forthcoming
visit to Moscow by federal German President Weizs_cker, which was planned to
take place in mid-May.
Also on April 13, 1987, a private
German citizen wrote a letter about the Hess case to the German-language
service of Radio Moscow. The letter of reply, dated June 21, 1987, declared:
"As can be hoped from the most recent statements of our head of
government, M. Gorbachev, your long years of efforts for the release of the war
criminal R. Hess will soon be crowned with success." It can be assumed
with certainty that such a letter from Radio Moscow was not written without
approval from above.
These three events -- my reception
in the Soviet consulate in West Berlin on March 31, 1987, the Spiegel magazine
report of April 13, 1987, and the reply from Radio Moscow of June 21, 1987 --
show unequivocally that the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Secretary
General Gorbachev, inted to release Rudolf Hess. This release would not only be
entirely consistent with Gorbachev's policy of reconciliation, it would also be
essential feature of a settlement of the remaining unresolved consequences of
the Second World War, without which the reunification of Germany and Berlin
would not be possible.
Death by Suicide?
If the western custodial powers had
not already been aware of Gorbachev's intention, they certainly were after the
publication of the Spiegel article in April. This undoubtedly set off alarm
bells in Britain and the United States, since this new Soviet move would remove
the last remaining legal obstacle to my father's release. For many years the
British, American and French governments had said that they were ready to agree
to Hess' release, but that it was only the Soviet veto that prevented it.
Gorbachev's new initiative threatened to call the British and American bluff.
The authorities in London and
Washington would have to find some new and more permanent way to deny Hess his
freedom and keep him from speaking freely.
On Monday, August 17, 1987, a journalist
informed me in my office that my father was dying. Later, at home, I received a
telephone call at 6:35 p.m. from Mr. Darold W. Keane, the American director of
the Spandau Prison, who informed me officially that my father had died. The
official notification, which was in English, read as follows: "I am
authorized to inform you that your father expired today at 4:10 p.m. I am not
authorized to give you any further details."
The next morning I was on a plane to
Berlin, accompanied by Dr. Seidl. When I arrived at the prison, a fairly large
crowd had gathered in front. Berlin police were blocking the entrance, and we
were obliged to show identification papers before we were allowed to approach
the green-painted iron gate. After ringing the bell, I asked to speak with the
American prison director, Mr. Keane. After quite a while, Mr. Keane finally
appeared, looking extraordinarily nervous and unsure of himself. He told us
that we would not be allowed inside the prison complex, and that I would not be
permitted to see my dead father. He also told us that he was not able to
provide any further information about details of the death. A new report with
details of my father's death was allegedly being prepared, and would be made
available at about 4:00 p.m. Then, after we gave him the address and telephone
number of a Berlin hotel where we would be waiting for further news, he left us
standing in front of the gate.
The long-expected telephone call to
the hotel finally came at about 5:30 p.m. Keane said:
I will now read to you the report
that we will release immediately afterwards to the press. It reads:
"Initial examination indicated
that Rudolf Hess attempted to take his own life. In the afternoon of August 17,
1987, under the customary supervision of a prison guard, Hess went to a
summerhouse in the prison garden, where he always used to sit. When the guard
looked into the summerhouse a few minutes later, he discovered Hess with an
electric cord around his neck. Attempts were made at resuscitation and Hess was
taken to the British Military Hospital. After further attempts to revive Hess,
he was declared dead at 4:10 p.m. The question of whether this suicide attempt
was the cause of his death is the object of an investigation, including a
thorough autopsy, which is still in progress."
Hess was a frail 93-year-old man
with no strength left in his hands, who could just barely drag himself from his
cell into the garden. How was he supposed to have killed himself in this way?
Did he hang himself with the cord from a hook or a window latch? Or did he
throttle himself? Those responsible would not immediately provide a detailed
explanation about this point. We had to wait a full month for the final
official statement about the circumstances of the death. It was published by
the Allies on September 17, 1987, and reads as follows:
1. The Four Powers are now in a
position to make the final statement on the death of Rudolf Hess.
2. Investigations have confirmed
that on August 17 Rudolf Hess hanged himself from a window latch in a small
summerhouse in the prison garden, using an electric extension cord which had
for some time been kept in the summerhouse for use in connection with a reading
lamp. Attempts were made to revive him and he was then rushed to the British
Military Hospital where, after further unsuccessful attempts to revive him, he
was pronounced dead at 4:10 p.m.
3. A note addressed to Hess' family
was found in his pocket. This note was written on the reverse side of a letter
from his daughter-in-law dated July 20, 1987. It began with the words
"Please would the governors s this home. Written a few minutes before my
death." The senior document examiner from the laboratory of the British
government chemist, Mr. Beard, has examined this note, and concluded that he can
see no reason to doubt that it was written by Rudolf Hess.
4. A full autopsy was performed on
Hess' body on August 19 in the British Military Hospital by Dr. Malcolm
Cameron. The autopsy was conducted in the presence of medical representatives
of the four powers. The report noted a linear mark on the left side of the neck
consistent with a ligature. Dr. Cameron stated that in his opinion death
resulted from asphyxia, caused by compression of the neck due to suspension.
5. The investigations confirmed that
the routine followed by staff on the day of Hess' suicide was consistent with
normal practice. Hess had tried to cut his wrists with a table knife in 1977.
Immediately after this incident, warders were placed in his room and he was
watched 24 hours a day. This was discontinued after several months as
impracticable, unnecessary and an inappropriate invasion of Hess' privacy.
The report of the autopsy carried
out by the British pathologist Dr. Cameron on August 19 was later made
available to the family. Concluding that my father's death was not due to
natural causes, it was consistent with point five of the Allied final official
statement.
Autopsy and Burial
On the basis of an 1982 agreement
between the family and the Allies, the body of Rudolf Hess would not be burned,
but instead would be turned over to the family for burial "in Bavaria
quietly in the presence of his immediate family."
The Allies kept this agreement --
something they have most probably since regretted emphatically. Accordingly, my
father's body was turned over to the family on the morning of August 20, 1987,
at the American military training grounds of Grafenw_hr, where it had arrived
earlier that same morning from Berlin in a British military airplane.
The coffin was accompanied by the
three Western governors and two Russians, whom I didn't know, as well as a
certain Major Gallagher, chief of the so-called "Special Investigation
Branch, Royal Military Police." The turnover was brief and to the point.
We then immediately brought the body to the Institute for Forensic Medicine in
Munich, where Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Spann was waiting at our family's request to
conduct a second autopsy. Throughout the entire journey from the military
training grounds in Grafenw_hr to the Institute for Forensic Medicine in
Munich, the transport was guarded by a contingent of Bavarian police.
In the conclusion of his report of
December 21, 1988, on the second autopsy, the renowned Munich pathologist
Professor Spann pointed out the difficulties he encountered because he did not
have any information about details of the alleged hanging. In particular, he
had no information about details of the condition of my father after the
supposed discovery of his body. In spite of these limitations, Dr. Spann
nevertheless was able to arrive at the following remarkable conclusions:
Dr. Cameron's further conclusion
that this compression was caused by suspension is not necessarily compatible
with our findings ...
In forensic medicine, the course
which the ligature mark takes on the neck is considered a classic indicator for
differentiating between forms of hanging and throttling ... If Prof. Cameron,
in his assessment of the cause of death, comes to the conclusion that the cause
of death was asphyxiation caused by compression of the neck due to hanging, he
neglects to con-sider the other method of strangulation, that is, throttling
... Making this distinction would have required an examination of the course of
the ligature mark. The precise course of the mark is not given in Prof.
Cameron's autopsy report ...
Here, neither the course of the
strangulation mark on the neck, as we have described it, nor its course on the
throat, nor its position relative to the prominence of the larynx has been
described and assessed ... Since on the uninjured skin of the neck, where the
possibility of distortion through the suture of the dissection incision is
ruled out, an almost horizontal course of the strangulation mark could be
identified, this finding, as well as the fact that the mark on the throat
obviously was not located above the larynx, is more indicative of a case of
throttling than of hanging. Under no circumstances can the findings be readily
explained by a so-called typical hanging. The burst blood vessels which were
observed in the face, caused by blood congestion, are also not compatible with
typical hanging.
A Tunisian medical orderly, Abdallah
Melaouhi, was a civilian employee of the Spandau prison administration at the
time of my father's death. He is not a citizen of one of the four Allied
occupation powers, nor, even more to the point, a member of their armed forces.
As a result, he could not be silenced or transferred to some remote corner of
the world like the others who were present at the scene of the crime.
After the death of my father,
Melaouhi got in touch with our family. >From a note that my father wrote to
him, it is clear that there was a relationship of personal trust between the
two men. The core of Melaouhi's account, which he set down in an affidavit, is
as follows:
When I arrived at the garden
summerhouse, I found the scene looking as though a wrestling match had taken
place. The ground was churned up and the chair on which Hess had usually sat
lay on the ground a considerable distance from its usual location. Hess himself
lay lifeless on the ground: He reacted to nothing, his respiration, pulse and
heartbeat were no longer measurable. Jordan [an American guard] stood near
Hess' feet and was obviously quite beside himself.
Melaouhi noticed to his surprise
that besides Anthony Jordan, the Black American guard, two strangers in US
military uniform were present. This was unusual, since no soldier was normally
permitted access to this part of the prison, and above all, because any contact
with Rudolf Hess was most strictly forbidden. In Melaouhi's opinion, the two
strangers seemed reserved and calm, in sharp contrast to Jordan.
Affidavit from South Africa
In addition to the Tunisian
orderly's account, there is a further affidavit regarding the events in Spandau
on August 17, 1987. My wife brought it back from South Africa, where she had
met with a South African lawyer with contacts to Western secret services. I was
able to persuade this man to phrase his testimony in the form of an affidavit
prepared for a judge. Dated February 22, 1988, this affidavit reads as follows:
I have been questioned about the
details of the death of the former German Reich Minister Rudolf Hess.
Reich Minister Rudolf Hess was
killed on the orders of the British Home Office. The murder was committed by
two members of the British SAS (22nd SAS Regiment, SAS Depot Bradbury Lines,
Hereford, England). The military unit of the SAS [Special Air Service] is
subordinated to the British Home Office -- not to the Ministry of Defense. The
planning of the murder as well as its direction was carried out by MI-5. The
secret service action whose aim was the murder of Reich Minister Rudolf Hess
was so hastily planned that it was not even given a code name, which is
absolutely not customary.
Other secret services which had been
privy to the plan were the American, the French and the Israeli. Neither the
[Soviet] KGB nor the GRU, nor the German secret services had been informed.
The murder of Reich Minister Rudolf
Hess had become necessary because the government of the USSR inted to release
the prisoner in July 1987 [in connection with German President von Weizs_cker's
forthcoming visit to Moscow], but President von Weizs_cker was able to
negotiate an extension with the head of the Soviet government, Gorbachev, until
November 1987, the next Soviet period in the guard cycle.
The two SAS men had been in Spandau
prison since the night of Saturday-Sunday (August 15-16, 1987). The American
CIA gave its consent to the murder on Monday (August 17, 1987).
During Reich Minister Rudolf Hess'
afternoon walk, the two SAS men lay in waiting for the prisoner in the prison
garden summerhouse and tried to strangle him with a 4 1/2-foot long cable.
Afterwards, a "suicide by hanging" was to be faked. But as Reich
Minister Rudolf Hess put up a fight and cried for help, which alerted at least
one American guard soldier to the attack, the attempt on the prisoner's life
was broken off, and an ambulance of the British Military Hospital was summoned.
The unconscious Reich Minister Rudolf Hess was taken to the British Hospital in
the ambulance.
I was given the above information
personally and verbally by an officer of the Israeli service on Tuesday, August
18, 1987, at around 8.00 a.m., South African time. I have known this member of
the Israeli service both officially and personallyfor four years. I am
completely satisfied that he was sincere and honest and I have no doubt
whatsoever as to the truth of his information. The absolutely confidential
nature of his conversation with me is also beyond doubt.
Next to Cameron's misleading autopsy
report, the British themselves provided the most decisive clue in solving the
mysterious death in the garden summerhouse of Spandau prison.
Suicide Note?
As already mentioned, I was told on
August 17, 1987, only that my father had died. It wasn't until the next day
that I learned that he had supposedly committed suicide. In response to doubts
I quickly expressed publicly about this supposed suicide, the Allies were
prompted to discover, on August 19, 1987, a supposedly incontrovertible
"proof" of suicide. This is the so-called "suicide note."
It is an undated hand-written letter on the back of the family's
next-to-the-last letter to Rudolf Hess, dated July 20, 1987. The text of this
supposed "suicide note" is as follows:
Please would the Governors s this
home. Written a few minutes before my death.
I thank you all, my beloved, for all
the dear things you have done for me. Tell Freiburg I am extremely sorry that
since the Nuremberg trial I had to act as though I didn't know her. I had no
choice, because otherwise all attempts to gain freedom would have been in vain.
I had so looked forward to seeing her again. I did get pictures of her, as of
you all. Your Eldest.
Wolf R. Hess alone with his father
for the first time since 1941.
This letter was handed to the family
more than a month after the death. We were told that it first had to be
examined in a British laboratory.
While it did seem to be my father's
handwriting (although considerably distorted, as it was whenever he was
suffering as a result of emotional upheaval, health problems or even
medication), this "note" did not reflect the thinking of Rudolf Hess
in 1987. Rather, it reflected thoughts of his some twenty years earlier. The
content mainly concerns "Freiburg," his one-time private secretary,
about whom he had been concerned in 1969 when he had a perforated ulcer in the
duodenum and was near death. Moreover, it was signed with an expression,
"Your Eldest," that he not used for about 20 years.
There is another clue in the
letter's text that indicates its date. The phrase, "I did get pictures of
her, as of you all," would have made sense only during the period before
Christmas 1969, because until that Christmas he received nothing but photographs
of "Freiburg" and us. As of Christmas 1969, he was visited by members
of his family, and received more pictures from "Freiburg," who was
not allowed to visit him. Considering the precise way my father expressed
himself, this sentence can only have been written before December 24, 1969.
Written in August 1987, this sentence makes no sense at all.
Finally, the brief letter's opening
words, "Written a few minutes before my death," cannot be reconciled
with his precise manner of expressing himself. If he had really written this
letter before a planned suicide, he would most certainly have chosen a phrase
specifying suicide, such as "shortly before my voluntary withdrawal from
life" or something similar, but not the ambiguous word "death," which
leaves open any possible method of death.
We, the members of his family who
knew not only my father's handwriting but the writer himself, and who were
intimately familiar with his concerns during his final years, know that this
supposed "suicide note" is a hoax as crude as it is malicious.
It can now be concluded that a
"farewell letter" written by my father almost twenty years earlier in
expectation of his death, and which was not handed over to the family at that
time, was used to produce this 1987 forgery. For this purpose, the text was
transformed by some modern means onto the back of a letter my father had
received recently from us. The censorship stamp "Allied Prison
Spandau," which normally appeared, without exception, on every piece of
incoming paper he received for more than 40 years, was conspicuously absent
from our letter to him of July 20, 1987. Finally, the supposed suicide note
bore no date, which was contrary to my father's routine practice of always
prefacing whatever he wrote with the date. The original date had obviously been
omitted.
Murder, Not Suicide
On the basis of Prof. Spann's
autopsy report, the affidavits of the Tunisian medical orderly and the South
African attorney, as well as the supposed "suicide letter," I can
only conclude that the death of Rudolf Hess on the afternoon of August 17,
1987, was not suicide. It was murder.
Although US authorities were
officially in charge of the Allied Military Prison in Berlin-Spandau in August
1987, it is noteworthy that British citizens played such a major role in the
final act of the Hess drama. The American director, Mr. Keane, was permitted by
the British merely to call me and inform me of my father's death. After that
his only duty was to keep his mouth shut.
To sum up here:
·
The two men the Tunisian orderly
Melaouhi saw in American uniform, who were most probably Rudolf Hess'
murderers, were from a British SAS regiment.
·
The death was established in the
British Military Hospital, to where my father was brought in a British
ambulance.
·
The death certificate is signed only
by British military personnel.
·
The autopsy was carried out by a
British Pathologist.
·
The British prison director, Mr.
Antony Le Tissier, supervised the prompt destruction of all tell-tale evidence,
such as the electric cable, the garden house, and so forth.
·
The officials of the Special
Investigation Branch (SIB) that investigated the death were all British
citizens, and were headed by a British major.
·
The alleged "suicide note"
was supposedly found two days later in the pocket of Hess' jacket by a British
officer, and was examined by a British laboratory.
·
Mr. Allan Green, the British
Director of Public Prosecution, halted an investigation into my father's death
begun by Scotland Yard, which had recommed a "full scale murder investigation"
after officials there had found many inconsistencies.
Rudolf Hess did not commit suicide
on August 17, 1987, as the British government claims. The weight of evidence
shows instead that British officials, acting on high-level orders, murdered my
father.
A Crime Against Truth
The same government, which tried to
make him a scapegoat for its crimes, and which for almost half a century
resolutely sought to suppress the truth of the Hess affair, finally did not
shrink from murder to silence him. My father's murder was not only a crime
against a frail and elderly man, but a crime against historical truth. It was a
logical final act of an official British conspiracy that began in 1941, at the
outset of the Hess affair.
But I can assure them, and you, that
this conspiracy will not succeed. The murder of my father will not, as they
hope, forever close the book on the Hess file.
I am convinced that history and
justice will absolve my father. His courage in risking his life for peace, the
long injustice he ured, and his martyrdom, will not be forgotten. He will be
vindicated, and his final words at the Nuremberg trial, "I regret
nothing!," will stand forever.
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