Rudolf Hess

Biography

Born in Alexandria in a family from European tradesmen (British mother and German father politically ultranationalist), it serves in the German army at the time of the First World War. It will be wounded on several occasions. It tried to enter the air force but the war will be completed before it can fly. It adheres to NSDAP by taking the 16th chart of the party as of 1920 where it meets the former corporal Hitler, under the influence of which it falls immediately. He then becomes his private secretary during the period known as of the “putch of the brewery of Munich”. For this reason, it connects a general-geographer, Karl Haushofer and Hitler. Haushofer is at the origin of the design of the State like organization vivant" derived from the thought from Darwin, and the inventor of the term Lebensraum (vital space) which will be a central theme of propaganda and the policy Nazis, which it developed with his/her friends in the review which he directs, Zeitschrift für Geopilitik (Books for geopolitics). Rudolf Hess helped Hitler to write Mein Kampf whereas they were imprisoned after the coup attempt of State of 1923.

Hess occupies a privileged position of assistant of Hitler at the time of the first years of the movement Nazi, but it is gradually put on side in the years 1930 as Hitler reaches the capacity. In 1933, Hitler publicly regards it as its dolphin then like the 3rd man of the mode after Göring. It engages as personal secretary Martin Bormann and represents Führer in the minor demonstrations.

Hess knows an intense interior life then (impassioned by astrology and the horoscopes, nourishing medicinal plants). Its entourage takes it for an original in extreme cases of the madness. Some see a romantic spirit rather there seeking to obtain a peace separated with the Britanniques. It has several children of which a son having for Hitler godfather.

This tendency to marginalize its role increases during the first years of the Second world war, which focuses all popular glory on the lieutenants of Hitler: Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. It is however named member of the Council of the defense of the Reich as of 1939.

Hess is also the central figure of a history which can seem sque Rocambole: according to William Shirer, author of Rise and fall of Third Reich , Hess, applicant to test a Messerschmitt Bf 110, hijacks the plane until the North of the the United Kingdom in May 1941, jumping in parachute on Ayrshire the May 10th in spite of the shootings of DCA, breaking ankle, in the hope to meet the Duke of Hamilton. Hess (which had briefly met Hamilton at the time of an official visit of Prince de Galles in Germany) thinks that the Duke is a mediator with the service of Lord Halifax, opponent and potential successor of Winston Churchill.

According to Rudolf Hess, in May 1941, preparing the “Barbarossa operation”, return towards the way of the East, Hitler wishes to put an end to the war in the west. Misused by the vast campaign of misinformation carried out by the British secret services, it sends Rudolf Hess, in the United Kingdom, with an aim of secretly taking again language with the bankers and the policies who had supported his walk towards the throne of Reich.

The secret services had encouraged the Britannique Prime Minister to agree to open discussions with representatives of the Nazi Germany to let think that a peace was possible. To make credible this operation, the strategy consisted in letting believe that once Churchill would be put in opposition to the Room, Lord Halifax - his most credible successor - would agree to negotiate a cessation of hostilities. At that time, England supported only the effort of war and the policy of Churchill was very criticized. Part of the political community, carried out by Lloyd George, wished the cessation of hostilities in order to preserve the Britannique empire.

Rudolf Hess is imprisoned with the Tour of London. Hitler then makes say that Hess became insane, and that it acted according to its only initiative. According to colonel SS Otto Skorzeny in its book the unknown war , Hitler was perfectly with the current of the project of Rudolf Hess to leave to negotiate in England.

Martin Bormann succeeds to him the station of assistant. Hess thus passes the remainder of the war in the United Kingdom. Hess is judged with the Procès of Nuremberg after the war for concerted plan or plot and crimes against peace and is condemned to the prison to perpetuity. He does not recognize any crime and known as to trust to have served his Master and the German people. During the years which follow, he is the “prisoner number 7”. After the releases of Baldur von Schirach and Albert Speer in 1966, he remains the last prisoner of the Prison of Spandau (West Berlin). Its guards affirm that its mental health was deeply degraded, and that it lost the memory. The Soviets insist that it remains in prison.

Rudolf Hess was the last prisoner of the prison of Spandau. Spandau being in West Berlin, the Soviet detachment charged to take the changing crossed out of weapons, part of the space controlled by the Westerners; this characteristic ended with the death of Hess.

It dies there in 1987, hung with an electric wire. Its death is described as suicide, although his/her son Wolf Rüdiger Hess always defended the thesis of an assassination perpetrated by SAS or the CIA. The English medical examiners confirm the thesis of the suicide however.

After the death of Hess, the prison of Spandau was destroyed in order to prevent that it does not become a gathering place of néo-Nazi S. Cependant, the latter from Germany and of all Europe found themselves with Wunsiedel, where he is buried (it is also the town of origin of its paternal family), for a “walk of the memory”. These demonstrations are renewed each year, the birthday day of died of Hess, although prohibited of 1991 with 2000 (years during which the steps take place in various cities of the neighborhoods). The steps of 2002 and 2003 (again authorized) gather more 2 500 néo-Nazis.

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