David Irving the Missing Years

David Irving Hess The Missing Years 1941–1945 hess - the missing years This edition ISBN 1-872197-21 The first editor of this work at Macmillan’s was Adam Sisman, who later went on to become a fine author in his own right. David Irving’s Hess: The Missing Years 1941–1945 was first published in 1987 by Macmillan London Ltd. No US edition was published at the time, through what Adam Sisman described as a regrettable bungle — scrimping on postage costs, (Macmillan sent the book to US publishers via Hilversum and the book never reached New York.) The book appeared in other countries however including Germany and Austria (Leopold Stocker Verlag, Graz); Grafton Books, a Division of the Collins Publishing Group, published a UK paperback edition in 1989. First published 1987 Electronic Edition 21 Focal Point Edition 21 © Parforce UK Ltd. 21 A digital edition of this book is uploaded onto the FPP website at www.fpp. co.uk/books as a tool for students and academics. It can be downloaded for reading and study purposes only, and is not to be commercially distributed in any form. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be commercially repro- duced, copied, or transmitted save with written permission of the author in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and to civil claims for damages. Readers are invited to submit any typographical errors to the author by mail at the address below, or via email at [email protected]. Informed comments and corrections on historical points are also welcomed. Focal Point Publications Dorney, Windsor sl4 qs (UK) hess - the missing years David Irving is the son of a Royal Navy commander. After visiting Imperial College of Science & Technology and University College London, he spent a year in Germany working in a steel mill and perfecting his ﬂuency in the German language. Among his thirty-odd books, the best-known include Hitler’s War; Church- ill’s War, vol. i: “Struggle for Power,” vol. ii: “Triumph in Adversity”, and vol. iii: “The Sundered Dream”; Accident, the Death of General Sikorski; The Destruction of Dresden; The Mare’s Nest; The German Atomic Bomb; The Destruction of Convoy PQ17; The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe; The Trail of the Fox: the Search for the True Field Marshal Rommel; Göring: a Biography, and Nuremberg, the Last Battle. He has also translated several works by other authors including Field- Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Reinhard Gehlen, and Nikki Lauda. He lives in Windsor, England, and has raised ﬁve daughters. HESS The Missing Years 1941-1945 by David Irving Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, flew to Britain on May 1, 1941, on a mission of peace – a last-ditch attempt to halt the madness of war before it descended into barbar- ity. He was held in a Secret Service prison, treated with truth drugs, and slowly went mad – as the secret British diaries printed here reveal. He spent the next forty-six years in jail, a captive of his enemies. F FOCAL POINT hess - the missing years in my mind’s eye I kept seeing – in Germany and Britain alike – an endless line of children’s coffins with weeping mothers behind them; and then again, the coffins of mothers, with their children clustered behind them. Rudolf Hess in captivity, explaining to the Lord Chan- cellor on June 9, 1941 the reasons for his mission Civilian victims of a 1942 British air raid laid out in a high school gym in Germany Contents Part One: Germany 1 a prisoner of mankind 3 2 the private secretary 15 3 the wailing wall 28 4 the bystander 39 5 the little thunderstorm 48 Part Two: Britain 6 fool’s errand 71 7 the tower 97 8 camp z 104 9 the negotiator comes 124 10 conversations in an asylum 143 11 a second cabinet visitor 164 12 on strike 185 13 first loss of memory 204 14 lies to stalin and roosevelt 216 15 red earth 234 16 laughter line 246 17 the eight-inch blade 257 Part Three: Nuremberg 18 return to germany 277 19 ‘do you remember “heil hitler”?’ 282 20 triumph of the will 303 21 will the true rudolf hess please stand up 316 Epilogue: a lifetime to repent 327 hess - the missing years Acknowledgements 333 appendix i: What did Hitler know? The file of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt on Rudolf Hess 336 appendix ii: Extracts from Guy Liddell’s Diary relating to the Rudolf Hess Mission 340 Abbreviations used in Notes 346 Notes 348 Archival Sources 377 Select Bibliography 383 Index 385 this book was first published by Macmillan London Ltd. shortly after the death of its subject in Spandau prison. The publishers took out whole-page advertising in The Bookseller (right) and elsewhere. It was the last work that they published by this author. In 1991 Macmillan came under increasing pressure, and on July 6, 1992, two days after the author returned from Moscow with the long-lost Goebbels Diaries from the KGB archives, Publishing Director Roland Philipps secretly ordered all remaining books by him to be destroyed, adding the instruction: ‘The author is not to be informed.’ List of Illustrations between pages 154 and 155 In August 1914 Rudolf Hess volunteered for the 1st Bavarian Infantry Regiment (Hess family archives). In World War I Lieutenant Rudolf Hess joined the 35th Jagdstaffel as a fighter pilot on the Western Front (Hess family archives). The famous geopolitician Professor Karl Haushofer became Hess’s mentor – but declined to join him in Hitler’s National Socialist Party (Heinz Haushofer collection). One of the Party’s most popular orators, Hess was equally at home in the workers’ canteens and touring the 1933 election battlefields with leading Nazis like Her- mann Göring and the SS Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler (Ernst Röhm / Author’s collection). The rare photo above shows Rudolf Hess with Max Amann, the Party’s publisher, and Adolf Hitler at an editors’ reception on November 11, 1938 – the day after the anti Jew- ish pogrom inspired by the visibly tight-lipped Dr Joseph Goebbels standing between them (US National Archives). hess - the missing years Nazi Party leaders at the Nuremberg Rally in 1933: Xaver Schwarz the treasurer, Ernst Röhm the SA chief of staff, Adolf Hitler, and Rudolf Hess (US National Archives). In the Party’s front rank – Rudolf Hess with Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler, and war minister General Werner von Blomberg in 1934 (US National Archives). Hess joins with the young architect Albert Speer with Hitler and the Führer’s adjutants Wilhelm Brückner and Julius Schaub visiting the new site of the annual Party Rally (US National Archives). Parade at the 1935 Party Rally in downtown Nuremberg (Author’s collection). In October 1937 the Duke of Windsor visited Hitler. He accepted Hitler’s word that Germany desired only friendship with Britain. Ilse Hess wrote that the Duke’s task was ‘made impossible by dark intrigues’ (Walther Hewel / Author’s collection). With the drums of war already beating, on January 30, 1939 Hitler (seen with Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hess, Hjalmar Schlacht and Walter Funk) told the Reichs- tag that if the Jews started another world war then they would pay (US National Archives). n facsimiles on page 111: On August 8, 1917 Hess’s personnel file showed that a rifle bullet had pierced his left lung. X-rays in Spandau prison failed to show the scar, leading to speculation about the prisoner’s true identity. The Spandau authori- ties declined to compare a 1941 dental chart on ‘Jonathan’ (i.e., Hess) with their current records, as requested by the author in 1987, but a German autopsy on the deceased Rudolf Hess eventually confirmed the tissue damage. facsimiles on page 225: Rudolf Hess’s handwriting showed no significant change between his imprisonment at Landsberg in 1924 and in England in 1941. between pages 282 and 283 In November 1937 Ilse gave Rudolf Hess his first and only child, Wolf Rüdiger, which changed the world for him (Hess family Archives). After he parachuted into Scotland from a crashing Messerschmitt-110 fighter plane in May 1941, Hess was imprisoned in the secret ‘Camp Z’ at Aldershot. Air photo- graphs were taken to test its camouflage (Crown Copyright). List of Illustrations The Duke of Hamilton. After their midnight meeting he never saw Hess again. Senior MI6 official Frank Foley (later honoured in Israel) tried to squeeze every secret out of Hess (photo by courtesy of University of Leeds, Brotherton Library). Winston Churchill had prevented Rudolf Hess from meeting the King, but Lord Beaverbrook did succeed in visiting him in his secret prison (Radio Times Hulton Picture Library). Interrogated on October 9, 1945 by US Colonel John H Amen at Nuremberg, Rudolf Hess – feigning amnesia and wearing his famous flying kit – said he could remember nothing. Amen failed to crack him (US National Archives). On trial at Nuremberg, Hermann Göring looked bored, Rudolf Hess took notes, Ribbentrop adjusted his earpiece. Hess outlived them all (Author’s collection). Photographed in his cell at Nuremberg on November 23, 1945, Hess looked haggard and unwell. It was deliberate – he had been starving himself for weeks to obtain this effect (US National Archives). Hess’s strange death in August 1987 made the front-page in the world’s newspapers. A top German forensic pathologist determined that he had been strangled. A photograph of Spandau prison in the British sector of Berlin, taken at very long range, showed Hess walking in the grounds, or so the press claimed (Author’s collection).

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