Volume 6 Number 049

The Flight of Rudolf Hess

Lead: On May 10, 1941, Adolf Hitler’s Deputy, Rudolf Hess, parachuted onto a Scottish farm after an 800-mile solo flight. It was one of the war’s most bizarre incidents.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Adolf and Rudolf served together in World War I and the latter became one of the Fuehrer’s most devoted followers. In prison with Hitler following the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, Hess took much of Hitler’s dictation for Mein Kampf and, as success attended the Nazi movement, Hess became Hitler’s private secretary and, in 1939, was designated second in line to succeed him.

After the invasion of Poland, there is some evidence that Hitler was surprised that the Allies finally went to war. He apparently nursed the illusory hope that he could recruit England and France into a war to eradicate the Soviets and therefore, even after the war began, he sent back-channel overtures to Churchill hoping to win English cooperation. One of the Nazis most active in this effort was Rudolf Hess. It is believed that in 1940 he met with the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, whose ill-disguised pro-Nazi sympathies were well known and an embarrassment to the British government and royal family. This meeting may have convinced Hitler and Hess that there was a strong “peace party” in England sympathetic to their cause.

Hitler may have sent him, but the preponderance evidence indicates that Hess’ flight was probably his own quixotic, rather naïve attempt to force the issue. It failed, of course, netting him Germany’s denunciation as a deranged man, wartime incarceration in the Tower of London, a sentence at the Nuremberg Trials after the war, and the rest of his life spent in jail. He died, the last of the great Nazi prisoners, at Spandau Prison in 1987.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts. Resources

Allen, Peter. The Windsor Secret: New Revelations of the Nazi Connection. New York, NY: Stein and Day, 1984.

Hancock, Eleanor. The National Socialist Leadership and Total War, 1941-1945. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

Kilzer, Louis C. Churchill’s Deception: The Dark Secret that Destroyed Nazi Germany. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1994.

Thomas, Walter Hugh. The Murder of Rudolf Hess. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1979.

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