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Rudolf Hess: The Last Nazi
On the night of May 10, 1941, a loan German Messerschmitt fighter plane took off from an airfield near Augsburg, Germany and headed west. Four hours later it reached the coast of Scotland. Racing along at 450 mph, the pilot kept the plane close to the ground to avoid enemy radar, at times flying 16 feet above level. He reached his destination south of Glasgow at 11 o'clock that night, and pointed the nose of the fighter straight up. And his speed dropped to zero, he bailed out.
Hours later, the pilot told his bewildered British captors that he had come on behalf of Adolf Hitler, with full authority to negotiate a peace treaty and alliance between the Third Reich in Her Majesty's government. "I am Reichsminister Rudolf Hess, he said, "I have come as a missionary for humanity. "
Within 48 hours Hitler announced to the world that his deputy Führer had indeed flown out of Germany — but on an unauthorized flight. He was mentally damaged, Hitler said, and ordered that the name of Hess — the Führer's closest friend and most ardent supporter for 20 years — be erased from Nazi literature, street signs and buildings.
After being in British custody for four years, Hess was sent to Nuremberg, where he was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to life in prison. When he died in 1987 Hess was the sole occupant of Spandau prison; he had been there forty years.
Was Hess the victim of his own "disastrous hallucinations," or was his bizarre mission taken with Hitler's approval? Scholars have debated the question for more than four decades.
In Rudolf Hess: The Last Nazi journalist Wülf Schwarzwäller offers new insight into that question and the mind of the man who helped create the monstrous Third Reich and its megalomaniacal Führer, Adolf Hitler. With new information from Hess' widow and son, Schwarzwäller relates the story of how a lonely Germany youth became an embittered World War I officer who fell under the charismatic sway of a former corporal, help to create Naziism, participated in Hitler's bloody rise to power, and watched unquestioningly as his "Tribune" marched and armies across Europe.
Rudolf Hess: The Last Nazi is the story of a man with his own reality, a man who refused to the end to understand that he had served an inhuman cause. The extermination camps and gas ovens of Auschwitz were part of a huge propaganda campaign concocted by the international powers, he believes. The Nazis and the Führer never went out of favor in Germany, and he himself was a victim, not a criminal. The story, and the delusions, and with Hess' lonely death at the age of 93.
Hours later, the pilot told his bewildered British captors that he had come on behalf of Adolf Hitler, with full authority to negotiate a peace treaty and alliance between the Third Reich in Her Majesty's government. "I am Reichsminister Rudolf Hess, he said, "I have come as a missionary for humanity. "
Within 48 hours Hitler announced to the world that his deputy Führer had indeed flown out of Germany — but on an unauthorized flight. He was mentally damaged, Hitler said, and ordered that the name of Hess — the Führer's closest friend and most ardent supporter for 20 years — be erased from Nazi literature, street signs and buildings.
After being in British custody for four years, Hess was sent to Nuremberg, where he was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to life in prison. When he died in 1987 Hess was the sole occupant of Spandau prison; he had been there forty years.
Was Hess the victim of his own "disastrous hallucinations," or was his bizarre mission taken with Hitler's approval? Scholars have debated the question for more than four decades.
In Rudolf Hess: The Last Nazi journalist Wülf Schwarzwäller offers new insight into that question and the mind of the man who helped create the monstrous Third Reich and its megalomaniacal Führer, Adolf Hitler. With new information from Hess' widow and son, Schwarzwäller relates the story of how a lonely Germany youth became an embittered World War I officer who fell under the charismatic sway of a former corporal, help to create Naziism, participated in Hitler's bloody rise to power, and watched unquestioningly as his "Tribune" marched and armies across Europe.
Rudolf Hess: The Last Nazi is the story of a man with his own reality, a man who refused to the end to understand that he had served an inhuman cause. The extermination camps and gas ovens of Auschwitz were part of a huge propaganda campaign concocted by the international powers, he believes. The Nazis and the Führer never went out of favor in Germany, and he himself was a victim, not a criminal. The story, and the delusions, and with Hess' lonely death at the age of 93.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1988
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