The Ruling Elite

by Deanna Spingola

  British and Soviet Treatment of Hess

  The British administered drugs to Hess during his incarceration in the Tower of London, during which time MI5 made a duplicate copy of his Luftwaffe uniform. Lords Simon and Beaverbrook officially met with Hess in addition to the unofficial meetings that Hess had with the Duke of Kent, Kirkpatrick and others. According to Kim Philby, Anthony Eden and Lord Beaverbrook both saw Hess shortly after his arrival. Churchill directed Lords Simon and Beaverbrook to interview Hess in the wired Cabinet War Rooms for which there are incomplete transcripts. Beaverbrook would interview him again on September 9, 1941 just prior to the diplomat’s visit with Stalin in Moscow. 1074

  Kim Philby compiled a file on Hess for the KGB, dated May 14. Philby had been with the NKVD since June 1934. He was now working for the SOE and had infiltrated the Anglo-German Fellowship as well as the Link. 1075 In addition to the SOE, Philby was on the XX Committee. NKVD agents working in America and in Germany understood that Hess had flown to Scotland with Hitler’s approval with a peace offering. Philby stated that Churchill feared that Hess would be successful in collaborating with his opponents and declared that Hess was his prisoner. Philby thought that Churchill’s opposition could still work with Hess in seeking peace. 1076

  The Duke of Hamilton, Kirkpatrick, and Lord Simon interviewed Hess in Glasgow on June 9, perhaps to feign serious interest in Germany’s peace proposal. Because Simon was not a member of the War Cabinet, Churchill, perhaps temporarily pretending mild interest, could deny that anyone from the government made any attempts to negotiate or even seriously considered Hess’s proposal. Kirkpatrick, in a report written on May 15, had suggested that they use such a strategy on Hess. Alexander Cadogan, in a diary entry, dated May 19, confirmed the approach they would employ using Simon. On May 20, Eden wrote to Churchill, saying, “I saw Simon yesterday and I think he will be willing to undertake the task of which we spoke… Simon will be fully briefed before he goes to the interview and I would be glad if he would undertake this task. All this will be kept most secret and only Cadogan and I in this office am aware of the project.” 1077

  The British Ministry of Information told the press that Hess may have fled Germany because of a leadership fragmentation and that he was attempting to escape a potential purge. A certain faction within the government obviously did not want to divulge the actual reason that he came to Scotland but was quite happy to have the press report a fabricated story. On May 20, The Glasgow Herald reported, “An official denial has already been given to an earlier rumor that Hess brought peace proposals either on his own responsibility or on behalf of Hitler, but it has not succeeded in destroying what the Government is most anxious should be clearly understood—the illusion that the facts are otherwise or that the War cabinet is contemplating a compromise peace.” 1078

  On June 7, 1941, the U.S. Embassy in Rome notified officials in Washington that German Intelligence thought “there is reason to expect (that the) Churchill Government may soon fall and hope is placed in the opposition of Astor and Beaverbrook. In fact, someone is in Rome now doing a little London business for Ribbentrop.” Hitler viewed Lord Beaverbrook, a member of the Peace Party, as someone that he would trust. On that same day, Goebbels called attention to the news from London, “Growing criticism of Churchill in London. But some of it (was) contrived.” British publicists insisted that Hess was a naïve idealist who was attempting “to make the world at peace with Adolf Hitler.” 1079 Lords Simon and Beaverbrook interviewed Hess again on September 9, perhaps to extract military intelligence to share with the Soviets. Shortly thereafter, Beaverbrook traveled to Russia to coordinate military assistance for the Soviet Union. 1080

  The British classified all related documents and details of the Hess flight. In June 1992, the British purportedly released all of the papers but omitted what Wolf Rüdiger Hess referred to as the secret contacts between Britain and Germany, and any mention of the British peace group, including some members of the Royal Family. There was no reference to Hess’s mission and its objectives. Had the British accepted the peace proposal, World War II could have been averted and Germany would probably not have attacked Russia, because Hitler would have controlled Europe. 1081 The Nuremberg War Tribunal determined that “as deputy to the Fuhrer, Rudolf Hess was the top man in the Nazi Party with responsibility for handling all party matters and authority to make decisions in Hitler’s name on all question of party leadership.” They claimed that Hess participated in the “German aggression against Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.” They convicted him of “planning, preparing, initiating or waging aggressive war,” but acquitted him of violating the rules of war and of crimes against humanity.” Thus, they did not execute him. 1082

  The Four Powers, Britain, the United States, France and the USSR, following the Nuremberg trials, incarcerated him for life in Spandau Prison, located in western Berlin, which the Four Power Authorities operated. Hess spent twenty years as the only prisoner. They closed and demolished the prison after Hess’s death on August 17, 1987. Given the date of his flight, May 10, 1941, one must ask what kinds of war crimes he committed that would warrant a life sentence. The alleged Holocaust crimes occurred after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

  America, Britain, France and West Germany, over the years, regularly asked for Hess’s freedom based on humanitarian grounds. However, the Jews reminded the diplomats that Hess had signed the nefarious Nuremberg laws that withdrew civil rights from the German Jews, a situation, they said, that led to the Holocaust. Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, associates of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, wrote, “A life sentence for this unrepentant Nazi is an act of compassion in comparison with the fate suffered by the millions who were redefined as subhuman by a stroke of Hess’s pen.” 1083

  The Soviet Union obstructed Hess’s freedom possibly based on the fact that the Russians thought that Hess wanted to establish peace with Britain to fortify Germany’s position against Bolshevism. Stalin accused Hess of being some part of a German plan to gain British support for her onslaught against the Soviet Union. However, Hess simply intended to end the war and the suffering and thought it was potentially “suicidal for the white race.” He was surprised when the British rejected his peace formula or even accord him the safety of a diplomatic status. 1084

  Stalin, whose suspicions bordered on paranoia, and not believing in coincidences, was convinced that Hess’s mission had something to do with Hitler’s imminent assault on the Red Army. Following the war, people assumed that the Four Powers would exercise leniency and release Hess. After all, at the behest of Hitler, he attempted to seek peace and avoid the war. 1085 Although the four powers had the responsibility to maintain the prison, holding only one prisoner, the American taxpayer, without their knowledge or approval, assumed all of the costs of sustaining the prison. 1086

  Hitler protected Hess’s family and arranged for the government to pay a pension to his wife. On June 14, 1941, Hess, knowing his mission had failed, wrote two farewell letters, one to Hitler and one to his family, just before he attempted suicide in the Mytchett Place. During his forty-year incarceration, the British forbid him to talk about his peace mission as Hess had embarrassing information that the British, the Soviets and probably the Americans did not want disclosed. 1087 Hess died in 1987. Wolf Rüdiger Hess maintains that the British killed him. Dr. W. Hugh Thomas argued that the man in Spandau was not Hess but a double and gives substantial evidence to prove his case. His fellow NSDAP members said the same thing about the man they claimed was Hess at Nuremberg. Churchill contended that Hess was a lone lunatic. Yet, if that were true, according to the Geneva and Hague Conventions, they should have repatriated him instead of trying him. 1088

  The Murder of Rudolf Hess

  Some people have suggested that Special Operation Executive (SOE) agents may have kidnapped Rudolf Hess and then taken him to Scotland where they interrogated and then killed him. Thereafter, the SOE allegedly us
ed a double in order to undermine the NSDAP leadership. Dr. W. Hugh Thomas, who conducted physical examinations and had access to Hess’s medical records, repeatedly claimed that Prisoner No.7 was not the real Hess. Karlheinz Pintsch witnessed and photographed the departure of Hess, later confirmed by Helmut Kaden. 1089

  On September 25, 1973, Dr. Thomas, a British physician, assigned to Spandau Prison, examined and evaluated Hess more thoroughly than his brief physical exam in 1969. In the interim, he had researched Hess’s medical history which included X-rays taken in 1969 and his military records from World War I during which he received a bullet through the chest. That kind of a wound, even if the bullet passes between two ribs, would have caused a tough residual gristly track through his chest and a persistent internal scar, along with the external scars and shortness of breath. Dr. Thomas, in evaluating the X-rays saw absolutely no sign of any damage. Dr. Ferdinand Sauerbruch, a pioneer in thoracic surgery, as a battlefield surgeon, operated on Hess following the wound he received. 1090 This prisoner also had no external scars of any kind. 1091

  Dr. Thomas, after much effort, found in the Berlin Document Center, a photostat copy of Hess’s detailed service records from World War I, which Thomas reproduced, in part, in his book, The Murder of Rudolf Hess. These records disclosed that, on June 12, 1916, Hess received a wound in his left hand and upper arm, from shell splinters at Verdun, which required hospitalization. On July 25, 1917, He was wounded but remained with his unit. On August 8, 1917, he was “severely wounded” in the storming of Ungureana, Romania when a rifle bullet went into his left lung. Beginning on August 9, he remained hospitalized until December 10, during which time Dr. Sauerbruch operated on him. Hess, according to those records received three separate wounds. His last wound ended his active duty in the infantry. He convalesced until February 1918. 1092

  Hess, a health-conscious vegetarian, a non-smoker and non-drinker, was with the Free Corps in 1919 and 1920. In May 1919, during a street fight with the Communists in Munich, he was wounded in the leg. On November 4, 1921, in another skirmish with the Communists, someone aimed and threw a heavy beer mug at Hitler but Hess saw it coming and stood in its path, suffering a wound that left a permanent scar on his head. There was no evidence of any scar on the head of Prisoner No. 7. Given Hess’s physical and health history, Dr. Thomas maintains that Spandau’s Prisoner No. 7 had never suffered any serious wounds. Therefore, he ascertained that the prisoner was not Hess. 1093 In 1977, Dr. Thomas reiterated his belief that Prisoner, No. 7 was not Hess. The question is, did Germany send a double or did the British murder Hess and replace him. Thomas shared his evidence with seventy-six thoracic surgeons from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh who all confirmed that the prisoner was absolutely not Hess. 1094

  Spandau Prison

  On August 18, 1997, Cameron Simpson wrote in The Glasgow Herald, “Startling new research claims that the man who committed suicide in Berlin’s Spandau prison was not Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess but a British intelligence ‘double.’” Two researchers, one a Scots military historian, and the other a former British intelligence officer, argued that British intelligence substituted a double for the real Hess who had apparently died or perhaps been murdered. They divulged some of their primary research to The Herald after an assistant news editor, a Hess scholar, gave the researchers access to the paper’s archives. 1095 The statements above obviously contradict the beliefs of Hess’s son, Wolf Rüdiger Hess, who was just three and a half when his father left for Scotland. Hess claimed that the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) had murdered his father because the British feared that his father would divulge humiliating details about their actions during World War II.

  Hess’s beliefs correspond to recent news about the murder of Hess. According to the Daily Mail, dated September 7, 2013, there are claims that the British ordered the murder of Rudolf Hess to prevent him from disclosing war time secrets. Dr. Hugh Thomas supplied Scotland Yard with documents that named two British agents who were suspected of the murder because the Soviet Union was about to release Hess. Yet, Scotland Yard, under pressure, suspended its investigations. Detective Chief Superintendent Howard Jones, under the Freedom of Information Act, looked into Thomas’s claims. Thomas also alleges that the man that the Allies sent to Spandau Prison was not Hess but an imposter. Thomas, in the report, told Jones that the British Government sent two assassins associated with the SIS to kill Hess so that he would not expose secrets concerning the plot to overthrow Churchill. In 1989, the Crown Prosecution Service received a copy of the report but Sir Allan Green halted the investigation. 1096

  So, was the prisoner an imposter or was it Hess? One should keep in mind that the British military assigned Dr. Thomas to Spandau. We have no idea what kind of games that the British played. Did Dr. Thomas actually examine Hess or did the British temporarily replace Hess with someone else? I cannot imagine anyone pretending to be Hess from 1941 until 1987. It makes little difference in the scheme of things whether the British murdered Hess to silence him in 1941 or in 1987. I personally think, based on the following, that Hess was in prison for over four decades and that the British brutally assassinated him.

  We have the account of Abdallah Melaouhi, author of Rudolf Hess, His Betrayal & Murder. On April 26, 1894, Rudolf Hess, the oldest of three children and son of a wealthy German merchant, Fritz Hess, spoke Arabic because he was born in Alexandria, Egypt, where he would live until the age of twelve, when his parents sent him to Germany to attend a boarding school in Bad Godesberg. The family visited Germany often, beginning in 1900, staying at their summer home in Reicholdsgrün in the Fichtel Mountains. They discharged Hess from the armed forces in December 1918. The British had expropriated the family’s business interests in Egypt which drastically altered the Hess family’s economic situation.

  In 1982, the Allies, not wanting someone capable of relating with his patient, appointed Melaouhi, a non-German trained nurse, to care of the elderly Hess, who had spent twenty years in solitary confinement. Melaouhi began looking after Hess on August 1, 1982. 1097 Someone evidently failed to discover that Hess could speak Arabic and could therefore converse with his new nurse. 1098 In May 1986, senior Russian guards had mentioned that the Soviet government, under Mikhail S. Gorbachev, was considering releasing Hess per his latest petition. Melaouhi was surprised that Hess was not ecstatic when he reported that possibility. Instead, Hess said, “If the Russians release me that would be my death. It would only be a happy day for me if the British published my documents internationally. Then I would be free.” Hess explained, “I always wanted to have peace in the world, and I did everything I could to prevent war. Almost nothing that people write about me is true. That is why it would be good if those documents could finally be published, because then I would be a free man and I could finally see my family again. You must, however, not tell anyone about this as this would be more harmful than useful to me, and the Allies would twist every word I said as they pleased as they have always done before.” Then Melaouhi understood that the British would never allow his release.1099

  On August 17, 1987, Melaouhi began the day at 6:45 am as usual, helping Hess prepare for his shower, watching him shave (electric razor), and dispensing his medicine. He then sat with him while he ate breakfast. Hess would usually read or take a nap for fifteen or twenty minutes and then have lunch at 10:30 am. After the change of the guards, Hess gave the senior guard his regular weekly request for provisions, tissue and toilet paper, and writing paper for correspondence with his family. Melaouhi said that Hess was not depressed and he surely would have given some indication to him if he were planning on committing suicide. Given his age and circumstances, Melaouhi would have attempted to stop him, but would have understood. 1100

  At 2 pm, the senior guard called Melaouhi at his official residence, about 100 feet from the prison, and told him that someone had murdered Hess, and then amended his statement to say that Hess had killed himself. Bernard Mil
ler, the British guard, told Melaouhi that his services were no longer needed. Melaouhi insisted on seeing Hess who was sprawled on the floor behind closed doors in the garden house. When he gained entrance, there were two strangers, dressed in American uniforms, and he noted that the room was in disarray and that the electric cable that Hess allegedly used to hang himself was still plugged into an outlet. In addition to the two Americans, Anthony Jordan, a black American guard, was there. He was “sweating heavily, and his shirt was saturated with sweat and he was not wearing a tie.” Jordan hated Hess and the prisoner greatly feared Jordan. He said, “The pig is finished, you won’t have to work a night shift any longer.” 1101 1102

  Melaouhi further testified, “During the five years in which I daily cared for Mr. Hess, I was able to obtain a clear and accurate impression of his physical capabilities. I do not consider, given his physical condition, that it would have been possible for Mr. Hess to have committed suicide in the manner later published by the Allied powers. He had neither the strength nor the mobility to place an electric flex around his neck, knot it and either hang or strangle himself. Mr. Hess was so weak that he needed a special chair to help him stand up. He walked bent over with a cane and was almost blind. If ever he fell to the ground, he could not get up again. Most significantly, his hands were crippled with arthritis; he was not able, for example, to tie his shoelaces. I consider that he was incapable of the degree of manual dexterity necessary to manipulate the electric flex as suggested. Further, he was not capable of lifting his arms above his shoulders; it is therefore in my view not possible that he was able to attach the electric flex to the window catch from which he is alleged to have suspended himself.” 1103