Please check the wiki contents which now has an entry for Rudolf Hess' 1941 flight to Scotland.
This started out ages ago as a few lines, just out of interest, but grew into a huge file that had to be edited down to remove the speculative and conspiracy based items, and then the content provided by those with a 'Point to Prove' and then the politically and belief biased threads. It's a wonder there was anything left after a while.
It actually becomes rather interesting to piece something like this together, as it becomes apparent how the 'truth' behind the conspiracy theories is probably more about latter-day authors placing a bit of 'spin' on an inconsistency or detail that differs between accounts (or an entirely absent piece of information they deem 'essential'), so that they can write a book building on the point, knowing they have an almost guaranteed audience/income for their effort.
The worst aspect of this is that while there may be some foundation in some of the early items (I'm not saying there is though), the latter items that build and expand on them, and become more elaborate as time passes, obscure and distort past evaluations.
I have to say that being steeped in the references for a few week has made me pretty skeptical of most, if not all the conspiracy theories. He was probably deluded, he probably wanted out, Hitler probably knew he was making the flight, he probably supported it on the offchance it succeed, probably had the insanity story ready if it backfired, and the Allies probably reckoned they had a prize catch for free, regardless of his mental state.
There's no surprise there were odd stories floating about - both sides had active propaganda ministries, tasked with ensuring the other side was kept off balance.
Thought about this afterward, and I probably wan't being fair, as what I heard was a dramatisation, so it was German officers discussing Hess that I heard, so they would only think of a flight in this direction as being to England or Britain, so I wasn't being fair
The overwhelming majority of Johnny Foreigners think of the whole UK as England, its historical and the union of 1707 made not a jot of difference to a world who knew only of England.
Talking of 1707 I wonder how the Scottish Parliament will mark the 300th. anniversary next year .... or how the Executive will manage to avoid marking it.
Twas hardly a spectacular example of democracy at work.
I occasionally allow myself a little smile when I read some stories, and this alternative version of the capture of Rudolph Hess shortly after he bailed out raised one such smile.
While I've never come across any claims that Hess was held at Comrie (other than this one), consistent accounts indicate he spent 7 nights in Scotland, counting his arrival at 11 pm as contributing one night.
This following story smacks more of something dreamt up and spread about by the Toffs and Jolly Good Fellows, affronted that a lowly ploughman should be credited with such a worthy prize.
It's certainly never popped up in any of the books or extracts I read over a 2 week period researching the landing, nor did any reference to Comrie.
Comrie is understandable as an assumption though, given it was used to hold the most hardcore Nazi prisoners, and you probably also know the inmates murdered one of their own, believing him to be a British spy. Five prisoners were tried and executed.
The story, unedited:-
Note - there are accounts that Rudolph Hess was held at this camp for 1 night when he crash landed in Scotland. However, the following email from Peter R McNaughton would refute that:
"You may be interested in knowing that Rudolph Hess never stayed at Camp 21 in Comrie. He did, however, stay at Buchanan Castle some 40 miles away, near Buchlyvie. The father of a friend of mine was the one who captured him. The story goes that Mr. Clark was at a soiree in the evening and heard the crash. On looking out he saw flames coming from a crashed aircraft on the hillside. He was dressed in a tuxedo and strapped on his Sam Brown belt with revolver over it and went to investigate. He came across this figure moaning and staggering around. He drew his revolver and then took the man to the house where the soiree was being held. There the prisoner was handed over to the military police. It was only later that he realized that his revolver was not loaded! And only much later that he found out that his prisoner was, in fact, Hess. The following day, much to his embarrassment the Duke of Hamilton, a Spitfire pilot in Edinburgh, was asked to go and identify him. Apparently Hess had met him in Berlin in or around 1936. Hess thought that by naming him and suggesting he knew him, that the Duke could identify him and would lead him to Churchill. Hess, of course, was a lunatic. He had apparently hoped to come to an arrangement of stopping the War. The following day he was sent to London where he was incarcerated in the Tower of London until he was flown to Nuremberg. The article that everyone quotes was in either the Daily Mail or the Daily Mirror. As with many rags the reporter jazzed up the article with this comment. [That he was held at the POW camp] Rudolph Hess was never in Comrie Camp (Camp 21) but was in Scotland for only two nights. The first when he was captured (or gave himself up) and the second at Buchanan castle in Bucklyvie near Kippen and Loch Lomond in Stirlingshire.
A question about the Hess flight. I've got somewhat of an interest in Local History, and one of the books on Irvine mentions that there was a Royal Observer Corps Observation post on top of the old Blue Billy Bing in what is now the Irvine Beach Park, and that they were credited with the first definite visual confirmed sighting of Hess's plane. I've never heard this mentioned elsewhere.
It's the Old Irvine book by Neil Stirrat that mentions this.
The ROC (admittedly the Cold War period) is one of my special interests, and I was fortunate enough to make a note of the account of the observation of the Hess flight by the World War II observers, and a quotation is included in the Hess Flight Page on the main site:
This notes that Assistant Observer Group Officer Major Graham Donald couldn't get anyone to believe him at the time, but was later commended by his superior for making his report.
As noted on the page, the original source of this quotation has since vanished from the web, but I am sure the ROC Association would recognise it, and provide details to confirm if anyone needed to make it 'official'.
Quite a lot has already been written about the Rudolph Hess flight to Scotland on May10th 1941, and I myself have made several postings on other threads. It is of course likely we'll never know with 100% certainty what the whole story was; however, I have always had a feeling at the back of my mind that the Hess affair was contrived by the likes of Churchill and the British Secret Service. I have recently read a book, "Foot Prints in Time", written by John Colville, and published by Collins in 1976, and it dispels any thoughts in my mind that there was more to the Hess's timely flight than we have been led to be believe.
Colville was one of Churchill's Private Secretaries, and on the evening of Saturday May 10th 1941, he was alone at #10 Downing St. while Churchill was off spending the weekend at Ditchley. Colville spent the night sheltering in the rather flimsy accommodation at #10, while the Luftwaffe plastered London with high explosives and incendiaries, in what was probably the most devastating raid of the war.
After the "All-Clear" Colville went out for a walk and a bit fresh air. On his way back to #!0 he dropped into the Foreign Office for a chat with his friend, who was Anthony Eden's Private Secretary. Eden's Secretary was speaking on the telephone and he said to Colville,
" This may be a lunatic. He says he's the Duke of Hamilton and that something extraordinary has happened, that he's about to fly down from Scotland to Northolt, and that he wants to be met by Alec Cadogan [Asst. Foreign Secy.], and the Prime Minister's Secretary.".
Colville spoke to the Duke and asked, "Has somebody arrived?", to which the Duke replied, "Yes, please be at Northolt to meet me.", and rang off.
Colville telephoned Ditchley and asked for instructions from the Prime Minister.
"Well, who, has arrived?", asked Churchill.
"I don't know", replied Colville, "He [Hamilton] wouldn't say.
"It can't be Hitler?" asked Churchill, to which Colville answered,"I imagine not.".
"Well stop imagining, and have the Duke sent straight here from Northolt.", answered Churchill.
A careful reading of the foregoing will doubtless lead to the Questions:
(1) Why was Colville's first reaction to ask, "Has somebody arrived?" ? and (2) Why was Churchill's first reaction to ask, "Well, who, has arrived?" ?
The answer to Question #1 is simply that during the air-raid Colville had been dozing and daydreaming about Peter Fleming's 1940 book, "Flying Visit", a fantasy which had Hitler inadvertently landing in the U.K.. But it wasn't Hitler Colville had been daydreaming about, but Göring, who it was rumoured, was believed to take flights in German bombers.
The answer to Question #2, is that Churchill too was aware of the information from Air ministry Intellegence, that Göring was believed to take flights in German bombers, and simply in his thoughts, replaced Göring with Hitler.
I now believe that it was later that day, Sunday May 11th, that Churchill first learned, from the Duke of Hamilton, that Hess had arrived in Scotland, and that MI5 and/or MI6 had nothing to do with the arrival of Hess in Scotland.
Just as an aside, does anyone here think Hess actually deserved the life imprisonment that he got at Spandau. While he was a Nazi he seemed to have a lot less blood on his hands than a lot of them. In fact, after Himmler appeared on the scene Hess was positively sidelined.
Just as an aside, does anyone here think Hess actually deserved the life imprisonment that he got at Spandau. While he was a Nazi he seemed to have a lot less blood on his hands than a lot of them. In fact, after Himmler appeared on the scene Hess was positively sidelined.
I don't think Hess deserved the sentence of life imprisonment that he was given at Nuremberg. The two counts for which Hess was found guilty at Nuremberg were:
(1) Planning and preparation of aggressive war; and (2) Conspiracy to commit crimes.
For this guilt, Hess served the rest of his life in Spandau Prison. One might note that if George Bush or Tony Blair were tried today in court for planning and preparing for an aggressive war, or conspiring to commit crimes, they would, beyond any doubt, be found guilty by virtue of having planned and waged an aggressive war against a sovereign nation. Even aside from the current Iraq situation, almost all leaders, Churchill, included, would have been guilty of the same crimes for which Hess served a life sentence... planning, preparing, and conspiring for war, is part of a leader's job-description.
While Hess may have been involved to some extent with the persecution of minority groups in Greater Germany, he was not a part of the Nazi excesses which developed after Hess was incarcerated in Britain. It is my belief, that these Nazi excesses, while not mentioned as part of the crimes for which Hess was found guilty, played a role in the unjust level of punishment handed down to him; and I feel further, that it was the realisation of Hess seeming to have "a lot less blood on his hands " that led the western powers to seek his early release from Spandau.
For much the same reason I think the life sentence handed to Grand Admiral Erich Raeder and 20 years to Grand Admiral Karl Donitz were also excessive. The worst excesses of the Nazi regime seemed to have been perpetrated by the likes of Reinhard Heydrich and his ilk.
As usual, while looking for something else, I came across the following recent release from the National Archives...
Rudolf Hess in Spandau Prison
Contains minutes of the meetings of the Spandau Prison governors, in addition to correspondence with legal advisers for each of the Four-Power Authorities (UK, USA, France and the Soviet Union). Discussions in this file concentrate on the state of Hess´s health and the negotiations between the three western powers and the Soviet governor to allow Hess to receive medical treatment at the British Military Hospital in Berlin.
Many items in the files relate to the campaign to release Hess in the build-up to his 80th birthday.
If you want have your own copies of some Hess documents, you can get them for free by following the link on that page to the DocumentsOnline option.
Follow the procedure as if you were going to purchase the copies and you'll end up at a page asking for your email (if you were actually purchasing docs, the email is used to tell you where you can download your purchase) and your credit card details.
You do NOT need to enter your credit card details - as soon as you hit Return it will take you to the Free Download Page.
You might not even need to enter an email address since it's not actually needed either, but I did stick one in just in case.
They are worth a look, and bring home the the truth of things like the intransigence of the Russian in response to anything Hess requested (they didn't want him to be given a new notebook to write in until the old one had first been removed from him and destroyed), and the intense level of legal detail any requests or claims were subject to.
I downloaded the lot, but will probably never find the time even to look at these few docs in detail, and look in alarm at content that refers to things like the 883rd and the 1,346th meeting. Hess's long incarceration certainly kept a lot of people in a job.
Quite why the search engine decided the following met the criteria I had entered to try and track down the original story about a dispute about Tiree airstrip is beyond me, however I thought I'd give you the chance to read this take on the Rudolf Hess flight.
I haven't read it in total, and admit to have dropped it into the drivel box, considering it to have "an agenda" and having spotted a para that refers to "On the night of the 10th May the landing lights of the airstrip had been turned on as the result of a phone call from the home of the Duke of Buccleuch, but were switched off a few minutes later a few minutes later by a group of strangers who had entered the house."
Yes folks, in wartime Britain, groups of strangers could just wander into a house that hosted a temporary runway with landing lights, and turn them off without being challenged or identified. Bear in mind that if the lights had just been turned on, then the place was not unmanned at the time, so...
I was reading about Hess' son, (Wolf Rüdiger Hess, 1937-2001), an unapologetic Nazi and fervent supporter of Adolf Hitler, who (and I can understand his bitterness given the treatment given to Rudolf Hess) maintained to his dying day that the British SAS murdered his father to prevent his parole (which many thought was imminent). Wolf was sure that the murder was committed because the British were afraid that his father would reveal embarrassing information about British actions during the war, if he was allowed to speak freely. However, this position is rebutted by the release, in 2007, of documents demonstrating British support for Hess' release on humanitarian reasons and their campaign against steadfast Soviet opposition to his release.
Rows over the jailing of Adolf Hitler's deputy became a key point of Cold War tension, papers reveal. Rudolf Hess was held in Berlin's Spandau prison until his suicide in 1987, aged 93. The documents show British governors fought Soviet attempts to turn the jointly-run jail into a "gulag" labour camp with just one prisoner.
France, the US, UK and Russia jointly managed the jail - and disputes over Hess led to bitter recriminations. Hess had been in custody since flying to Scotland in 1941. Marginalised in the Nazi hierarchy with increasing mental problems, he thought he could strike a peace deal with Britain so Hitler could invade Russia unhindered. He ended up jailed for life at the Nuremberg war crime trials. By the 1970s, he was the only Nazi left in Spandau and a humanitarian campaign had been launched to see him released. The three western powers sympathised but could do nothing without the Soviet Union's agreement.
In files originally opened two years ago after a Freedom of Information request, National Archives documents show the stand-off reached a boiling point in 1974. The Western powers fell out with Russia over Hess's health after doctors warned he could have cancer. The British wanted Hess taken for tests at their nearby military hospital. But the Russians told the Americans to pay for an x-ray machine in the prison instead. The papers show how British governor, Robert de Burlet, began taking his Russian counterparts to task over "prisoner number seven", as Hess was officially known.
In one meeting, de Burlet demanded the Russians see sense. "If you keep him in prison until he dies, you have created a martyr who would be remembered not for his own misdeeds but for the inhumane treatment which he himself suffered." The Russian official, Romanovsky, privately conceded that he sympathised with the British position. But he said decisions over Hess were taken at the top and added: "I do not think that for us it will be possible to release him - the political difficulties are too great."
And so Hess's regime remained strict. Confined to a small badly-furnished cell, his requests for more relaxed rules led to petty and pointless political clashes. The Russian governor began censoring large parts of Hess's letters to his wife. He ordered his guards to take Hess's glasses at lights out - a regulation that was never followed by the other powers. When a Russian guard established that Hess had 13 photographs in his cell, rather than the regulation 10, three were removed - leading to another row in the governors' office. Hess wrote himself a sign reminding himself to stand up in the presence of the Russian commandant. The three other powers said they didn't want an old man to stand. The British became convinced the Russians wanted to turn Spandau into a western outpost of the "Gulag Archipelago" - the Soviet Union's forced labour camps.
In one incident, Hess saw some windfall plums in the prison gardens and wanted to take them inside rather than leave them to the birds. The Soviet guard said no - but was overruled by the British warder. Within days, the incident had escalated into a full-scale row between the four governors with the Russians accusing the British of breaching the original post-war agreement over war criminals and demanding reports and disciplinary action. "We have what I consider a genuine case of mental cruelty," said Robert de Burlet. "Whatever horrors the Germans had perpetrated in their concentration camps I do not want it to be said that we were following their example." London urged him to resist attempts to tighten the regime and diplomatically endure lecturing from Russian generals, one of whom was frequently the worst for drink.
Hess's birthday passed with no sign of movement on release. And in a sarcastic editorial marking the occasion in Pravda - the Kremlin's official newspaper - explained why.
"The Hitlerite lieutenant must drink his retribution to the bottom of the cup," it said.
Hot on the heels of Wolf Hess's assertion that the British, the SAS, MI6 (and probably the kitchen sink at some point), murdered Rudolf Hess, I've uncovered "the truth" buried in a newspaper item from 2001, and written by the first person to investigate the death scene of Rudolf Hess in Spandau prison.
While the world speculated about the death of the 93 year old in 1987, found hanged in his cell - a fact given as evidence that he was actually murdered because he was physically incapable of carrying out the act himself due to arthritic fingers - Ian Brewster, the head of crime scenes for Gwent Police, had been keeping the real truth a secret until 2001, when he decided to spill the beans to an unknown reporter on a nondescript Welsh newspaper in Gwent.
After revealing this, Mr Brewster said: "These facts have been kept secret over the years, but I suppose it's OK to tell them now - Hess's writings confirm that he was firstly an anti-Semite who agreed with extermination of the Jews, and he believed that black people should be next.
"When the Americans decided to give Hess a black orderly he was so outraged that he decided to kill himself."
After discovering this story, the South Wales Argus unsurprisingly decided to run it ahead of the planned article.
Of course, it's all perfectly clear now, it was really the Americans that murdered Hess, using a carefully crafted psychological ploy designed to manipulate the old man's mind, and coerce him into killing himself, so that they'd clearly be blameless, or maybe the British would get the blame.
Anyone interested in Hess at all should read Eugene K Birds book "THe Loneliest Man in the World". This was written when Hess was still alive and basically starts off when the Nuremberg defendents were still in the prison and awaiting trial.
I hadn't seen this article before, and it was the Laurel & Hardy reference that caught my eye first, but the reality is far from humorous, with a reflection on the difference between the Soviet military and diplomatic arms.
"In this environment the velvet glove is off and the mailed fist and the venom are all too plain to see."
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