Rudolf Hess – Martyr for Peace

Rudolf Hess was born on this day 128 years ago: 26th April 1894.

He was Deputy Führer of Germany from April 1933 until 10th May 1941 when he made his famous solo flight to Britain, crash-landing in Scotland. This peace mission is still partly shrouded in secrecy, though some official documents have been released in recent years.

On 23rd October 1941 Hess wrote from his confinement at the so-called ‘Camp Z’ (Mytchett Place in Surrey) to Lord Beaverbrook, the influential owner of the Daily Express and other newspapers who was a minister in Churchill’s cabinet.

While Hess is often described as having been irrational, readers can draw their own conclusions about his state of mind from this letter, which concludes:
“I admit openly that until recently I had not given up hope that reason would come in England and that an understanding between the two peoples would be brought about.
“But the Führer could not do more than he has done, i.e. stretched out his hand over and over again. And I staked everything as far as I personally was concerned.
“It was not to be apparently.
“Yours sincerely, Rudolf Hess.”

The previous month, in official complaints to the British authorities about the conditions under which he was being held, Hess nevertheless continued to maintain that his objective was to advance the possibility of an Anglo-German understanding against Bolshevism. His letter of complaint concluded:
“…the treatment which I have received does not affect my honour but that of the persons who ordered the treatment.
“Of course, I shall not allow the German public to know of the treatment I have received. It would contradict the meaning of my flight to England which was undertaken to improve and not to worsen the relations between our two countries.”

In an appendix to a letter of protest dated 18th September 1941, Hess wrote that during his captivity he had been presented with propaganda tales of German atrocities in ‘concentration camps’. Note that at this stage of the war even British propagandists were not believing tales of homicidal gas chambers of the kind which are now presented as ‘Holocaust history’, but there were nevertheless other stories of excesses in German concentration camps, to which Hess replied as follows:

“I have been given reports of alleged witnesses of alleged treatment of prisoners in German concentration camps.

“When I return to Germany I shall cause an investigation to be made about the facts which are related. I shall investigate from personal interest whether sub-leaders did in fact behave as described without the knowledge and against the will of leaders.

“I was given to read a book written like a novel by a former Austrian national who professes to describe the treatment in concentration camps of Austrian prisoners.

“The writer has wisely omitted to mention that under the Schuschnigg Government [i.e. the conservative Catholic, anti-national-socialist dictatorship that ruled Austria from 1934 to 1938] thousands of National-Socialists were interned in so-called “Arrest Camps” and treated in an inhuman way in police stations and rooms of the Vaterlandischer Front, etc. Many lost their lives through the bad treatment they received. This is proved by many statements taken on oath and by records of court proceedings against the guilty parties.

“The writer has also omitted to mention that with the exception of common criminals, the persons in concentration camps have spread Communism in Germany and Austria, either directly by word and deed or indirectly by fighting against its antipodes, National-Socialism. Communism, wherever it was in power, established as a principle the most dreadful terror accompanied by the most bestial tortures.

“It was not only sufficient to be considered an opponent: to belong to the intelligentsia, to possess the marks of a higher race were also sufficient to be treated in a way which would make German concentration camps look like convalescent homes, even if the stories about them are true. This was the case not only in Russia, but also formerly in Germany, in Hungary, in Spain and recently in the Baltic States. Swedish, and therefore neutral, investigations prove that in Latvia alone about 50,000 persons were slaughtered during the recent Bolshevik regime [October 1939 to June 1941]. Corpses which have been disinterred show signs of terrible tortures; women and girls were as little spared as in Spain.

“There is the testimony of Bishop Prohaszka about conditions during the Council’s period of Government in Hungary [i.e. the communist rule under Béla Kun in 1919]. He describes how corpses which had been defaced by torture were carted every night to the Danube bridge and thrown into the river. Priests’ hats were nailed to their heads; their nails were torn off; their eyes were gouged out with the jovial remark: Why should they arrive in the next world with their eyesight?! I am sorry to say Jews were nearly always responsible. When the country was freed from the Bolshevists, and many of them were condemned, an outcry against the White terror went up in the whole world; the real cruelties were almost ignored. Bishop Prohaszka shows that it has always been so as soon as it became necessary to defend oneself against Jews.

“The same thing has been happening since National Socialism came into power in Germany. It is a fact that even Anglican Bishops took the part of the Godless party of the desecrators of churches and of the murderers of priests. I can leave it to history to judge of their prayers for the Bolshevists as ‘Protagonists of Christian culture’.”

My forthcoming book will include previously unreported details of a plot to murder Hess soon after his arrival in Britain. Further information about this book will appear here soon.

In 2017 I spoke at a rally in Spandau, Germany, to mark the 30th anniversary of the death/murder of Rudolf Hess. Video of this event seems to have been purged from the internet, but the text of my speech is online at the Heritage & Destiny website.