I. The Hess Mess
II. Hess the Hermetic
III. Putschin' on the Ritz
IV. A Scottish Excursion
V. A Plea for Peace
VI. The Lore of the Lure
VII. Cooperating Coops
VIII. Capturing a Captain
IX. Conspiracies and Contingencies
X. Prisoner 007
XI. The Forgotten Flight
XII. Deputy Dopplegänger
XIII. To Make a Man
XIV: An Astonishing Assassination
XV: A Secret So Sinister
XVI: An Antarctic Epilogue
The Hess Mess
The choice of the word "mess" to describe this opera is much more than just a clever rhyme. What the Hess Mess represents is undoubtedly akin to the proverbial Rabbit Hole; the Chapel Perilous of Robert Anton Wilson.
The mess is riddled with so many twists, turns and contradictions that what ultimately emerges is the grandest conspiracy at not only the highest levels of the British government, but one that includes multiple superpowers and their various intelligence agencies.
In addition, something about the secret at the heart of the Hess Mess is so significant that it still warrants concealing from the public after more than three quarters of a century.
What could be so unacceptable to Britain, or the Allies, in the early 21st century? What does the Rudolf Hess story conceal that would in some way shock even today's cynical world?
The best place to start the Hess Mess is at the end, and a messy end for Hess it was.
On August 17, 1987, Rudolf Walter Richard Hess, once Adolf Hitler's Deputy Führer, was pronounced dead at a British Military Hospital in Berlin.
Having spent the last 41 years of his life in prison, the 93-year-old inmate had reportedly chosen to end his own life, hanging himself from a window latch with an electrical cord.
Only Hess among all the Nazis incarcerated after World War II was made to serve out his entire life sentence, and this includes other individuals of comparable rank, such as the Reich's Armaments Minister Albert Speer, the two chiefs of the German Kriegsmarine, Grand Admirals Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz, Reichsbank President Walther Funk, diplomat Konstantin von Neurath, and Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach.
These were some of the men that kept the gigantic war machine of the Third Reich smoothly running and functioning as a military power right up to the end of the war, and in Dönitz's case, had nearly brought Britain to its knees in the unrelenting U-boat warfare.
Indeed, of all the "designated successors" to Hitler, it was Dönitz that finally succeeded Hitler as the legal head of state and government after the latter's problematical "suicide" in the Berlin Führerbunker.
All of these men were released, including Raeder and Funk, even though both had received life sentences. Although their premature release was for "health and humanitarian" reasons, no explanation was ever offered for why Hess remained for another 21 years, despite suffering considerable health problems, which began in earnest after a perforated ulcer in 1969.
To make matters even more strange, an entire prison facility, known as Spandau Prison, was maintained just to house Hess! Built in 1876, Spandau Prison had a single occupant from the years 1966-1987: Rudolf Hess.
It's an absurd picture: the Allied powers--France, Great Britain, the USA, and the Soviet Union--all contributed to the maintenance and upkeep of the entire Spandau Prison, changing their military guards at regular monthly intervals, just to guard this one man.
The guard rotation shifted on a monthly basis, with the French guards during the months of February, June, and October; British guards in January, May, and September; American guards in April, August, and December; and Soviet guards in March, July, and November.
Why did Hess have to be guarded at all costs and have his access to the outside world strictly, and even cruelly, controlled?
Why was it necessary to maintain an entire prison, and the military guards and medical staffs of four world powers, just to keep watch over one individual who, by the end of his life, was a frail old man, and a threat to no one?
What secrets did he know that the Four Powers wanted to prevent others from knowing? Did they themselves even know what those secrets were, or did they only suspect? Or were they trying to break him and learn those secrets?
Or did Hess not know anything at all?
Was the man they were guarding even really Rudolf Hess?
Was "Spandau Hess" someone else, a double, substituted at some point in the drama? Was that the real reason for the Spandau Ballet of elaborate changings of the guard and maintaining an entire prison for just one man, and refusing to let him out, lest the substitution--the real secret--be discovered?
Hess the Hermetic
Of the myriad legendary characters that populate the lore of the two World Wars, countless biographies have been written. But there is a curious absence of writings concerning the life of times of one Rudolf Walter Richard Hess.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1894, Hess was the son of a moderately well-to-do German merchant. After enlisting in World War I, he sustained numerous wounds on both the Eastern and Western fronts, for which he earned the Iron Cross, 2nd class.
While several of his earlier wounds required months of recovery, his worst injury occurred in August of 1917, in which Hess was pierced by a bullet "that entered the upper chest near the armpit and exited near his spinal column" and collapsed his lung. While convalescing, Hess decided to train as a pilot in the air corps, and soon became very skilled.
After the war, Hess began networking extensively and started getting involved with certain paramilitary organizations in Germany and Bavaria.
Later that year Hess enrolled in the University of Munich and joined the infamous Thulegesellschaft, the Thule Society. Having been introduced to the quasi-occult lodge in Munich by a Freikorps friend, Hess was very taken with the society and thus began his well-known fascination with the occult.
While there has been much unfounded speculation regarding Hitler's connection to the Thule Society, including the theory that Hess and Hitler met at a meeting in 1919, there is no evidence that Hitler was even involved with the Thulegesellschaft, and in fact he had the head of the society arrested after his rise to power.
These doctrines proved to be highly influential, as they could "justifiably be regarded as a predecessor of the National Socialist German Workers' Party."
With this in mind, it's very curious indeed that the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutors forbade any mention of the occult during the trials, ostensibly for fear of Hess pursuing an "insanity" defense. This may have been a convenient cover story:
How influential were these occult societies and their doctrines on the Nazi power structure? Did there exist a faction within the Nazi government itself that opposed the policies of Hitler?
Hess drew considerable inspiration from his geopolitics mentor Professor General Karl Haushofer and his son Albrecht.
The influence of the Haushofers on Hess, and therefore Hitler, cannot be understated, despite Albrecht eventually being executed for his alleged involvement in the 1944 bomb plot against Hitler.
General Haushofer envisioned a complete revamping of German imperial policy, which included the belief that confronting Great Britain was completely unnecessary. He also saw no reason for a substantial German navy. In this vision:
The Haushofers happened to have numerous contacts in British Society, including the Duke of Hamilton, and these strange bedfellows had a mutual concern:
How much did the ideologies of the Haushofers affect the vision of Hess, and therefore Hitler, as well as the formation of the Nazi Party?
Was Rudolf Hess's "quixotic flight to Britain the last attempt of the old Thule Society--long dissolved, or driven underground--to affect world politics in the face of a Führer who had escaped their clutches and completely deformed their visions"?
Putschin' on the Ritz
In the aftermath of World War I, a veritable crucible of tensions began to emerge between the radical left and right in Germany, often in the form of street battles, with Bavaria in particular being a hotbed of this unrest.
The socialist-communist revolutionaries, known as the Spartacists, attacked and raided the Thule Society, stole documents and murdered some of its members.
The Thule Society soon struck back and retrieved the documents, and eventually the conservative element in Bavaria, "fed up with the growing slide of the Reich government to the left, attempted to seize power in Bavaria via Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who was made a councilor of Bavaria and given dictatorial powers."
On November 8, 1923, Hitler and 2,000 Nazis attempted to seize power in Bavaria in the Beer Hall Putsch. Hermann Göring was in charge of the "wet works" to be performed during the counter-coup, and Hess was entrusted with "secret orders to round up the ministers of the Bavarian state itself, which Hess was successful in doing."
During their time together in Landsberg Prison, Hess and Hitler began to forge an even stronger relationship, and they were also regularly visited by General Karl Haushofer. The experience established Hess as Hitler's "confidant, muse, and mentor."
It's well known that Hitler dictated much of Mein Kampf to Hess during this period of incarceration, and Hess's contributions shouldn't be understated, "particularly in those few lucid passages in the work, which were not the ravings of Hitler the thwarted artist, but of Hess, the multi-lingual university student of Haushofer."
During the Nuremberg trials, General Haushofer himself stated that it "was actually Hess, not Hitler, who had dictated some passages of the work."
After their short stint in prison, Haushofer and Hitler would soon serve as groomsmen for Hess's wedding, and a decade later, as godfathers for his son, Wolf Hess, who we will meet again near the end of the mess.
Before his fateful flight in 1941, Hess's power within the Nazi State apparatus could hardly be understated. Hess orchestrated the inception of the "Führer cult" by transforming "Herr Hitler" into der Führer.
Hess facilitated the incorporation of Thule Society imagery, like the Swastika, into Nazism, and even acted as the "sophisticated face" to Nazism when attempting to woo German industrialists and bankers to support the 1932 political campaign.
Hess became the Stellvertreter, which is usually translated as "Deputy", but is actually:
At the time, CFR-influenced American journal Foreign Affairs wondered if "Hess was not the ultimate intellectual creator of Adolf Hitler to the extent that a piano creates music."
In other words, nothing could happen in Germany without Hess's knowledge or approval. Prior to 1941, Hess was really the "brains of the operation."
Despite his role as the "conscience" of the party, and although he objected to the actions taken during the infamous Kristallnacht, Hess's signature was indeed on the infamous Nuremberg Race Laws. In addition, Hess reportedly disagreed with Hitler's halt order issued to the Wehrmacht at Dunkirk, an order which ultimately saved many British lives.
Hess also spotted the talent of Martin Bormann, making him his right hand man, "particularly of the party's own intelligence services." Together they urged action to take out the leadership of the Brownshirts during the Night of the Long Knives.
Although this particular foray into the Hess Mess gives Bormann no further mention, his role in the entire affair, and everything that followed (even after Bormann's "death"!), should not be discounted.
A Scottish Excursion
On May 10, 1941, a supremely enigmatic event occurred that is given remarkably scant mention in most of the standard histories of World War II.
One of the 20th century's greatest mysteries began when Rudolf Hess took off from Germany in a Messerschmitt 110 and flew to England. The general consensus is that he was attempting to bring about peace between Germany and England by a personal intervention, the implication being that "Hess's flight was a more-or-less a spontaneous affair, ill-thought-out and sloppily planned."
Hess was one of the only major Nazi leaders who had misgivings about Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. To Hess, this was far too risky with Great Britain still in the war, as well as the looming possibility of an American entry.
Luftwaffe General Adolf Galland also had misgivings about Barbarossa, and his first impression was that Hess's flight was a "desperate attempt to prevent the two-front war that would follow."
This chain of events raises several questions: When did Göring learn about the flight? What did he know about Hess's motivations? Why did he order a shootdown, especially a futile one? Göring, too, had his own concerns about Barbarossa:
Despite the narrative of the "official" version of events, Hess's flight wasn't "spontaneous" at all, as secret meetings did take place between Hess, General Haushofer and the General's son Albrecht to discuss the feasibility of peace overtures to Great Britain.
This interpretation of the Hess Mess suggests that "Hitler himself gave tacit approval for the idea, and that Albrecht Haushofer then utilized his prewar contacts and friendship with the Duke of Hamilton to contact the Duke to propose a meeting between him and Hess."
Hitler's pilot provided Hess with maps! As for Baur, he was rumored to have been involved in a plot to "kidnap" Hitler and fly him to Great Britain to surrender, but these allegations have never been verified. Coups aside, Baur did help Hess in some capacity.
Let us start by examining the "standard" narrative of Hess's flight:
After bailing out, "he was found by a farmer, marched off to the Home Guard and brought to a barracks in Glasgow. Insisting that he was one Oberleutnant Alfred Horn, he asked to see the Duke of Hamilton."
Meanwhile, in Germany, one of Hess's aides delivered a message to Hitler, who was in a conference at the time. Allegedly, upon receiving the letter, Hitler shouted "Oh my God, my God! He has flown to England!" In the letter, Hess wrote:
Hitler then ordered his aids to contact Göring, Bormann and Joachim von Ribbentrop, and he immediately placed Hess's adjutant under arrest.
An announcement was soon made that Hess had commandeered an aircraft against orders and that he may have been "a victim of hallucination."
The British followed with their own statement a few hours later, merely stating that Hess had come to Great Britain. In response, the German's updated their statement, making things look even worse:
The damage control had begun.
A Plea for Peace
To summarize the mess so far:
Even in this standard narrative, Hitler's foreknowledge of the plan is still up for considerable debate, suggesting that his "rage and fulminations on learning of the mission from Hess's letter was a bit of very convincing theater."
Hitler later would state that "I am deprived of the only two human beings among all those around me to whom I have been truly and inwardly attached: Dr. Todt (builder of the Westwall and Autobahn) is dead and Hess has flown away from me!"
Further indication of a wider plot can be found in the strange actions of Göring, who not only issued an impossible shootdown order, potentially to cover his own tracks, but he proceeded to deny any knowledge of the event the following day.
The more this event is scrutinized, the less likely that the Hess flight was the spontaneous blunder of a lone madman, rather it was "an international conspiracy of the highest order, involving powerful elements within both the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany."
And neither was Hess a "martyr for peace" as some revisionist works portray him--after all, he was still a Nazi.
It's important to consider the strategic position Great Britain and Germany found themselves in during the early months of 1941. Everything looked good for Germany, "yet, as preparations for Operation Barbarossa moved forward, the Churchill government continued to woo America to enter the war. Time was on Britain's, and not Germany's, side."
The Royal family was merely "the tip of the iceberg of a pro-peace party in Britain, a party that had some representation in the British peerage, and the various organs of government."
Many researchers believe that this "peace faction" emboldened Hess to make his fateful flight.
Another speculative scenario adds a fascinating new dimension to the Hess flight: the atomic bomb.
While the standard narrative of WWII depicts the Nazi atomic bomb project as fruitless, considerable evidence suggests otherwise, and the case has been made that actual tests of atomic bombs were performed by the Germans in October of 1944 and then again in March of 1945.
This possibility aside, "an actual existing atomic bomb project does rationalize Hitler's confidence in his invasion plans for Russia, and also rationalizes his inexplicable decision to declare war on the USA as his armies were freezing before the gates of Moscow."
The Lore of the Lure
For Churchill, Hess's sudden arrival was surely unwelcome, as it put the Prime Minister and his government in a very awkward position:
Two contemporary magazine articles written about the event both propagated the so-called "lure" hypothesis, namely that Hess was lured by British intelligence, "the implication being that there was no 'peace party' nor realistic hope that a negotiated peace with the Churchill government was possible."
Although certainly feasible, the lure hypothesis could itself be a "spinning" of the event, a "legend created to reassure America that Britain was not double-dealing and to extricate the Churchill government from the diplomatic difficulty caused by the Hess flight."
In 1942, soon after the USA entered the war, Churchill finally publicly addressed the Hess matter in an oft-overlooked exchange on the floor of the House of Commons:
To some observers, this speech is the "beginning of the conundrum" and clearly states the motivation of the Hess flight was to "gain access to the certain circles that could remove Churchill and his government from power."
In a further blow to the "spontaneous event" explanation for the Hess flight, "by the time of his flight to Scotland, several contacts had already been made between the German and British peace parties." In addition, discussions had already taken place in Sweden, Switzerland and Spain.
The reason Scotland was chosen as the destination was because of the German "peace party" and its connection to the Duke of Hamilton, Scotland's highest ranking peer, who had access to the Royal Family. Hess had been doing his homework as well, even brushing up on the British Constitution itself:
The British sovereign has certain "reserve powers" that can be used in times of constitutional crisis.
In other words, Hess wasn't merely petitioning the Duke of Hamilton, rather he was using the Duke to petition King George VI himself.
Hess's infamous flight is beginning to seem less fanciful after all.
Cooperating Coups
As one plunges deeper into the Hess Mess, a tangled web of covert connections is uncovered. Various correspondence from the time reveals a Haushofer-Hess peace faction in Germany that was carrying on secretive discussions with the British peace faction. In addition, they often attempted to avoid both the official channels of Great Britain and Germany for much of this correspondence. In one of these letters, Albrect Haushofer stated:
In addition, the "only genuine solution to European peace and security was a European federation, and a "fusion" between Germany and Britain, a fusion that the English are now about to conclude with the United States."
However, according to Albrecht Haushofer, there seemed to be very little possibility of a negotiated peace with Hitler.
Which brings us to a key question: What did Hitler know about the flight?
It seems much more likely, given what appear to be the coup plotters' eventual goals, that Hitler was kept in the loop to a certain extent, but not entirely.
Despite these attempts at negotiation, the response from Britain was unwavering: their distrust of Hitler was a "fatal obstacle" to any peace. Notably absent is any reference to peace with Germany. The Germans had similar demands regarding the future of the Churchill government.
To get a better understanding of the scope of collusion involved with such a scheme, it's important to consider the extraordinary details of the flight itself.
Hess's plane itself, a Me 110E-2/N series aircraft, had undergone significant modification, including custom drop tanks and enhancements to his radio system.
Modifications aside, a glaringly inconvenient detail emerges when one considers the oil consumption required for such a lengthy flight. Some researchers have noted that it's unlikely the aircraft would have had made the trip without running out of oil and crashing into the sea.
After considering the possible routes and options, the city of Göttingen becomes a strong possibility.
There is similar evidence of collusion on the British side, as the response has long been acknowledged to have been lackluster, including testimony from a Royal Air Force radar operator that "he was given orders to relay to aircraft that the incoming German airplane was not to be attacked."
Some have even accused the RAF of "pulling its punches" that May evening, stating that "at least some in the Royal Air Force command structure in Scotland were well aware of where Hess intended to land."
According to the "official" narrative, Hess's destination was Dungavel House, but its small airstrip has led some to suggest that a nearby RAF base was Hess's real target.
However, clearly, something went wrong on that fateful night, and Hess was forced to parachute:
According to the standard narrative of the Hess flight that was rather abruptly decided upon by both the British and German authorities, Hess was a madman with mad intentions, and such a notion of a significant "peace faction" in Britain was almost entirely fanciful. But was it?
They advocated for an entente with Germany, and perhaps an eventual alliance, for only Germany could challenge the Soviet Union and offer counter-balancing weight to growing American influence.
This sentiment was far more popular than is often acknowledged by historians:
As already stated, one of Germany's concerns at the time was an alliance, or even fusion, between the US and the UK, which was "always the stated goal of Cecil Rhodes, and his Rhodes scholarships were established as one of the mechanisms to effect this goal."
According to the research of Carroll Quigley, there were in fact "pro Atlanticist-unionists" within the US and the UK who sought an actual union of the two countries.
Clearly, numerous influential people in the British establishment opposed Hitler, but not necessarily Germany.
For example, in 1939, shortly after Germany's invasion of Poland, the future Duke of Hamilton submitted the following to the London Times:
Not only does the letter refer to Hitler's aggression and not to Germany's, but it also recognizes the principle of Lebensraum and mentions the post-WWI injustices suffered by Germany.
Why, then, the reference to colonies? The direct reference to the infamous Kristallnacht may give us a clue:
Hess, while a firm believer in international Jewish-Zionist plots, did offer protection to the Haushofers, as Frau Haushofer was half Jewish.
The future Duke of Hamilton may therefore have been appealing directly to parties in Germany that were uncomfortable with the direction Hitler's Reich was taking.
The same day that the future Duke of Hamilton's "peace message" was published in the Times, the German BBC service broadcast the letter.
This letter may ultimately be one of the most crucial elements of the entire Hess Mess, as it becomes clear that either Hess "undertook his mission with the intention of dissembling to the British, concluding a peace, and keeping Hitler in power; or he undertook his mission with the intention of participating in the overthrow of Hitler's government, in order to procure a peace with Britain."
Despite Hess's loyalty towards Hitler, this possibility is strengthened by the curious actions of Göring on the night of Hess's flight, as well as Göring's own history of conducting peace negotiations with the British. Göring was Hitler's successor in offices of state, while Hess was his designated representative and successor in the party.
An attempt had even been made in 1941 via contacts between the Duke of Hamilton and the Haushofers for the Duke and Hess to meet on neutral territory, specifically Lisbon. Lord Halifax was aware of these plans, and notably did not share them with Churchill, who had been chosen prime minister over Halifax just a few months previously.
Regardless, it was clear that preparations for a meeting continued on the German side, and this fact alone invalidates the nation that Hess decided to undertake such an absurd mission on some "crazy lark."
In addition, at Hess's express bidding, Albrect Haushofer had been negotiations with the British ambassador in Madrid, Sir Samuel Hoare. As a result of these negotiations, it was agreed that peace could not be reached without the removal of both Hitler and Churchill.
It has even been claimed that Haushofer, Hess, Halifax and Hoare had planned a secret meeting somewhere in Portugal or Spain in early 1941. The French press even reported that Hess was in Spain in 1941, compelling the German press to issue a denial of the French story.
It should be noted that three of the men who allegedly met in early 1941, Hess, Haushofer, and Halifax, were all deeply disturbed by the policies of the Nazis toward the Jews. In 1938, Lord Halifax himself had attempted to initiate discussions in the War Cabinet about providing a Jewish homeland in Western Australia or British Guiana.
Could Hess really bring himself to lead a coup d'etat against Hitler himself? An essay from his university days may give us a clue, namely that although Germany needed a "severe and ruthless" leader, notably, once he had succeeded in restoring Germany's standing in the world, "he would have to stand aside and allow a more moderate government to assume power."
To add further credence to this theory, in his initial contacts with the British after his capture, Hess indicated that he was not speaking for Hitler, but for Germany.
Why then did Hess undertake such a flight at great personal risk to Great Britain itself?
When Hess was forced to parachute and land in a Scottish farmer's field, he was therefore "up for grabs" between two potentially opposing factions within the British government/intelligence apparatus. Conflicting narratives in the official account of what occurred after Hess's capture strongly support this scenario.