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Rudolf Hess
was the deputy Fuehrer, Hitler’s No. 2 man. Nevertheless, Hess’s
sense of having been removed from centers of policymaking power,
coupled with his knowledge of the planned attack on the Soviet
Union, evidently joined with other factors to prompt his bold
decision to fly to England. Hess set out on his mission in early May
1941, hoping that Britain would be willing to make peace with
Germany after the impending invasion of the USSR. To this day, it is
not clear whether the initiative for the flight was purely Hess’s
or whether it was inspired, albeit indirectly, by Hitler. In either
case, Hitler repudiated Hess’s mission as soon as its failure
became known. Hess was arrested when he landed in England and was
held there until the end of the war. After the war, he was
prosecuted along with the other surviving leaders of the Nazi regime
at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, and was held in
Spandau prison after being found guilty. He committed suicide there
in 1987. |
