Rudolph Hess

Discussion in 'The Third Reich' started by Wise1, May 31, 2004.

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  1. Kyt

    Kyt Very Senior Member

    From 1966 Hess was the sole prisoner. Both Speer and Schirach, who had been sentenced to 20 years each, would have been there in the early 60s too.
     
  2. Capt.Sensible

    Capt.Sensible Well-Known Member

    My short but inglorious military career included a couple of weeks spent at Cultybraggen Camp, near Comrie, where Hess was detained in the few weeks after the crash. I don't think the facilities had been upgraded since 1941....
     
  3. Len Trim

    Len Trim Senior Member

    Strangely enough Cultybraggan camp is just along the road from the school I teach in. I believe it is the subject of a local community buy out to stop housing development.

    Len
     
  4. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Len,
    Any photos of your time in Berln?
     
  5. Capt.Sensible

    Capt.Sensible Well-Known Member

    Strangely enough Cultybraggan camp is just along the road from the school I teach in. I believe it is the subject of a local community buy out to stop housing development.

    Len
    It would be nice if a few of the many former defence sites flogged off recently were actually put aside for the use of the communities that have supported them for so long. On the other hand, there must be a demand for a local housing initiative in your area...politics....tricky...tricky....
    H
     
  6. Len Trim

    Len Trim Senior Member

    I believe I have a couple of prints of me in dress uniform somewhere and definitely some of East German troops guarding an 'eternal flame' somewhere in East Berlin, next to a mass grave/ memorial. I also remember a photo of some of us doing a river crossing (Havel) in the depth of winter. I mean swimming pushing your kit, none of this namby pamby boat stuff. I must go and look the photos out. Found my dress para belt the other day. Sadly it had shrunk and no longer fitted my waist ;-)

    Len

    Len
     
  7. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Rudolf Hess... 'unbalanced'?
    (well, more unbalanced than his contemporaries...)

    England flight?
    Nuremberg high strangeness, genuine or a cover?

    Cheers,
    Adam.
     
  8. BORIS

    BORIS Junior Member

    Dont want to offer an opinion on his mental health myself, but the ''National Archives'' have just released these top secret documents some of which relate to his mental health .....[they are free to download!] havnt looked yet myself, hope the link works and is of interest....

    News | 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.

    BORIS.
     
  9. BORIS

    BORIS Junior Member

    Just started trawling through it, very interesting! though heavy going!
     
  10. 52nd Airborne

    52nd Airborne Green Jacket Brat

    My father did guard duties at Spandau prison while he was stationed in Berlin in the 1960's. When I spoke to my father about Hess he just said (Using his own words) that he was nutty as a fruit cake!
     
  11. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    My father did guard duties at Spandau prison while he was stationed in Berlin in the 1960's. When I spoke to my father about Hess he just said (Using his own words) that he was nutty as a fruit cake!
    :lol:
    Well that's good stuff 'straight from the horse's mouth', did your dad ever mention specifics?

    I just can't decide if he was delusional or trying to cover up his stupid mistakes. The behaviour at Nuremberg was frankly bizarre, the amnesia that suddenly cleared up, the strange statements that offered nothing to improve his case, the swaying and mumbling while sat in the dock...

    This is interesting:
    The Avalon Project : Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 1
    (some excellent Nuremberg papers on there) It contains comment from Rosenberg that Hess was perfectly normal and stable before his flight to England, and as ever the psychiatrists/psychologists that comment on Hess seem to always come to different conclusions.

    Can anyone recommend a good biography of the man? I read one years ago but it was a bit 'tabloid', can't remember the details now.

    Cheers,
    Adam.
     
  12. marcus69x

    marcus69x I love WW2 meah!!!

    I remember watching about that Nuremburg trial on TV. I've never really looked into Hess but from what I've seen and read, I would say yes, he was mad.

    At first I thought he was faking the amnesia at his trial, perhaps so he would be locked in a mental institute rather than face certain death?
    But if I'm right, didn't he admit his pretence just as the judges were about to show some 'leniency' on his sentence? If so that alone says it all for me.

    But what about him flying to Scotland in hope of peace talks? Like I said before, did he really think we'd just let him get back on his plane to germany?

    Madder than a Mad Hatter. :wink:

    marcus
     
  13. 52nd Airborne

    52nd Airborne Green Jacket Brat

    :lol:
    Well that's good stuff 'straight from the horse's mouth', did your dad ever mention specifics?Adam.

    Vacuuming the lawn was one thing that my father mentioned.
     
  14. machine shop tom

    machine shop tom Senior Member

    My father did guard duties at Spandau prison while he was stationed in Berlin in the 1960's. When I spoke to my father about Hess he just said (Using his own words) that he was nutty as a fruit cake!

    I wonder if being the only inmate at Spandou Prison might have pushed him over the edge he was teetering on.

    tom
     
  15. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    I always thought it was very unfair that he was kept in that prison whilst other, more culpable characters (Speer, Von Schirach) got out. It was cruelty, nothing more.
     
  16. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Old Hickory Recon

    In recent years have the Russians given any reason as to why they were so adamant they wanted to keep him locked up and not the others?
     
  17. smc

    smc Member

    Don't forget the theory that the Hess in Spandau wasn't the same Hess that took off from Germany in 1941.
     
  18. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    This is part of the problem, such a long-standing cause celebre beginning with a dark regime, continuing through world war and ending in cold war distrust and secrecy inevitably brings the most complex veneer of conspiratorial baggage with it.

    (by the way Boris, you're not kidding those documents are heavy going, about 2/3rds of the way through I begin to feel I'm reading the same thing over and over again... may have to start again ;))
     
  19. The Aviator

    The Aviator Discharged

    The Hess Spandau prison farce

    Rudolf Hess, was the deputy furher of the Third Reich from the time of Hitler's election. He served 7 1/2 months for participating in the Beer Putsch. Despite his apparent high rank, Hess was marginalized within the Nazi leadership, with men like Himmler, Goering, and Bormann gaining more influence over Hitler with time. In May 1941, Hess flew a Messerschmitt Bf 110 to England, crash-landing in Scotland, where he was promptly arrested.

    His stated purpose for flying to the UK was to attempt to negotiate peace between the UK and the Third Reich. The Nazi leadership proclaimed him to be insane after his flight. He was imprisoned for the rest of the war, stood trial at Nuremberg, and was found guilty of "crimes against peace" and "conspiracy to wage aggressive war", and found not guilty of "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes".

    Along with Walther Funk and Admiral Raeder, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Spandau Prison in West Berlin, a prison administered under a four-power rotating arrangement. Whereas Raeder and Funk were released in the 50s, Hess served the rest of his life in Spandau, and was claimed to have died by suicide and by strangulation with an electrical cord in 1987.
    Quote:

    Russia blocked UK plans to free Rudolf Hess

    Britain tried in vain to allow Hitler's deputy to be freed after 30 years in jail for war crimes, according to newly released secret files.

    However, the Russians never forgave Rudolf Hess for what they believed was his double treachery in seeking peace with Britain just before the Nazis launched their attack on the Soviet Union.

    The documents, released to National Archives in Kew, south-west London, relate to the period between 1973 and 1974, when Hitler's former deputy had been the sole prisoner in the Allied Military Prison in Berlin — Spandau — for about eight years.

    The prison was jointly governed by Britain, France, America and Russia. By 1974 the western allies were prepared to allow Hess to live in limited freedom but they were powerless unless the Soviets agreed.

    Correspondence between the countries reveals the depths of scrutiny of Hess's movements and the tensions over his release.

    It took 32 military guards, 20 warders and four prison governors — one from each Allied country — to maintain round-the-clock surveillance.

    In 1974, as Hess approached his 80th birthday alone in Spandau, British appeals for clemency were backed by President Nixon in America and the French and West German governments.

    There was wide support for a humanitarian release. One of the supporters was Airey Neave, the Tory MP who had been an official at the Nuremburg war crimes trials and a prisoner of war in Colditz.

    According to the documents, he told William Rogers, the Labour foreign secretary: "Hess is confined in very cramped quarters and the Russians interpret the regulations very harshly. I hope you share my view that this is inhuman, and that the Soviet policy of vengeance towards a man of 79 should not prevail."

    But the Russian gaolers kept up a relentless campaign of humiliation.

    Their attitude was summed up by the Soviet party newspaper Pravda, which decreed: "The conscience of the people dictates that the Hitlerite lieutenant Hess must drink his retribution to the bottom of the cup."

    Hess flew to Britain on May 10, 1941 seeking to end the war with the western allies. His terms were rejected but the Russian leader, Josef Stalin, believed he had tipped off Winston Churchill about Hitler's invasion of Russian territory on June 22, repudiating their non-aggression treaty.

    Hess died in Spandau in August 1987, aged 93. A verdict of suicide was recorded, because of an electric cord around his neck, although his family claimed he had been murdered by his captors.

    Source: Russia blocked UK plans to free Rudolf Hess - Telegraph
     

    Attached Files:

  20. marcus69x

    marcus69x I love WW2 meah!!!

    A short reply mate, but I think he shouldn't have been released, no. However, I do think that in his frail later years, they could have made him a little more comfortable.

    marcus
     

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