Rudolf Hess The Deputy

The first biography of Rudolf Hess since his death in August 1987. Traces Hess's political evolution towards Nazism. He was in Munich in 1919 and joined the anti-Marxist anti-democratic, and antisemitic Thule Gesellschaft. Hess became a disciple of Karl Haushofer and a friend of Dietrich Eckart, editor of the antisemitic newspaper "Auf Gut Deutsch" and later of the "Völkischer Beobachter". He was attracted to Hitler in 1919, becoming an intimate follower and a fervent promoter of Hitler's personality cult. Hess endorsed Nazi racial doctrine and antisemitic propaganda and signed, as Hitler's deputy, anti-Jewish decrees from 1933 to 1938 (although he reportedly protested against the "Kristallnacht" pogrom). Pp. 165ff. deal with his flight to Scotland in May 1941 and its repercussions.

After outwitting some ducks, Iktomi, the Indian trickster, is outwitted by Coyote.

On 10 May 1941, Rudolf Hess - Deputy Fuhrer of the Third Reich - embarked on his astonishing flight from Augsburg to Scotland. At dusk the same day, he parachuted on to a Scottish moor and was taken into custody. His arrival provoked widespread curiosity and speculation, which has continued to this day. Why did Hess fly to Scotland? Had Hitler authorized him to attempt to negotiate peace? Was British Intelligence involved? What was his state of mind at the time? Drawing on a variety of reliable archive and eyewitness sources in Britain, Germany and the USA, authors Roy Conyers Nesbit and Georges van Acker have written what must be the most objective assessment of the Hess' story yet to be published. Their compelling narrative not only dispels many of the extraordinary conspiracy theories, but also uncovers some intriguing new facts.

On May 10, 1941, Rudolf Hess, then the deputy führer, parachuted over Renfrewshire in Scotland on a mission to meet with the Duke of Hamilton, ostensibly to broker a peace deal with the British government. After being held in the Tower of London, he was transferred to Mytchett Place near Aldershot. The house was fitted with microphones and sound recording equipment, guarded by a battalion of soldiers and code-named Camp Z. Churchill's instructions were that Hess should be strictly isolated, and that every effort should be taken to get information out of him. During the ensuing thirteen months, a psychological battle was waged between intelligence officers using the new Freudian techniques of "dynamic psychologies" and the man who had been a heartbeat away from Hitler. Stephen McGinty uses new documentation and contemporaneous reports, diaries, letters and memos to piece together a riveting account of the claustrophobia, paranoia and highstakes gamesmanship being played out in an English country house. Camp Z is a locked-room mystery in which the locked room is a man's head, and no one is certain whether the mind within it, which holds information that could help change the course of the Second World War, is sane or insane.

Rudolf Hess was Adolf Hitler's Deputy Führer until, in 1941, he flew to Scotland, ostensibly to negotiate peace between Germany and Britain. Captured by the British, he was held for the rest of the War, before being convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. Desmond Zwar collaborated with Col. Burton C. Andrus, who was Commandant of Nuremberg Prison during the Trials, on his book The Infamous of Nuremberg, and with Col. Eugene K. Bird, US Governor of Spandau Prison (where Hess was held for over forty years), on The Loneliest Man in the World. For reasons of practicality, neither of these books told the full story, which is now revealed for the first time in Talking to Rudolf Hess. As well as his interviews with Hess and others, Zwar tells the story of how this book came to be written, including how Hess hid proofs in his underpants, how Bird was sacked by the US Army and how the CIA tried to recover the transcripts.

All true stories, easy to read, fast paced with high amounts of heroism - many based on World War II. New jackets, author interviews and tour and major P.R. activity.