The Truth About Rudolf Hess by James Douglas-Hamilton

Author:James Douglas-Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781473876187
Publisher: Frontline Books
Published: 2016-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

NOTES:

1.General Professor Karl Haushofer’s grandson, Martin Haushofer, told the author that ‘Minero Silricola Limited’ was an accommodation address for the Abwehr, the German Secret Service. It appears that this point had not been picked up by MI5 in 1940.

2.Hamilton papers.

Hess standing in the cockpit of an Me 110.

5

The Leap into the Dark: 10 May 1941

Back in Germany Hess’s influence with Hitler had declined to an all-time low. The American Under Secretary of State, Sumner Welles, wrote after an interview with Hess on 3 March 1940:

Notwithstanding the impression so often given me previously that Hess possessed a powerful and determining influence in German affairs, the effect he made upon me at the time was that of a man who had only the lowest order of intelligence. …

It was so obvious that Hess was merely repeating what he had been told to say to me … and that he had neither explored the issues at stake nor thought anything out for himself, that I made no attempt to enter into any discussion with him.

Nobody was more aware of the situation than Hess himself. There was no question of his being disloyal in any circumstances; and, as Albrecht Haushofer explained to Rainer Hildebrandt:

Hess leads a conventional bourgeois life but as soon as Hitler in some form enters his subconscious he automatically becomes liable to mental excesses. …

During the first years I tried to warn Hess of the dangers which he could avoid and proved to him in black and white Hitler’s mistakes … Hess saw all this and was determined to intervene where necessary. At the end of our talk he said, ‘I will ask the Führer; I am sure he will understand and will turn everything to the best’ …

It is Hess’s dream to be able by some great mediating act to save the Reich for Germany, for his friends and first of all for Hitler, his idol. Hess is a Parsifal, and all injustice committed by Hess is in fact due to his bondage and under a kind of hypnosis.

It was to be expected that Hess would feel that he could not play his part in saving the Third Reich by remaining tied to office work. In September 1939 he asked Hitler for permission to fly with the Luftwaffe at the Front. Hitler refused and demanded an assurance from Hess that he would not fly again, whereupon Hess promised not to fly for one year. By September 1940 Hess felt free from his promise. During the same month he tried to put out his peace feeler to Britain through Albrecht Haushofer. However, as this letter never received a reply, Hess thought that he would make another attempt, this time without the knowledge of his wife and the Haushofers, and above all without the knowledge of Hitler. He would embark on a personal unauthorised mission of a secret and dramatic kind.

He must have known about the suggestion which Goering had made to Hitler just after Britain’s declaration of war against Germany. Goering then said, ‘We must fly to Britain and I’ll try to explain the position.

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