Why did hess fly to scotland

Had someone sent him to Scotland or had someone sent for him? News of Hess's flight was a bombshell in Berlin, and Nazi authorities quickly moved to disassociate him from the regime. The German public was quickly told that Hess suffered from mental disturbance and hallucinations. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist who knew much about such tactics, feared that the British would use Hess as part of a devastating campaign targeting German morale.

But the furor gradually died down. Though Hess held a powerful title, his actual influence in the Nazi hierarchy had waned dramatically by , so much so that some have speculated that his flight was born of hopes to regain Hitler's favor by delivering him an agreement with the British.

Instead his departure simply consolidated the power of his ambitious and manipulative former deputy Martin Bormann. Yet a persistent theory has suggested that Hess's ill-fated peace mission was actually carried out with Hitler's knowledge—and the understanding that he'd be disavowed as insane if it failed. Hess's adjutant, Karlheinz Pintsch, had handed Hitler an explanatory letter from Hess on the morning after the flight, and Uhl discovered a report featuring Pintsch's description of that encounter in the State Archive of the Russian Federation.

Pintsch claimed that the Hitler received his report calmly. This version aligns well with Soviet claims dating back to Stalin himself that British intelligence services had been touch with Hess and duped him into the flight. In fact they may align too well, for the statement was produced during the decade when Pintsch was an often-tortured Soviet prisoner and its language smacks of Cold War propaganda terminology—suggesting the Soviets coerced the version from Pintsch.

Indeed other witnesses reported a very different reaction from Hitler. Speer discussed the flight with Hess himself 25 years later when both were incarcerated in Spandau. It had also been one of Hitler's recurrent formulas before and occasionally even during the war.

As with much of the Hess affair definitive evidence is lacking but a few tantalizing possibilities exist. Padfield has unearthed intriguing nuggets from period sources : the diary of a well-placed Czech exile who'd viewed a report suggesting an English trap, reports of Soviet spies who'd uncovered now untraceable evidence of the same. In the son of a Finnish intelligence agent who'd been on Britain's payroll claimed that his father was involved in the plot.

The official records that have been made available, perhaps not surprisingly, reveal no such role for the British intelligence services. The most plausible motivation for such a plot, were it ever to have existed, was that the British hoped it would convince Hitler to scrap or at least postpone an invasion of Britain; a peace settlement would make such a drastic and dangerous step unnecessary and free him to focus on the battle against his most hated enemy—the Soviet Union.

MI5 files declassified in suggest that Hess did have his adviser Albrecht Haushofer pen a letter to Hamilton in , suggesting that a neutral site meeting could advance secret peace talks.

British intelligence intercepted that letter, investigated and exonerated Hamilton for being part of a pro-peace Nazi plot, and seriously considered the possibility of replying to set up a double-cross. But they dismissed the scheme and simply let the matter drop without ever knowing that Hess was the man behind the communication, the official files suggest.

However those files are far from complete. The information is said to have originated from London but both British and German records can verify that no such statement was ever issued from official sources. However, no German records exist to substantiate the theory that Heydrich escorted Hess for any part of his flight or that he flew over the North Sea that day.

Public records show that three Spitfires and a Defiant were ordered to attack, not escort, the approaching enemy aircraft. Fires were started on both sides of the Thames and the number of casualties was high, estimated at more than 1, killed and 2, injured, stretching the emergency services to the limit.

There are claims that 33 German raiders were shot down, but German figures indicate that only 10 failed to return. Hess crossed the English coast miles to the north of London at There was no air raid alert at London until Hugh Thomas, a former Army surgeon, had a theory that an imposter flew to Britain on 10 May and that the real Hess was murdered.

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that the pilot who flew to Scotland on 10 May was truly Rudolf Hess; he was positively identified by Ivone Kirkpatrick, the Foreign Office expert on Germany and while in Britain Hess wrote to his family and friends on numerous occasions — his letters contained personal details which only he could have known — and his handwriting matched that of letters written by Hess pre-war.

Apart from the true identity of Hess, there is also the overriding question of why any alleged double would accept life imprisonment without revealing their true identity. The Rudolf Hess flight: 10 conspiracies. Here are 10 of these conspiracy theories: 1. The Duke of Hamilton was associated with Hess and implicated in his flight Upon being captured in Scotland, Hess gave a false name and said he had an important message for the Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, the Duke of Hamilton, a fellow aviator whom he had never met.

Hess right with his geopolitics professor and father of Albrecht Haushofer, Karl Haushofer left , circa Rudolf Hess in British military intelligence induced Hess to make his flight The Russians first propagated this belief, after Stalin had not believed an urgent warning from the British in April that Hitler was about to attack their country. Hess at Landsberg Prison in , awaiting trial. Hess could not have flown over German territory without authorisation In the same way that RAF aircraft could fly over Britain, aircraft with German markings could fly unhindered almost anywhere over their own territory.

Hess took off from Calais and not Augsburg Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet published a report on 23 May stating that Hess had not set off from Augsburg, or from Germany at all, but had rather taken off from Calais. A Messerschmitt Bf, similar to the one flown by Rudolf Hess. It was not Hess who flew to Scotland, but an imposter Hugh Thomas, a former Army surgeon, had a theory that an imposter flew to Britain on 10 May and that the real Hess was murdered. The changing of the guard at Spandau Prison.

Sign up for our newsletter Enter your email address below to get the latest news and exclusive content from The History Press delivered straight to your inbox. He was eventually tried at the military tribunals in Nuremberg and incarcerated in Spandau prison in Berlin, where he died in The wartime president of the United States, Franklin D.

Roosevelt, was one of the leading subscribers to the theory that the man in Spandau was an imposter, an idea perpetuated by a British doctor who worked at Spandau, W. Hugh Thomas. Had the real Rudolf Hess escaped justice and settled abroad?

Now the mystery has finally been solved by a piece of DNA detective work by a retired military doctor from the US Army and forensic scientists from Austria. They conclude that the prisoner known as Spandau 7 was indeed the Nazi criminal Rudolf Hess. Hess has continued to generate historical interest.

During his incarceration in Spandau, Hess was monitored and cared for as was any other prisoner.