Rudolf Hess

Rudolf Hess

Rudolf Walter Richard Hess, also spelled Heß (26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987), was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s. On the eve of war with the Soviet Union, he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom, where he was arrested and became a prisoner of war. Hess was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he served at Spandau Prison, Berlin, where he died in 1987. After World War II Winston Churchill wrote of Hess, "He was a medical and not a criminal case, and should be so regarded."

On 27–28 September 2007, British news services published descriptions of disagreement between his Western and Soviet captors over his treatment and how the Soviet captors were steadfast in denying his release. In July 2011, the remains of Hess were exhumed from his grave in Bavaria and destroyed, after it became a site of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis.

Read more about Rudolf Hess:  Early Life, World War I, Hitler, Deputy Führer, Flight To Scotland, Death and Legacy

Famous quotes containing the word hess:

    Your children are not here to fill the void left by marital dissatisfaction and disengagement. They are not to be utilized as a substitute for adult-adult intimacy. They are not in this world in order to satisfy a wife’s or a husband’s need for love, closeness or a sense of worth. A child’s task is to fully develop his/her emerging self. When we place our children in the position of satisfying our needs, we rob them of their childhood.
    —Aaron Hess (20th century)