Thirty-five years ago today the 93-year-old Rudolf Hess died at Spandau, where he had been the sole prisoner for more than twenty years. He had been incarcerated for almost half a century, since his crash landing in Scotland in May 1941.
Hess flew to Britain hoping that Germany and Britain could end their mutually-destructive war. He proposed that Britain should develop her Empire which was in no way threatened by Germany, who only required the return of her relatively modest colonies from the Kaiser’s era.
Under Hess’s proposals, Germany would be given a free hand in Europe, including dealing with Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Soon after his arrival, Hess was interviewed by Lord Simon (Lord Chancellor in Churchill’s cabinet) and Ivone Kirkpatrick, a senior Foreign Office diplomat and expert on Germany. The transcript of their conversation includes Hess pointing out:
“The Führer was of the opinion that the war would be a reason for a closer rapprochement between the countries, one which he had always attempted to bring about. The Führer’s aim ever since 1921 had always been to further this rapprochement between the countries and (that was) the aim which he had always had in view ever since he came to power.”
Unfortunately British leaders had rebuffed Hitler’s repeated peace offers, including his suggestion of an international convention against bombing of civilians.
“I could lay out a whole list of broken treaties and broken international laws. I would like to remind you of Lawrence of Arabia. It is well known that he resigned from his rank of colonel because England did not keep his word to the Arabs. The reproach of the suppression of small nations comes ill from England’s mouth.
“German people ask themselves constantly: What guarantee is there that England will keep to her treaties, her pacts, in any better way than she has done previously? In addition there is considerable bitterness in Germany because they know, the German people know, that the Führer did not want the war on the civilian population by means of bombing raids. The Führer made the suggestion at the beginning of the war that such bombing attacks should not occur.
“Despite this, ever increasing attacks made by the British Air Force on the German civil population resulted.”
After war had intensified during 1940, Hess perceived that Britain would not now easily agree a peace settlement without losing prestige, so he decided to take the risk of flying to Britain himself, “so that by his own presence in England, England would be enabled to consider an approach.” Hess hoped that he could provide some foundation on which peace talks could proceed.
Instead this martyr for peace found himself in one prison or another for the rest of his life.
To begin with Hess used cautious language about the Soviet Union, not wishing to give away too much in advance of what he hoped would be serious negotiations with the British. But by July 1941 when he wrote a memorandum titled “Germany – England from the viewpoint of war against the Soviet Union”, eventually handed to government minister and Daily Express owner Lord Beaverbrook, Hess was open (and prescient) about the overriding threat from Moscow that he believed an Anglo-German alliance should combat.
He believed that Germany was strong enough to defeat Russia, correctly pointing out that German morale was far higher in this war than it had been during the First World War:
“It will hardly be doubted that the spirit of the troops is magnificent. The elements which in the [first] world war eventually weakened the spirit of the German troops – the disruptive influences from home infected with Marxist communism, and hunger at home – are missing today.
“Thanks to the effects of National-socialism, the German armed forces are not only immune from Bolshevik propaganda, but fantastically anti-Bolshevik.”
Nevertheless, Hess asked influential Britons such as Beaverbrook to consider the consequences for the British Empire of a German defeat.
“Consequent on the Anglo-Bolshevik alliance, a victory for England would be a victory for the Bolsheviks.
“…Should England’s hopes of a German weakening be realised, the Soviet state, after the expansion of its armament capacity, would be the strongest military power in the world.
“Only a strong Germany as counter-balance, supported by all Europe, and in trustful relationship with England, could hinder this.
“I believe that Germany, destined by fate, was compelled at a given moment to draw aside the curtain covering the secret of the Bolshevik army, so that revelation of the danger might even yet make possible the defence of the civilised world.
“…England should further bear in mind the danger that would face certain parts of her Empire when the Bolshevik giant – which today is hardly conquerable by the biggest army in the world – has reached the military strength to be anticipated in the future.
“The danger will be still further increased by the attraction of Bolshevik ideas with the native-born populations with a low standard of living.
“…I am convinced that world domination awaits the Soviet Union in the future – if her power is not broken at the last minute – with the loss to Great Britain of her position as an Imperial power.
“…A genuine understanding with Germany would be, for England, a realisation of the efforts of Joe Chamberlain at the beginning of the century. It could have as a result the taking over by Germany of the role towards Russia which Joe Chamberlain, in his day, expected from Germany.
“It would be advantageous to England’s power in the future to divert to her Empire the strength which she has been expending in European affairs.
“Germany has no wish to mix in the affairs of the British Empire. On the contrary, she wishes to have no causes of friction with her.
“But this is only possible in the long run if Germany gets sufficient room in Europe in which to settle and to nourish her surplus population. Otherwise she would be compelled to seek the necessary room in other parts of the world, as well as to carry on her export at any price. Sooner or later this must lead to clashes in the British sphere of interest.
“The desire of Germany to avoid all causes of friction with the British Empire is evidenced by Germany’s refusal to strive after world domination, as has often been emphatically declared by the Führer. He explained to me that striving after world domination would only lead to irresponsible disintegration of strength. Germany needs these powers in the East, where her future lies. He would emphasise this in his political testament.
“…In conclusion: England must ask herself whether it pays her, at great sacrifice, to make the most precarious effort to conquer the Axis and, into the bargain, to strengthen with certainty, Bolshevik Russia as an immensely more dangerous opponent to her Empire.”
Last month – using recently released documents from the UK National Archives – I explained why we can now deduce that Hess was murdered by Tony Jordan, a black American prison guard at Spandau.
Today on the 35th anniversary of that murder, we should look back to 1941, and an earlier conspiracy to murder Hess within days of his arrival.
More than eighty years have passed since that murder plot, that was apparently foiled by the security service MI5, but the British authorities are still hiding aspects of the story.
Seventeen Polish officers were said by MI5 to have been part of the plot, in addition to two British officers including the expert sniper Alfgar Hesketh-Prichard.
According to senior MI5 officer Guy Liddell who investigated this conspiracy to murder, “the Poles seem to think that Hess may have come here to offer peace negotiations and that the British Government may succumb to the idea leaving the Poles in the hands of Germany.”
Though today’s British government still refuses to release full details of the murder plot, I have tracked down some of Hesketh-Prichard’s strange connections and will expose some of the forces behind the conspiracy in my forthcoming book.
The tragic irony was that Polish patriots and Hesketh-Prichard himself soon fell victim to the Bolshevik threat foreseen by Hess.
Having failed in an unofficial plot to kill one leading national-socialist in 1941, Hesketh-Prichard became chief liaison officer for SOE (the Special Operations Executive) training and equipping the Czech assassins who killed Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in 1942.
But in December 1944 when he took charge of another SOE team working with Slovene partisans on the mountainous Austrian-Yugoslav border, Hesketh-Prichard was murdered by his own allies!
The Kremlin gave the order to a communist partisan leader that Hesketh-Prichard should be eliminated, to prevent SOE from building alliances of non-communist guerrilla fighters. His remains were never found. Whether or not this was part of their motive, Moscow’s agents silenced the man at the centre of the first plot to murder Rudolf Hess.
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