Rudolf Hess

This article is about the Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler. For the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, see Rudolf Höss. For the Californian artist, see Rudolf Hess (artist).

Rudolf Hess
Hess in 1935
Deputy to the Führer of the Nazi Party
In office 21 April 1933 – 12 May 1941
Führer	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Martin Bormann (Chief of the Party Chancellery)
Reichsminister without portfolio
In office 1 December 1933 – 12 May 1941
President	Paul von Hindenburg
Chancellor	Adolf Hitler
Chief of the Nazi Party Liaison Office
In office 20 March 1933 – 12 May 1941
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Martin Bormann
Private Secretary to the Führer of the Nazi Party
In office 1925–1935
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Martin Bormann
Additional positions
1939–1941	Member of the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich
June–September 1933	Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party
1933–1941	Member of the Greater German Reichstag
1932–1941	Chairman of the Nazi Party's Central Political Committee
Personal details
Born	Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (1894-04-26)26 April 1894 Alexandria, Khedivate of Egypt
Died	17 August 1987(1987-08-17) (aged 93) Spandau Prison, West Berlin, West Germany
Cause of death	Suicide by hanging
Resting place	Friedhof Wunsiedel, Wunsiedel, Germany
Party	Nazi Party (1920–1941)
Spouse	Ilse Pröhl ​ (m. 1927)​
Children	Wolf Rüdiger Hess
Education	École supérieure de commerce, Neuchâtel LMU Munich
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	German Empire
Branch/service	Imperial German Army
Years of service	1914–1918
Rank	Leutnant der Reserve
Unit	7th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment 1st Infantry Regiment
Battles/wars	World War I First Battle of Ypres Battle of Verdun Romanian Front
Awards	Iron Cross, 2nd Class
Criminal information
Criminal status	Deceased
Convictions	Conspiracy to commit crimes against peace Crimes of aggression
Trial	Nuremberg trials
Criminal penalty	Life imprisonment

Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (Heß in German; 26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987) was a German politician, convicted war criminal, and a leading member of the Nazi Party in Germany. Appointed Deputy to the Führer (Stellvertreter des Führers) in 1933, Hess held that position until 1941, when he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate the United Kingdom's exit from the Second World War. He was taken prisoner and eventually convicted of crimes against peace. He was still serving his life sentence at age 93 when he committed suicide in 1987.

Hess enlisted as an infantryman in the Imperial German Army at the outbreak of World War I. He was wounded several times during the war and was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd Class, in 1915. Shortly before the war ended, he enrolled to train as an aviator, but he saw no action in that role. He left the armed forces in December 1918 with the rank of Leutnant der Reserve. In 1919, he enrolled at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), where he studied geopolitics under Karl Haushofer, a proponent of the concept of Lebensraum ('living space'), which became one of the pillars of Nazi ideology. He joined the Nazi Party on 1 July 1920 and was at Hitler's side on 8 November 1923 for the Beer Hall Putsch, a failed Nazi attempt to seize control of the government of Bavaria. While serving a prison sentence for this attempted coup, he assisted Hitler with Mein Kampf, which became a foundation of the political platform of the Nazi Party.

After Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, Hess was appointed Deputy to the Nazi Party Führer in April of the same year. He was elected to the Reichstag in the March elections, was made a Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party in June, and in December 1933, he became Minister without Portfolio in Hitler's cabinet. In addition to appearing on Hitler's behalf at speaking engagements and rallies, Hess signed into law much of the government's legislation, including the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, which stripped the Jews of Germany of their rights in the lead-up to the Holocaust. Hess was also appointed in 1938 to the Secret Cabinet Council and to the Council of Ministers for the Defence of the Reich in August 1939. Hitler decreed on the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939 that Hermann Göring was his official successor, and named Hess as next in line.

By the start of the war, Hess was sidelined from most important decisions, and many in Hitler's inner circle thought him to be mad. On 10 May 1941, Hess made a solo flight to Scotland, where he hoped to arrange peace talks with the Duke of Hamilton, whom he believed to be a prominent opponent of the British government's war policy. The British authorities arrested Hess immediately on his arrival and held him in custody until the end of the war, when he was returned to Germany to stand trial at the 1946 Nuremberg trials of major war criminals. During much of his trial, he claimed to be suffering from amnesia, but he later admitted to the tribunal that this had been a ruse. The tribunal convicted him of crimes against peace and of conspiracy with other German leaders to commit crimes. He served a life sentence in Spandau Prison; the Soviet Union blocked repeated attempts by family members and prominent politicians to procure his early release. While still in custody as the only prisoner in Spandau, he hanged himself in 1987 at the age of 93.

After his death, the prison was demolished to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. His grave, bearing the inscription "Ich habs gewagt" ("I dared to do it"), became a site of regular pilgrimage and demonstrations by neo-Nazis. In 2011, authorities refused to renew the lease on the gravesite, so his remains were exhumed and cremated, and the gravestone was destroyed.

Early life and family

Hess, the eldest of three children, was born on 26 April 1894 in al-Ibrahimiyya, a suburb of Alexandria, in the British-controlled Khedivate of Egypt (a nominal vassal of the Ottoman Empire), into a wealthy German family. Originally from Bohemia, the family settled in Wunsiedel, Upper Franconia, in the 1760s. His grandfather, Johann Christian Hess, married Margaretha Bühler, the daughter of a Swiss consul, in 1861 in Trieste. After the birth of his father, Johann Fritz Hess, the family moved to Alexandria, where Johann Christian Hess founded the import company Hess & Co. which his son, Johann Fritz Hess, took over in 1888. Hess's mother, Klara, was the daughter of Rudolf Münch, a textile industrialist and councillor of commerce from Hof, Upper Franconia. His brother, Alfred, was born in 1897 and his sister, Margarete, was born in 1908. The family lived in a villa on the Egyptian coast near Alexandria, and visited Germany often from 1900, staying at their summer home in Reicholdsgrün (now part of Kirchenlamitz) in the Fichtel Mountains.

Hess's youth in Egypt left him with a strong admiration for the British Empire. His youth growing up under the "Veiled Protectorate" of Sir Evelyn Baring made him unique among the Nazi leaders in that he grew up under British rule, which he saw in very positive terms.

Hess attended a German-language Protestant school in Alexandria from 1900 to 1908, when he was sent back to Germany to study at a boarding school in Bad Godesberg. He demonstrated aptitudes for science and mathematics, but his father wished him to join the family business, Hess & Co., so he sent Hess in 1911 to study at the École supérieure de commerce in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. After a year there, he took an apprenticeship at a trading company in Hamburg.

World War I

Within weeks of the outbreak of World War I, Hess enlisted in the 7th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment, part of the 1st Royal Bavarian Division. His initial posting was against the British on the Somme. He was present at the First Battle of Ypres. On 9 November 1914, he transferred to the 1st Infantry Regiment, stationed near Arras. He was awarded the Iron Cross, second class, and promoted to Gefreiter (corporal) in April 1915. After additional training at the Munster Training Area, he was promoted to Vizefeldwebel (senior non-commissioned officer) and received the Bavarian Military Merit Cross. Returning to the front lines in November, Hess fought in Artois, participating in the battle for the town of Neuville-Saint-Vaast. After two months out of action with a throat infection, he served in the Battle of Verdun in May, and was hit by shrapnel in the left hand and arm on 12 June 1916 while fighting near the village of Thiaumont. After a month off to recover, he was sent back to the Verdun area, where he remained until December.

Hess was promoted to platoon leader of the 10th Company of the 18th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, which was serving in Romania. He was wounded on 23 July and again on 8 August 1917; the first injury was a shell splinter to the left arm, which was dressed in the field, but the second was a bullet wound that entered the upper chest near the armpit and exited near his spinal column, leaving a pea-sized entry wound and a cherry stone-sized exit wound on his back.

By 20 August, Hess was well enough to travel; he was thus sent to a hospital in Hungary and eventually back to Germany, where he recovered in hospital in Meissen. In October, he was promoted to Leutnant der Reserve and was recommended for, but did not receive, the Iron Cross, first class. At his father's request, Hess was transferred to a hospital closer to home, arriving at Alexandersbad on 25 October.

While still convalescing, Hess had requested that he be allowed to enrol to train as a pilot, so after Christmas leave with his family, he reported to Munich. He received basic flight training at Oberschleissheim and Lechfeld Air Base from March to June 1918, and advanced training at Valenciennes in occupied France in October. On 14 October, he was assigned to Jagdstaffel 35b, a Bavarian fighter squadron equipped with Fokker D.VII biplanes. He saw no action with Jagdstaffel 35b, as the war ended on 11 November 1918, before he had the opportunity.

Hess (right) with his geopolitics professor, Karl Haushofer, c. 1920

Hess was discharged from the armed forces in December 1918. The family fortunes had taken a serious downturn, as their business interests in Egypt had been expropriated by the British. He joined the Thule Society, an antisemitic right-wing Völkisch group, and the Freikorps of Colonel Ritter von Epp, one of many such volunteer paramilitary organisations active in Germany at the time.

Bavaria witnessed frequent and often bloody conflicts between right-wing groups, the Freikorps, and left-wing forces as they fought for control of the state during this period. Hess was a participant in street battles in early 1919 and led a group that distributed thousands of antisemitic pamphlets in Munich. He later said that Egypt made him a nationalist, the war made him a socialist, and Munich made him an antisemite.

In 1919, Hess enrolled at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), where he studied history and economics. His geopolitics professor was Karl Haushofer, a former general in the German Army who was a proponent of the concept of Lebensraum ("living space"), which Haushofer cited to justify the proposal that Germany should forcefully conquer additional territory in Eastern Europe. He later introduced this concept to Adolf Hitler, and it became one of the pillars of Nazi Party ideology. Hess became friends with Haushofer and his son Albrecht, a social theorist and lecturer.

Ilse Pröhl, a fellow student at the university, met Hess in April 1920 when by chance they rented rooms in the same boarding house. They married on 20 December 1927 and their only child, Wolf Rüdiger Hess, was born 10 years later, on 18 November 1937. His name was, at least in part, to honour Hitler, who often used "Wolf" as a code name. Hess nicknamed the boy "Buz".

Relationship with Hitler

Hitler, Emil Maurice, Hermann Kriebel, Hess, and Friedrich Weber at Landsberg Prison in 1924

Hess (2nd from left, behind Heinrich Himmler) was an early supporter of the Nazi Party.

After hearing the Nazi Party leader Hitler speak for the first time in 1920 at a Munich rally, Hess became completely devoted to him. They held a shared belief in the stab-in-the-back myth, the notion that Germany's loss in World War I was caused by a conspiracy of Jews and Bolsheviks rather than a military defeat. He joined the Nazi Party on 1 July as member number 16. As the party continued to grow, holding rallies and meetings in ever larger beer halls in Munich, he focused his attention on fundraising and organisational activities. On 4 November 1921, he was injured while protecting Hitler when a bomb planted by a Marxist group exploded at the Hofbräuhaus during a party event. Hess joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) by 1922 and helped organise and recruit its early membership.

Meanwhile, problems continued with the economy; hyperinflation rendered many personal fortunes worthless. When the German government failed to meet its reparations payments and French troops marched in to occupy the industrial areas along the Ruhr in January 1923, widespread civil unrest was the result. Hitler decided the time was ripe to attempt to seize control of the government with a coup d'état modelled on Benito Mussolini's 1922 March on Rome. Hess was with Hitler on the night of 8 November 1923 when he and the SA stormed a public meeting organised by Bavaria's de facto ruler, Staatskommissar (state commissioner) Gustav von Kahr, in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall in Munich. Brandishing a pistol, Hitler interrupted Kahr's speech and announced that the national revolution had begun, declaring the formation of a new government with World War I General Erich Ludendorff. The next day, Hitler and several thousand supporters attempted to march to the Ministry of War in the city centre. Gunfire broke out between the Nazis and the police; sixteen marchers and four police officers were killed. Hitler was arrested on 11 November.

Hess and some SA men had taken a few of the dignitaries hostage on the night of the 8th, driving them to a house about 50 kilometres (31 mi) from Munich. When Hess left briefly to make a phone call the next day, the hostages convinced the driver to help them escape. Hess, stranded, called Ilse Pröhl, who brought him a bicycle so he could return to Munich. He went to stay with the Haushofers and then fled to Austria, but they convinced him to return. He was arrested and sentenced to 18 months of Festungshaft (fortress confinement) for his role in the attempted coup, which later became known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler was sentenced to five years of fortress confinement, and the Nazi Party and SA were both outlawed.

Hitler speaking at a party rally in Munich in 1925

Both men were incarcerated in Landsberg Prison, where Hitler soon began work on his memoir, Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), which he dictated to fellow prisoners Hess and Emil Maurice. Edited by publisher Max Amann, Hess and others, the work was published in two parts in 1925 and 1926. It was later released in a single volume, which became a best-seller after 1930. This book, with its message of violent antisemitism, became the foundation of the political platform of the Nazi Party.

Hitler was released on parole on 20 December 1924 and Hess was released ten days later. The ban on the Nazi Party and SA was lifted in February 1925, and the party grew to 100,000 members in 1928 and 150,000 in 1929. They received only 2.6 per cent of the vote in the 1928 election, but support increased steadily up until the seizure of power in 1933.

Hitler named Hess his private secretary in April 1925 at a salary of 500 Reichsmarks per month, and named him as personal adjutant on 20 July 1929. Hess accompanied Hitler to speaking engagements around the country and became his friend and confidante. Hess was one of the few people who could meet with Hitler at any time without an appointment. His influence in the Party continued to grow. On 15 December 1932, Hess was named head of the Party Liaison Staff and Chairman of the Party Central Political Commission.

Retaining his interest in flying after the end of his active military career, Hess obtained his private pilot's licence on 4 April 1929. His instructor was World War I flying ace Theodor Croneiss. In 1930, Hess became the owner of a BFW M.23b monoplane sponsored by the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter. He acquired two more Messerschmitt aircraft in the early 1930s, logging many flying hours and becoming proficient in the operation of light single-engine aircraft.

Deputy Führer

Vehicle standard for Hess while serving as Deputy Führer

On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor, his first step in gaining dictatorial control of Germany. Hess was named Deputy Führer (Stellvertreter des Führers) of the Nazi Party on 21 April. On 2 June 1933, he was made one of 16 Reichsleiters in the Party hierarchy. On 1 July, Hess was raised to the rank of Obergruppenführer in the Schutzstaffel (SS). However, by 20 September, Hitler decreed that he stop using the titles of Reichsleiter and Obergruppenführer, and use only the title of "Deputy Führer". This was an acknowledgement of his primus inter pares status in the Party. Hess was appointed to the cabinet as a Reichsminister without portfolio on 1 December. With offices in the Brown House in Munich and another in Berlin, Hess was responsible for several departments, including foreign affairs, finance, health, education and law. Hess also was named as a member of Hans Frank's Academy for German Law. All legislation passed through his office for approval, except that concerning the army, the police and foreign policy, and he wrote and co-signed many of Hitler's decrees. An organiser of the annual Nuremberg Rallies, Hess usually gave the opening speech and introduced Hitler. Hess also spoke over the radio and at rallies around the country, so frequently that the speeches were collected into book form in 1938. Hess acted as Hitler's delegate in negotiations with industrialists and members of the wealthier classes. As Hess had been born abroad, Hitler had him oversee the Nazi Party groups such as the NSDAP/AO that were in charge of party members living in other countries. Hitler instructed Hess to review all court decisions that related to persons deemed enemies of the Party. He was authorised to increase the sentences of anyone he felt got off too lightly in these cases, and was also empowered to take "merciless action" if he saw fit to do so. This often entailed sending the person to a concentration camp or simply ordering the person killed.

In 1933, Hess founded the Volksdeutscher Rat (Council of Ethnic Germans) to handle the Nazi Party's relations with ethnic German minorities around the world, with a particular focus on Eastern Europe. The purpose of the council was to protect the Nazi Party from criticism that it was attempting to extend the process of Gleichschaltung to international ethnic German communities. Despite Hess's claims to the contrary, the council members were primarily loyal to Germany rather than their current nations. The eight council members, only one of whom was a member of the Nazi Party, were responsible only to Hess. All had long been known to either Hess or Haushofer, who was also involved with the council. Members publicly claimed to be uninvolved in the council, which Hess used as proof that the Nazi Party was not trying to interfere in the domestic affairs of other nations. As the council had considerable funds and appeared to be sufficiently independent of the German government to satisfy foreign governments, its activities had some impact on international German communities in the 1930s. Its most notable impact was in the Sudetenland, where in 1933 it promoted Konrad Henlein as the politician with the best hope of building a Nazi-friendly party that would win mass support without being banned by the Czechoslovak government.

The Nazi regime began to persecute Jews soon after the seizure of power. Hess's office was partly responsible for drafting Hitler's Nuremberg Laws of 1935. These laws had far-reaching implications for the Jews of Germany, banning marriage between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans and depriving non-Aryans of their German citizenship. Hess's friend Karl Haushofer and his family were subject to these laws, as Haushofer had married a half-Jewish woman, so Hess issued documents exempting them from this legislation.

Hess, Heinrich Himmler, Phillip Bouhler,