Nazi Rudolf Hess’s Mad Mission for Peace (Strange Stories of WWII)

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free trial to be sure you love it first this is also available to returning members so if you've let your membership lapse you can still claim this offer click on the link in the description to try magellan tv now you'll be glad you did rudolph hess's mad mission for peace may 10 1941 strange stories of world war ii it was just before midnight on the evening of may 10 1941 and britain had been at war with nazi germany for the last 18 months when two volunteer members of the royal observer corps were startled to see a lone luftwaffe twin-engine messerschmitt bf-110 fly overhead at very low altitude the german aircraft was barely flying high enough to clear the nearby trees and two-story buildings of the sleepy village of chattan in the north of england the observers had been surprised to see a german aircraft so far north especially as at the time the luftwaffe nighttime raids were concentrated hundreds of miles away around london and the southeast of england earlier that evening two raf spitfires on a routine patrol had been ordered to intercept the mystery aircraft after it had been spotted by british radar without any success later on a third spitfire was scrambled from a nearby air base to find raid 42 as it had now been designated but as it was now nightfall and it had dropped off the radar it too had failed to locate the unidentified aircraft the royal air force had code names for the aircraft that they were watching on their radar for example a bandit was an identified enemy aircraft and a bogey was an unidentified possibly unfriendly aircraft scramble referred to a fast takeoff and climbed to intercept enemy aircraft oddly this german long-range two-seater heavy fighter continued heading northwards after flying over chattan towards the scottish border the aircraft had just one person on board 47 year old reich's minister and deputy fuhrer rudolph hess who was one of the most powerful and influential figures in adolf hitler's government hess was a complex man a fanatical and cruel nazi who had a hatred of people of jewish and arabic origins he was also heavily into the occult and astrology as well as being a neurotic hypochondriac and was always claiming to be suffering from a variety of afflictions and illnesses as well as being an ardent non-smoker a strict vegetarian and a committed family man who had been happily married for the last 14 years hess and his wife had a son that they had named wolf whose godfather was none other than adolf hitler himself as a child hess was deeply affected by being brought up in british colonial egypt where his middle class german parents ran an important export business it seemed that his childhood had brought out in him a strong dislike for the arab people and a deep-rooted respect for how the british administered their colonies arrogantly hess felt that the modern day egyptian people could not function properly or achieve anything meaningful without guidance and control from the british therefore he felt that britain could have been a potential ally with germany and that going to war with them in 1939 had been a huge mistake but his views had been ignored and he had been increasingly sidelined by adolf hitler in favor of other political figures like reich marshall hermann goering and the head of the nazi party chancellory martin bormann so what of frustration hess acting completely alone decided to go to britain on an unannounced secret peace mission he took on this assignment with some serious misconceptions he thought that the british prime minister winston churchill who would not contemplate any kind of peace treaty with nazi germany was highly unpopular with the british public and the current monarch king george vi and that he could quite easily be removed from office hess had also been wrongly informed that the scottish nobleman the duke of hamilton could help him remove winston churchill from power and then help negotiate a peace treaty between germany and great britain so on that fateful afternoon of may 10 1941 pess had flown out alone from the airfield at the messerschmitt factory in augsburg in the state of bavaria which was situated deep within germany this was not in itself unusual as hess was a keen and experienced aviator who regularly went on training flights in his own personal bf-110 but this aircraft had been specially modified on hess's explicit instruction it had some long-range fuel drop tanks added to it just before he departed hess left behind a letter addressed to the fuhrer it explained his intentions to go to britain and arrange for the removal of winston churchill from office and to then negotiate a peace treaty with great britain the aircraft took off at 5 45 pm and started its 900 mile journey to the duke of hamilton's estate at dungavel castle in south atlantic share it immediately climbed to an altitude of 5000 feet or about 1500 meters in order to conserve as much fuel as possible for most of the flight hess flew over the north sea in order to stay out of range of the british radar then as the sun was starting to set he turned his aircraft towards england ditching his auxiliary fuel tanks into the sea as he did so shortly afterwards he crossed over the northeast of england's coastline somewhere near the ancient village of vembra a short time later at around 10 pm he descended to a dangerously low altitude in order to avoid being detected by radar but unbeknownst to him he had been picked up by radar and given the reference code name raid 42 a pair of spitfires that were on routine patrol nearby were ordered to intercept this unknown bogey aircraft when they failed to locate him raf fighter command scrambled another spitfire due to it being dark and raid 42 having disappeared off the radar screens they too could not find this elusive aircraft it was only when raid 42 was spotted at chattan about 30 minutes later at 10 30 pm did they realize there was only one aircraft and bizarrely they reported it was heading in the wrong direction for a raid and instead was on a bearing heading away from london and traveling north towards scotland less than five minutes later a bolton paul defiant interceptor aircraft of number 141 squadron based at ire airfield was dispatched by fighter command to shoot down this unidentified mystery plane the defiant had been unsuccessful as a day fighter during the battle of france but was now proving to be a highly effective and deadly knight interceptor fighter for the next 30 minutes the defiant relentlessly pursued the messerschmitt which then suddenly pulled up and climbed rapidly to an altitude of 6000 feet or about 1800 meters then just after 11 pm hess abandoned his aircraft and parachuted to the ground unfortunately for him he broke his ankle as he exited the plane the unpiloted bf-110 crashed a short time later at a nearby farm breaking up as it did so remarkably after five hours and 900 miles of flying hesse just landed 12 miles away from the duke's castle a truly remarkable feat of navigation he was at the time wearing the uniform of a luftwaffe captain after landing in the field he promptly surrendered himself to a local farmer the farmer then called the local home guard unit who quickly came to pick him up hess was then interrogated and he told him he was captain alfred horn and that he had an extremely important message for the duke of hamilton the duke was immediately summoned and came to meet with this mysterious captain alfred horn hess on meeting the duke confessed who he really was but although has spoke fluent english he struggled to understand the duke's heavy scottish accent though he did manage to convey to him that he was on a mission to negotiate a peace treaty with the british government the next day the stunned duke headed south to london to brief winston churchill and his war cabinet on this unexpected turn of events they were all unsure of what to make of it meanwhile the nazi regime back in germany quickly distanced themselves from the whole rudolph hesse episode they claimed that he was mentally ill and was acting completely alone without their knowledge or authority when hitler was told of the incident he allegedly flew into a terrible rage and started screaming and shouting at everyone and everything the nazis explained away hesse's actions by saying that he had a mental breakdown brought on by an old combat wound he had suffered from his time in the trenches back in world war one for the rest of the war hess was kept at various sites around britain under heavy guard including at the tower of london one place he was kept at for 13 months was mitchett place in the village of [ __ ] in surrey near the garrison town of aldershot that was given the code name camp z as it was top secret it is rumored that polish soldiers stationed in scotland found out where he was being held and a group of 17 of them went absent without leave attempting to find hess in order to kidnap or kill him in revenge for the nazi atrocities carried out in poland this resulted in a firefight with the british soldiers guarding hess who managed to fight them off he was never to meet the duke of hamilton again and was never really taken seriously by the british authorities as soon as it became obvious that the nazi regime back in berlin had completely disowned him and his secret peace mission to britain and it was not also helped by hesse's increasingly odd and erratic behavior after the war he was charged with war crimes and stood trial at the now famous nuremberg trials that ran from 1946 to 1947 there he claimed he was suffering from amnesia when he was examined by an american court psychiatrist they concluded that though hess might be exaggerating his condition he indeed was seriously mentally ill they said that hess was prone to unreasonable hysterical behavior due to being extremely paranoid as well as having a schizophrenic personality after a long trial hess was cleared of war crimes and crimes against humanity but was convicted of crimes against peace and of conspiracy he was sentenced to life imprisonment he was sent to spandau prison in west berlin and though this 19th century prison had 600 cells after the war it housed just a handful of nazi high-ranking prisoners including hess after the last of the other prisoners were released in 1966 hess became the only prisoner there until his death in 1987 at the age of 93. some say he died in suspicious circumstances where he was said to have hanged himself so it was deemed to be a suicide but his son and lawyer maintained hess was murdered by the british secret service but there is no evidence to support this theory in the same year the now empty prison at spandau was hurriedly demolished a supermarket was quickly built on the site to cater for the large number of british soldiers and their families stationed in berlin at the time you

Channel: Simple History

Views: 510,768

Keywords: simple history, animated history, educational, education, Rudolf hess, 1941 mad mission, germany, britain, ww2, Luftwaffe, Messerschmitt Bf 110, RAF Spitfires, radar, Raid 42, Royal Air Force, Chatton, Winston Churchill, King George the V, Duke of Hamilton, Augsburg, Captain Alfred Horn, Mytchett Place, Prison at Spandau

Id: HdnHmurY_uY

Length: 12min 29sec (749 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2021