Why Did Hitler's Right-Hand Man Make a Secret Trip to Britain?

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lamp from the table in his summer house then lifted the extension cord with his trembling arthritic fingers and began patiently winding it around the latch of a nearby window when he was satisfied the cord was secure he made a loop at the other end placed that loop around his neck and allowed himself to slide slowly to the floor pulling the makeshift noose tight around his neck and cutting off the air supply to his lungs within minutes he was dead if you're wondering why this ancient man had decided to take such drastic action i can confirm it wasn't an act of erotic asphyxiation gone wrong and neither was it an accident although some people believe it may have been a murder made to look like a suicide but before we get into all of that perhaps it would be helpful if i told you exactly who this particular oap was because what i've just described were the final earthly actions of a man named rudolf hess husband father keen gardener avid hiker oh and one time second in command to a guy called adolf hitler hess was so notorious that at the time of his suicide he was the sole inmate in a 600 cell fortress prison presided over by a cadre of guards from the uk france the united states and the soviet union representatives from these countries would take it in turn to guard hess rotating personnel from one month to the next for an idea of how much effort and expense went into guarding this one man just picture the prison that houses tai lung in the first kung fu panda film and you're pretty much there almost as soon as hess was found dead the entire prison that held him was raised to the ground so as not to become a shrine to neo-nazis but before it was unceremoniously demolished the prison was known as spandau and it was located in western berlin at the end of world war ii a series of court proceedings known as the norenberg trials took place to determine the fate of high-ranking nazis many were sentenced to death by hanging a handful were acquitted but seven of them including rudolf hess ended up serving prison sentences of varying glimpse in spandau by the way if the name spandau is ringing a bell you might be thinking of the british new wave pop group the spandau ballet and oddly enough the band did indeed get its name from the prison that housed rudolf hess and other prominent nazis specifically the name refers to the involuntary jig danced by spandau inmates in their death froze during execution by hanging lovely name for a band that anyway whilst hess was the last of the spandau 7 to leave the prison and the only one that did so in a bodybag he was also the first of them to be captured you see unlike his fellow inmates who were rounded up at the end of the war hesse had already been in prison in britain for some four years at that point and the story of how he ended up there is quite possibly the strangest ever to come out of the second world war it starts with a friendship bordering on obsession with one of the most evil men in history includes a secret solo flight to scotland across war-torn europe and ends in one of the longest prison sentences ever served by a human being allow me to explain despite being a fierce patriot and nationalist rudolf hess was actually born in egypt and wouldn't make germany his permanent home until the age of 14 when he went to boarding school there he was 20 by the time the first world war broke out and having signed up pretty much straight away he served germany with distinction fighting in the first battle of ipra and the battle of verdun during which time he earned both a bullet through his lung and an iron cross second class the war ended when hess was 24 and much like every other soldier he went home and tried to build a life for himself but one evening in july of 1920 this unfamiliar new existence took a decisive turn because that night rudolf hess heard adolf hitler speak in front of a crowd for the very first time hess had harbored racist views his entire life whilst growing up in egypt he'd shown contempt for everyone who wasn't white and he believes germany had lost the first world war thanks to a widespread conspiracy of jews and bolsheviks so it was no surprise that he was drawn to hitler like a big racist moth to a bright bigoted flame hess signed up to the nazi party that very same night from that point on he was rarely found far from the future fiora's side he acted as hitler's muscle at rallies where clashes of ideology frequently escalated into exchanges of punches and helped out with fundraising for the party along with pretty much anything else that needed doing when hitler attempted to seize control first of munich and then the german national government during what is now known as the beer hall puts in 1923 hess was once again by his side the coup failed and both hitler and hess were sent to prison for five years but even behind bars hess managed to keep himself useful to the man he saw as the future of his nation scribing and editing for hitler as he dictated what would become the foundation of the nazi party manifesto mein kampf to say hess was at the center of the nazi party during these formative years would be akin to claiming heroin is a tad moorish it's true it's just one hell of an understatement hess was a fanatical follower of hitler's ideology and unlike plenty of other nazis he wasn't in it for the glory or the power but just because he believed and through his belief and his devotion to hitler he became one of the most important figures in the fuhrer's rise the silent bob to hitler's jay the bird to his ernie the wait is it just me or is rudolf hess actually the spitting image of bert well that's something i'm never going to be able to unsee anyway despite literally trying to overthrow the government of their own country hitler and hess were released from prison after serving less than a year behind bars and around 10 years after that hitler achieved his ultimate goal of becoming the leader of the german branch this time through the slightly more mainstream method of actually getting people to vote for him within the year his power in germany was absolute but despite having hit the big time hitler remembered his old friend hess repaying his enduring loyalty by honoring him with the title of deputy fuhrer and eventually going as far as to make her second in line to the leadership of the entire nazi party behind hermann goring the supreme commander of the luftwaffe as for hess he couldn't have been happier the man he viewed as something close to germany's messiah was in power the country he loved was back on the road to greatness after the shame of its defeat in the great war and hess himself was right in the thick of it as one of hitler's most trusted confidants but as war descended across europe in 1939 things began to change despite his military record hesse's main duties weren't directly related to the war effort and as hitler became more and more distracted with blitzkrieg tactics and complex foreign policy for the first time since 1920 hess found himself on the outside of hitler's inner circle looking in as the war progressed he began to grow more and more worried it wasn't so much that things were going badly quite the opposite in fact by the middle of 1940 germany controlled much of europe poland norway denmark belgium luxembourg the netherlands half of france but these early successes had gone to hitler's head the germans and their allies were starting to get cocky this growing sense of invincibility in the nazi camp was one of the driving forces behind operation barbarossa hitler's plan to invade the soviet union but hesse was concerned that taking on both the allies and the soviet union who up until now had largely stayed out of things and in some cases actively worked with the germans was just asking for trouble hess felt that trying to fight against the british and the soviets simultaneously would stretch german resources to fit and so whilst hitler and his cronies were putting the finishing touches to their plans for operation barbarossa hess was finalizing a plan all of his own one that no one not even the fuhrer ever saw coming hess's scheme was simple he reasons that if fighting on two fronts had the potential to be a military disaster all he had to do was remove one of germany's enemies from the equation and so rudolf hess was going to take the british out of world war ii on his own but if you're picturing bert from sesame street dressed in full rambo regalia storming the houses of parliament in search of winston churchill you're a little wide of the mark hess didn't plan to defeat the british in battle he was going to neutralize them at the negotiating table by suing for peace and how exactly he attempted to do that is without a doubt one of the single weirdest things to have happened in the whole of the second world war hess an accomplished pilot secretly had a messerschmitt modified with long-range fuel tanks and several other updates to equip it for long distance flying he trains tirelessly in the aircraft for many months focusing on his navigation skills and efficient flying techniques and then one night in the spring of 1941 as war raged across europe and the german luftwaffe prepared for a huge bombing grade on london the deputy fuhrer second in line to the command of the entire nazi party took off from an airfield in the south of germany all on his own and set a course for scotland now then this is probably the part of the story where i should point out that hess may have been a little bit mad rumor has it this whole wild scheme came to him in a dream and he chose the date of his departure based on the advice of his astrologer who had a good feeling about the alignment of a couple of planets and stuff apparently feeling he no longer had the furious trust hess plans this crazed mission entirely alone and without informing nazi leadership hoping to hand hitler the keys to peace with britain before anyone even realized he was missing still mad or otherwise hess knew how to handle an aeroplane he flew solo over largely unfamiliar terrain in foggy weather and with only charts and maps for guidance all whilst avoiding british air defenses and more than one raf squadron sent to intercept him he flew much of the latter part of the journey at an altitude of just 15 meters in order to better avoid british fighter pilots hesse's destination was dungavel house home of the duke of hamilton whom hess understood was keen on peace with germany and had the power to help broker it hess never quite made it though his master class in navigation and evasive flying didn't quite get him to his destination because he ran out of fuel just 12 miles away forcing him to bail out of his messerschmitt and parachute to safety a local man found him not too long after still struggling to extricate himself from his shoot in a field just outside the village of waterfoot south of glasgow hess assuming the false name alfred horn asked to be taken straight to see the duke of hamilton but this was britain so instead of doing as hess asked instinct kicked in and the man who'd found him followed the single most important rule in the great british manual of etiquette he took hess home to his cottage and made him a nice cup of tea hess was eventually allowed to meet with hamilton but after revealing his true identity and explaining his mission he soon encountered a problem common to many foreigners visiting scotland hess spoke fluent english and had no difficulty getting his point across the only trouble was he couldn't understand a damn thing hamilton was saying in response a translator was sent for to turn hamilton's english into more english but it soon became clear hess's problems didn't end with hamilton's incomprehensible scottish accent the duke had neither the power nor the inclination to make peace with germany so less than 24 hours in hesse's grand mission was a failure even worse because he'd made it clear he wasn't acting under the orders of hitler and was therefore not in scotland as part of an official envoy instead of being sent back to germany as a diplomat hess was thrown in jail not that anyone really knew what to do with him once they put him there hamilton himself rang winston churchill to explain this strange turn of events but the prime minister found the idea of hitler's right-hand man parachuting into a small village in scotland all on his lonesome to negotiate peace so ridiculous he assumed hamilton was playing an ill-conceived joke on him and hung up back in germany hitler wasn't finding the situation particularly funny either when word got back to him about his deputies impromptu highland holiday hitler is said to have let out an animalistic roar that shook the walls of his mountain home before decreeing that if hess ever returned to germany he would be shot on site not that hess needed to worry about that he would never be allowed to return home at least not as a free man after his capture in 1941 he would spend the rest of his long life as a prisoner during the war he was held in various different facilities across the uk including a brief spell in the tower of london becoming the last state prisoner ever to be held there and the last prisoner full stop aside from notorious london gangsters the cray twins who spent a few days there in 1952 hesse's 46 years as a prisoner represents one of the longest sentences ever served in history the 32nd longest outside of the u.s according to wikipedia and the last 20 years of his term was spent in complete solitary confinement not as a punishment for bad behavior but because as i've already mentioned he was the only inmate left in the entire prison at the time from almost a moment he was captured hess showed signs of the extreme paranoia and superstition that have led many people over the years to question his sanity he was obsessed with the idea his captors were trying to poison him often refusing meals or insisting on swapping plates with his guards before eating he also believed in all sorts of extreme conspiracy theories including that both churchill and hitler were under the control of psychic jews in just a couple of weeks on the 10th of may it will be 80 years to the day since rudolf hess's flight yet still today this strange story of one man's attempts to alter the course of the war remains so bizarre many people believe there must be more to it than meets the eye one popular theory suggests hitler knew all about the apparently solo mission but that it was agreed up front if hess was ever captured he would be disavowed and branded a madman so as not to damage morale back in germany in 2011 german newspaper der spiegel reported on the recovery of a statement written in a soviet concentration camp by hesse's personal aid which did appear to suggest the fiora had been fully aware of hess's mission though there's no guarantee the report wasn't coerced especially considering where it was written another theory suggests hess was actively lured into making the trip by the british secret service he posed as a duke of hamilton in a series of letters in an attempt to trick hess into coming to britain again treads of evidence seem to back this story up but none are in any way conclusive for a long time one of the more persistent conspiracies surrounding the case was that hess never actually made the journey at all and that an imposter had flown in his place this theory was put forward by british army surgeon hugh thomas who on giving hess a medical exam found no trace of the bullet wound hesse had suffered in world war one according to thomas the single inmate serving out his years in spandau prison was not and never had been rudolf hess this story persisted all the way up until 2019 when dna testing of an old sample of hess's blood was shown to have a 99.99 match in y chromosomal dna with one of hesse's living relatives most of the conspiracy theories surrounding hess are speculative at best but there is still something of an air of mystery to the whole story and whilst the majority of classified documents from the second world war have long since been released into the public domain one small cache has been held back far longer than most and believe it or not it's reported to contain correspondence between hess and none other than king george vi himself conspiracy theorists believe these files may uncover a plot within the british monarchy to ditch winston churchill and make peace with germany back when things weren't looking so good for europe at the start of the war the files are due to be released 20 years from now by the way on the 100th anniversary of the flight which is probably for the best the royal family could do with a few quiet years as for hess's ultimate demise at the age of 93 even that has attracted some whispers is it really possible that a very old very frail man could have hanged himself and why would he have even wanted to after so long behind bars it's true that he tried and failed to take his own life many times over the years but some people still believe he was eventually bumped off by the british who were worried about what secrets he might spill if released it's a big claim but there were a few odd inconsistencies relating to his death most notably the fact the apparent suicide note found beside the body had actually been written after hess feared dying when admitted to hospital with a perforated ulcer in 1969 still that certainly isn't proof and if it really was a secret service hit it seems mighty incompetent of them to have attempted to pass off a 20-year-old letter as a suicide note as for what really compelled rudolph hess to risk the dangerous and undeniably daring flight from germany to scotland in the middle of the second world war that's open for debate was he simply someone standing on the very edge of sanity making a wild play to regain the favor of the man he worshipped or was he on a secret mission from the fuhrer himself to broker peace with the british in a move that if successful could have changed the entire course of the war and therefore the history of mankind maybe or perhaps it had just been far far too long since he'd had a good haggis [Music] thanks for watching thanks again to call of war for sponsoring this video and remember you can claim your exclusive gift by clicking the link in the description this offer is only available for 30 days so choose your country and fight your way to victory

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 609,746

Rating: 4.9323688 out of 5

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Id: eRAif9J9b2E

Length: 24min 18sec (1458 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021