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Is this the final chapter?

Top Nazi Rudolf Hess exhumed from 'pilgrimage' grave

The grave holding the remains of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess has been destroyed to stop it being used as a pilgrimage site by neo-Nazis.
Hess's bones were exhumed at the graveyard in the town of Wunsiedel, southern Germany, early on Wednesday.
The remains were later cremated and are to be scattered at sea.

Hess was captured after flying to Britain in 1941 and sentenced to life in prison. He killed himself in a Berlin jail in 1987 at the age of 93.
As he requested in his will, he was buried in the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where his family had a holiday home and where his parents were already interred.

The local Lutheran church which supervises the cemetery gave its permission for the burial at the time, ruling that the wishes of the deceased could not be ignored.
But they and local people have since become concerned by the number of far-right groups visiting the grave.

Each year on the anniversary of his death, neo-Nazis have attempted to stage a march to the cemetery, saluting the grave with its epitaph "I dared", and laying floral wreaths.
A member of the church council, Hans-Juergen Buchta, told the Associated Press news agency: "The whole town was shut down and in turmoil and there was a huge police presence. We here at the graveyard were not always able to cope."

A 2005 court order banning such gatherings had little effect so the church decided to terminate the family's lease on the grave as of October 2011.
A granddaughter of Hess objected to the decision and filed a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent it going ahead, but was eventually persuaded by the parish council to drop the case and allow the exhumation to go ahead.
Roland Schoeffel, the deputy mayor of Wunsiedel, told AFP news agency that the monument had been razed "in an operation not open to the public".

Cemetery administrator Andreas Fabel told AP news agency on Thursday: "The grave is now empty. The bones are gone."
One resident, named as Mrs Koenig, said: "Perhaps we will now have some peace when he is gone. Perhaps they won't come any more, which is what Wunsiedel wants."

Charlotte Knobloch, the head of the Jewish community in Munich and Upper Bavaria, welcomed the move.
"For decades this town and its inhabitants were terrorised by far-right extremists from all over the world," she is quoted as saying by AFP.

Hess was one of Hitler's closest aides. But in 1941 he made a solo flight to Scotland, where his plane crash-landed, in an apparently unauthorised peace mission which was denounced by the fuhrer.
He was imprisoned by the British for the duration of the war.

At the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, Hess was cleared of war crimes and crimes against humanity but convicted of crimes against peace and jailed for life.
He spent 40 years in Spandau Prison in Berlin.
He was the last remaining inmate at the prison when he was found hanged there in August 1987.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14232768
 
So unless there are medical specimens stored anywhere that's the end of the last chance of DNA testing to establish if it really was Hess. :(
 
Bigfoot73 said:
So unless there are medical specimens stored anywhere that's the end of the last chance of DNA testing to establish if it really was Hess. :(
Could be. Sad, really - after all this time, would it hurt to learn the truth?

But it seems TPTB have already decided there is only one 'truth'...
 
It could be quite a can of worms that was being opened if they admitted it wasn't Hess, if there was any truth to the allegation that he was here to meet a faction of the government who were prepared to negotiate a way out of the war for Britain.
A friend of mine was one of the last British servicemen to serve in Spandau, and he just doesn't believe 'Hess' managed to kill himself in the middle of what was essentially a massive suicide watch operation.
 
A friend of mine was one of the last British servicemen to serve in Spandau, and he just doesn't believe 'Hess' managed to kill himself in the middle of what was essentially a massive suicide watch operation.

The British Army medic who examined 'Hess' in the 1970s or 80's confirmed that the person in Spandau could not be Rudolf Hess as he displayed no evidence of the wound he had received in the trenches WW1. Additional facts are that every time it was voted on by the Allied forces to release him, it was vetoed by the Soviet Union, supposedly because they wanted to keep a foothold in West Berlin; one year they didn't veto it, but another country did, Great Britain.

What may not be fact is that the plane RH took off in wasn't the one that crashed in Scotland.
 
If there was a Hess double, how did they find someone else with that King Kong brow?
 
Additional facts are that every time it was voted on by the Allied forces to release him, it was vetoed by the Soviet Union, supposedly because they wanted to keep a foothold in West Berlin; one year they didn't veto it, but another country did, Great Britain.


Additional facts are that every time it was voted on by the Allied forces to release him, it was vetoed by the Soviet Union, supposedly because they wanted to keep a foothold in West Berlin; one year they didn't veto it, but another country did, Great Britain.

Very interesting, and highly suspicious seeing as Britain was so keen to portray the Soviet Union as the only intransigent power.

What may not be fact is that the plane RH took off in wasn't the one that crashed in Scotland.

the version of the story that intrigues me is that in "Double Standards: the Rudolf Hess Conspiracy" by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince. This claims the Sunderland made an unscheduled stop on Loch Mor, on the shores of which is a house used to harbour the Kaiser just after WW1 ended. They suggest this was to collect Hess. The steering gear of the plane had been sabotaged, causing it to fail to clear the high ground north of the Loch. there was one more body in the wreckage than there should have been given that there was a survivor, the tail gunner. He ignored standing orders and left the scene - rescuers arrived only about 45 minutes after the crash so he must have seen them. He presented himself at a local croft 36 hours later minus most of his uniform and insisted the crofter phone the local police, not the Air Force.
He remained silent about the incident afterwards, Picknett and Prince suggest he fled in fear of being eliminated by the assassins, the pro-Churchill faction in the government.
 
i worked with someone the absolute double of him for years
 
might have been a relation lol
but the origianl might have been a bit older than this guy ..
 
Report into Rudolf Hess death fails to answer unexplained questions about Nazi prisoner's 'suicide'
It has been 25 years since leading Nazi Rudolf Hess died in a Berlin prison but a newly-declassified report into how it happened has apparently failed to answer unexplained questions about whether he really did kill himself.
By John-Paul Ford Rojas and Murray Wardrop
7:00AM GMT 17 Mar 2012

The publication of what is said to be a suicide note written “a few minutes before my death” by Hitler’s former deputy appears to add weight to claims that it had actually been penned nearly 20 years before when he was seriously ill.

Photographs of the “summer house” in the ground of Spandau Prison where the 93-year-old died – and the electrical cord he was said to have used to take his own life – seem to deepen the mystery even further.

Conspiracy theories have long suggested that he was murdered and the evidence covered up amid fears he was on the brink of being released – and might disclose embarrassing secrets about his time in British captivity.

His son Wolf Hess has claimed that the UK, US and France - who had long said they were prepared to consent to his release were it not for a Soviet veto - feared a new mood of openness in Gorbachev’s Kremlin would call their bluff.
He also claimed that the contents of the “suicide” note actually refer to a period in 1969 when he had a perforated ulcer in the duodenum and feared he could die.

One historian says the official text of the note in the report by the Royal Military Police’s Special Investigation Branch lends weight to the allegation.
Sceptics claim clues in the note suggest it refers to events 20 years earlier.
At that time Hess was concerned to express his regrets over his behaviour towards his one-time private secretary “Freiberg”, during the Nuremberg trials when he said: “I had to act as though I didn’t know her.”
The note was also said by his son to have used a sign-off “Euer Grohser”, or “your eldest”, that he had not used for about 20 years.

Peter Padfield, an historian who persuaded the Ministry of Defence to release the documents under Freedom of Information law, said: “The ‘suicide note’ in German appended to the report is surely bogus from the content.
“For instance, passing his regrets to Freiberg – he had done this some twenty years before when his wife and son visited him for the first time in Spandau.
“And by contrast there is no mention in the note of his grandchildren.”

The report also states that Hess killed himself using an electrical extension cable fastened to a rear window handle just 1.4m from the floor.
His son noted in 1992: “Hess was a frail 93-year-old man with no strength left in his hands, who could just barely drag himself from his cell into the garden.
“How was he supposed to have killed himself in this way? Did he hang himself with the cord from a hook or a window latch? Or did he throttle himself?”

The report states that no marks or “material of evidential value to suggest criminal involvement” was found at the scene.
But it adds: “Because of free access to the summer house by all concerned with the prisoner, the lifting of latent finger impressions was not considered practical.”

Hess was jailed for life in 1946 after being convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg.
The circumstances of his detainment at Allied hands are perhaps even more mysterious than those of his death.

Formerly Hitler’s loyal deputy, he took it upon himself to fly a plane to Scotland in 1941, apparently in an attempt to secure peace – parachuting from his Messerschmitt and being arrested by a farmer with a pitchfork.
One theory mooted last year suggested that he had been the victim of an elaborate MI6 sting, when he was persuaded that members of the Royal Family were willing to broker a peace deal with the Nazis.

He died in Berlin’s Spandau Prison on Aug 17, 1987. The report on his death was originally filed between August 25, 1987 and January 1988.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... icide.html
 
One theory mooted last year suggested that he had been the victim of an elaborate MI6 sting, when he was persuaded that members of the Royal Family were willing to broker a peace deal with the Nazis.

Implausible IMO. Why go to such lengths to capture him and then fail to maximise the propaganda value of doing so? He disappeared under a cloud of secrecy as soon as he landed, surely the government would have been parading him as a trophy.
 
Maybe this is just another cover up ...

An enduring conspiracy theory that the Nazi war criminal, Rudolf Hess, had been replaced by a double in jail has finally been put to rest.

A DNA test carried out by Austrian scientists has shown that the man imprisoned in Berlin's Spandau Prison had indeed been Hitler's deputy. Hess was captured after flying to Scotland in 1941 and sentenced to life in prison at the Nuremberg trials. He was found hanged in the Berlin jail in 1987 at the age of 93.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46964928?ncid=newsltushpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__012319
 
Implausible IMO. Why go to such lengths to capture him and then fail to maximise the propaganda value of doing so? He disappeared under a cloud of secrecy as soon as he landed, surely the government would have been parading him as a trophy.
Is it not possible it was a con perpetrated on Hess? Hitler was bonkers, and it could be argued that getting a reasonably rational person like Hess out of the way could shorten the war.
 
Maybe this is just another cover up ...
I understood that the recorded wounds Hess sustained during WW1 were not present as scars on the prisoner held at Spandau.

Also- (and I could never make sense of this): since he was captured in mid-1941, just exactly how was it decided that he was a "war criminal?" My reading of aspects such as the expansion of the concentration camps, attacks on Allied merchant shipping, and aerial bombing of civilian targets all increased dramatically from 1941 onwards, and the entry into the war by the USA.

If he was really Hess (and especially if he wasn't) it seems he was made a bit of a scapegoat, and became a totemic prisoner (yes, I know it was primarily the Russians that wanted him kept in jail, but I believe my point is still valid)
 
Further to my comment above, regarding the very-curious way in which Hess was treated *in particular* by the Soviet Union as a war criminal-

I've done some digging, and have realised the situation of what I'll term Hess's 'disproportionate culpability' is much stranger than I'd thought: plus there's an intriguing historical coincidence.

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were expedient allies for the entire period of time that Hess was in power (ie prior to his capture in Scotland). This was mainly via the Molotov/Ribbentop Pact of mutual non-aggression.

The chronological puzzler I've stumbled across is that Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of Soviet Russia by Germany) commenced on 22 June 1941, just 43 days after Hess was captured for interrogation.

It's not unreasonable to consider whether he as Depute Fuhrer advised the British of Germany's plans to break the Molotoff-Ribbentrop pact (he must have known about it...in fact, it could've been a primary driver in him doing the strange attempt at a peace deal the way he did).

He would certainly have shared such knowledge with the (then) Allies. Is there some way in which this action might've acted as a catalyst for making the invasion (and breach of pact) an accelerated reality? Thus explaining / justifying Russia's otherwise fairly-inexplicable wrath towards him, as a person and figurehead?

These conclusions are entirely-circumstantial, and I've arrived at them by myself independantly of any detailed research or cribbing from any sources (ie other analysts/historians surely must have drawn the same conclusions?).

But: coincidence? Or might I be right?
 
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Further to my comment above, regarding the very-curious way in which Hess was treated *in particular* by the Soviet Union as a war criminal-

I've done some digging, and have realised the situation of what I'll term Hess's 'disproportionate culpability' is much stranger than I'd thought: plus there's an intriguing historical coincidence.

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were expedient allies for the entire period of time that Hess was in power (ie prior to his capture in Scotland). This was mainly via the Molotov/Ribbentop Pact of mutual non-aggression.

The chronological puzzler I've stumbled across is that Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of Soviet Russia by Germany) commenced on 22 June 1941, just 43 days after Hess was captured for interrogation.

It's not unreasonable to consider whether he as Depute Fuhrer advised the British of Germany's plans to break the Molotoff-Ribbentrop pact (he must have known about it...in fact, it could've been a primary driver in him doing the strange attempt at a peace deal the way he did).

He would certainly have shared such knowledge with the (then) Allies. Is there some way in which this action might've acted as a catalyst for making the invasion (and breach of pact) an accelerated reality? Thus explaining / justifying Russia's otherwise fairly-inexplicable wrath towards him, as a person and figurehead?

These conclusions are entirely-circumstantial, and I've arrived at them by myself independantly of any detailed research or cribbing from any sources (ie other analysts/historians surely must have drawn the same conclusions?).

But: coincidence? Or might I be right?

Intriguing possibility. I lean more to the view that Hess was the sole survivor of AH's cadre and pure revenge was the driving motive. Stalin did want 50,000 Nazis executed at the end of the war according to Churchill, but he didn't get his way.
(Incidentally my school class mate went on to be in charge of guarding Hess for a while and subsequently got a knighthood and made a Lord- the moron. Make of that what you will)
 
Just as a side note, Hess wasn't charged or convicted as a war criminal as such, they had to create the charge of Crimes Against Peace just for him.....

Wm.
 
... Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were expedient allies for the entire period of time that Hess was in power (ie prior to his capture in Scotland). This was mainly via the Molotov/Ribbentop Pact of mutual non-aggression.

The chronological puzzler I've stumbled across is that Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of Soviet Russia by Germany) commenced on 22 June 1941, just 43 days after Hess was captured for interrogation.

It's not unreasonable to consider whether he as Depute Fuhrer advised the British of Germany's plans to break the Molotoff-Ribbentrop pact (he must have known about it...in fact, it could've been a primary driver in him doing the strange attempt at a peace deal the way he did).

He would certainly have shared such knowledge with the (then) Allies. Is there some way in which this action might've acted as a catalyst for making the invasion (and breach of pact) an accelerated reality? Thus explaining / justifying Russia's otherwise fairly-inexplicable wrath towards him, as a person and figurehead? ...

Attacking the USSR had been part of Hitler's war plans for years, and Operation Barbarossa's planning was well-advanced by the time Hess made his flight to the UK. The Molotov / Ribbentrop Pact was a cover for this long-planned action, and I'm not sure anyone (including the Soviets) seriously trusted it at face value.

The Germans were already poised to undertake their eastward invasion. IMHO the only military effect of Hess' action may have been an adjustment to the 'launch date', but that's all.

Hitler had outlined his grand plan of striking westward to secure that front then turning eastward for the 'main event' by the mid-1930's, when Hess was still #3 in the hierarchy and Hitler's personal secretary. There's evidence to suggest Hitler was banking on Britain to either stand aside or even support his campaign against the communists once a detente, if not a peace, had been established on the western front.

By 1941 Hess' status had diminished, and he was having misgivings about Germany's ability to prevail in a two-front war. To my mind the big Hess-related mystery concerns whether he was individually acting in accordance with the longstanding plan (the intent and failure of which were covered up by German denials) or trying to execute a pre-emptive personal PR stunt to bolster his sinking status.
 
... Also- (and I could never make sense of this): since he was captured in mid-1941, just exactly how was it decided that he was a "war criminal?"

Just as a side note, Hess wasn't charged or convicted as a war criminal as such, they had to create the charge of Crimes Against Peace just for him. ...

During the 1930's Hess had oversight on drafting and approving Nazi legislation, and as Hitler's personal secretary actually signed many of the decrees and laws by which the regime imposed internal repression. The #1 example of this would be the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 - the legal instrument for stripping Jews and others of rights and citizenship. These 1935 statutes became the basis for forced emigration or the even worse mass measures that followed.
 
Have we any idea whether this really was Hess yet? This has always seemed an improbable sequence of events to me. Surely the absence of his WW1 war wounds on the body is inexplicable except by substitution?

Ok, only just been watching Unsolved Mysteries. Not the most reliable source.
 
Have we any idea whether this really was Hess yet? ...

Yes, we do - and yes he was. DNA tests using an old clinical blood smear from Hess' Spandau years and DNA provided by male relatives demonstrated the man who died in 1987 was indeed Rudolf Hess. These results were publicized in January 2019.

DNA Analysis Debunks the Rumor That Rudolf Hess Was Replaced by a Doppelgänger
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...-doppelganger-dna-analysis-says-no-180971334/

Exclusive: DNA solves Rudolf Hess doppelgänger conspiracy theory
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...s-rudolf-hess-doppelganger-conspiracy-theory/
 
It's been a long time. But I still don't understand the whole Hess process. I'm not understanding why he wasn't simply condemned to death like the other Nazi major leaders.

Maybe he had something on someone in the British hierarchy? Edward 8 / Prince of Wales would be an obvious candidate. If he had stored away evidence of active collaboration between Eddie and Hitler ?
 
It's been a long time. But I still don't understand the whole Hess process. I'm not understanding why he wasn't simply condemned to death like the other Nazi major leaders.

Maybe he had something on someone in the British hierarchy? Edward 8 / Prince of Wales would be an obvious candidate. If he had stored away evidence of active collaboration between Eddie and Hitler ?
He hadn't been as involved in atrocities as much as the others. Although, your theory may also have some bearing I suppose.
 
He hadn't been as involved in atrocities as much as the others. Although, your theory may also have some bearing I suppose.
He must have had some reason to come to the UK, and believed he'd get a hearing. That to me suggests he had contacts.

As regards involvement in atrocities, I've never really been clear in my mind about that. There is huge variation in the involvement in atrocities in those that were put on trial after the war. In some ways those that were more honest about their responsibility suffered worse than those who fronted it out. I don't care much about that, myself, but it is a footnote.
 
A nice phat article on Ian Fleming and Aleister Crowley's war:
https://sevenages.org/history/ian-fleming-aleister-crowley-and-how-the-occultists-won-the-war/

The Sorcerer​


Vanessa Hoffman’s occult interests, and the exposure she gave him along these lines, may indeed have first piqued Fleming’s own interest in the occult, but rather strangely, it was Maxwell Knight who had direct prior involvement with one of England’s most notorious occultists, the infamous Aleister Crowley. Crowley himself had worked as an informant during the war, much like Hoffman, and after being introduced to Fleming, the two were purported to have dined together a number of times at the Cavendish Hotel. It was Rosa Lewis, owner of the exclusive establishment at 82 Jermyn Street (which, its worth noting, was very close to a residence Crowley had at the time) who claimed that she had actually served Crowley and Fleming on a number of occasions in 1941. During these dinnertime talks at the stately Cavendish, the beginnings of an alleged wartime project, referred to later by Fleming as “Project Mistletoe” (a reference to the mythical character Balder of Valhalla), began to formulate precisely how occult influence over the Nazis might be used to Britain’s advantage.

According to McCormick’s biography on Fleming, this eventually resulted in the completion of an elaborate magical ritual in Ashdown Forest, in which Crowley, joined my Maxwell Knight and, of course, Ian Fleming, dressed an effigy made to resemble Hess; the ensuing ceremony had been intended at invoking the restless Hess by magical means; however, the sole testimony to this event ever having transpired can be attributed to the late Amado Crowley, who had claimed, in addition to being Crowley’s illegitimate son and protégé, that he had literally been present at the ritual itself. While there is little doubt that Knight, Fleming, and Crowley had indeed shared involvement with regard to intelligence operations during the war, little supporting evidence exists for the so-called “fireworks display” said to have taken place in Ashdown Forest.

Indeed, far more likely than the occurrence of bizarre rituals is the simple fact that Crowley, being renowned for his own occult interests, had simply been the best candidate for providing official consultation on astrological matters to British intelligence. With regard to the use of horoscopes as a medium of propaganda and misinformation, British journalist Ellic Howe’s 1982 book The Black Game detailed how he had been recruited by British Intelligence during World War II, for purposes of fabricating horoscopes that would be sent directly to Nazi strongholds, where subscriptions of a popular esoteric magazine called Zenit were already being sent. Additionally, subversive information regarding the supposed existence of an underground Anglo-German organization known as The Link was also floated through various channels, which included the Zenit horoscopes. The process was described thusly by Maxwell Knight’s biographer Anthony Masters:

Fleming briefed an astrologer, via a Swiss contact, also an agent, to infiltrate Hess’s occult circles in Germany. This he successfully did, ensuring that Hess was given the picture he and Knight had conceived, that of an influential band of plotters who wished to bring down Churchill and the government and negotiate peace with Germany. The message was passed to Hess via a fake horoscope.
 
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