Rudolf Hess (26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987) was Deputy Führer of Nazi Germany from 21 April 1933 to 12 May 1941, preceding Martin Bormann. He betrayed the Nazi Party to make peace talks with the United Kingdom in Scotland, but in 1946 he was tried as a war criminal in the Nuremberg Trials and sentenced to life imprisonment; in 1987, he hanged himself at the age of 93 in Spandau Prison.
Biography[]
Hess in 1919
Rudolf Hess was born on 26 April 1894 in Alexandria, Egypt to a prosperous Bavarian merchant family. Hess enlisted in the 7th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment at the start of World War I and was present at the First Battle of Ypres and Battle of Verdun during the war. After the war's end, Hess joined a right-wing group in Bavaria and took part in the street fighting of 1919 against left-wing groups, spreading anti-Semitic pamphlets in Munich; he gained the idea of Lebensraum from his geopolitics professor Karl Haushofer and gave Adolf Hitler the idea of the concept. On 1 July 1920, he was the sixteenth person to join the Nazi Party, and in 1922 he joined the Sturmabteilung, helping to organize and recruit its membership. Following the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Hess and Hitler were imprisoned, and Hess encouraged Hitler to write his vision for the future, becoming a co-writer of Mein Kampf. However, he took no credit for his contribution to Hitler's book.
Deputy Chancellor[]
Hess wearing a Nazi armband
In 1933, when Hitler became the Chancellor and Führer of Nazi Germany, Hess was appointed his deputy. In 1935, he helped in the passage of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws, which deprived non-Aryans of German citizenship, forbade marriages between Germans and Jews, and persecuted people of partial Jewish descent. Haushofer was persecuted due to marrying a half-Jewish woman, but Hess helped him in avoiding the laws. Hess became disillusioned with the Nazi government as Hitler refused to eat with him due to his habit of bringing his own food to lunch (he was a vegetarian, non-drinker, and non-smoker), and Martin Bormann replaced him in various posts. On 10 May 1941, he flew to the United Kingdom in hopes of arranging a peace meeting, but he was arrested on arrival. Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1946 after the Nuremberg Trials, and he was held in Spandau Prison. On 17 August 1987, Hess hanged himself at the age of 93 after 46 years in prison, as the Soviet Union had repeatedly insisted that Hess not be paroled.
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