James Douglas-Hamilton - The Truth About Rudolf Hess

THE TRUTH ABOUT

RUDOLF HESS

To my wife Susie, my sons Andrew, Charles, Jamie and Harry, to Marlene, wife of Andrew, and their daughters Amelia and Louisa.

This book is also dedicated to Squadron Leader Lord David Douglas-Hamilton, killed on operations 2 August 1944, and to all the men and women who served in or were associated with the Royal Navy, the British Army and the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

James Douglas-Hamilton read history at Balliol College, was a Boxing Blue and President of the Oxford Union. After practising as a Scots Advocate, he served 23 years as MP for Edinburgh West, ten of them as a Minister. From 1999 to 2007 he was a Member of the Scottish Parliament. He has been a Life Peer since 1997 as Lord Selkirk of Douglas.

James Douglas-Hamilton

Frontline Books

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire - Philadelphia

THE TRUTH ABOUT RUDOLF HESS

This paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2018 by Frontline Books

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire - Philadelphia

Copyright Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, 2016

ISBN 978-1-52674-238-4

eISBN 978-1-47387-618-7

Mobi ISBN 978-1-47387-617-0

Publishing history

First published as Motive For A Mission by Macmillan in 1971. A new and expanded edition of the work was published in hardback by Frontline Books in 2016. This paperback edition contains further revisions and new material.

The right of Lord James Douglas-Hamilton to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

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The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material: George Allen and Unwin Limited and Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, for extract from The Memoirs of Dr Eduard Bene (1954) by Eduard Bene; the Revd. Dr Eberhard Bethge for permission to quote from a personal letter and from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Biography (Collins 1970); the British Broadcasting Corporation and Mrs Temple for extract from The Broadcast by the Revd. Dr William Temple, Archbishop of York, 2nd October 1939; Cassell and Company Limited and McClelland and Stewart Limited, Canada for extract from The War Speeches Vol II of Sir Winston S. Churchill; Cassell and Company Limited and Houghton Mifflin, Boston for extracts from The Reckoning: The Eden Memoirs by the Earl of Avon, and extracts from Their Finest Hour and The Gathering Storm from the Second World War Vols II and III by Sir Winston S. Churchill; Chicago Daily News for extracts from The Ciano Diaries (1947); Collins Publishers and Curtis Brown Limited for extract from Ambassador on a Special Mission by Viscount Templewood; Sefton Delmer for extracts from Black Boomerang, Doubleday and Co. Inc., for extracts from Total Power by Edmund Walsh; Hamish Hamilton for extracts from Black Record Germans Past and Present by Sir Robert Vansittart; Dr Karl-Heinz Harbeck for permission to quote from his unpublished thesis: Die Zeitschrift fr Geopolitik (Kiel 1963); Professor Dr Heinz Haushofer for permission to quote from The Hartschimmelhof Papers, and to reproduce Albrecht Haushofers Peace Plan (1941) and The Sonnets of Moabit; Sir Alan Herbert C.H. for poem Hess from Let Us Be Glum by A.P. Herbert (Methuen 1941); Dr Rainer Hildebrandt for extracts from Wir Sind Die Letzten (1950); H.M.S.O. for extracts from Hansard, Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-45 Series D. Vols XI and XII, and also from Trials of German Major War Criminals at Nuremberg; Professor Rolf Italiaander for extracts from Besiegeltes Leben (1949), and from Akzente eines Lebens (Carl Schunemann Buchverlag Bremen); Dr Ursula Laack (ne Michel) for permission to quote from her unpublished theses: Albrecht Haushofer und Nationalsozialismus (Kiel 1964); E.P.S. Lewin for extracts from Hitler The Missing Years (1957) by Ernst Hanfstaengl; Paul List Verlag, Munich for extracts from Das Spiel Um Deutschland (1953) by Fritz Hesse; The National Archives of the U.S.A., Washington for extracts from Speeches and Discussions in 1941; Gerald Reitlinger and The Viking Press, Inc., for extracts from The S.S.: Alibi of a Nation by Gerald Reitlinger; The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House for permission to quote from Albrecht Haushofers Lecture 29th April 1937, which was given to a private off-the-record meeting; Martin Secker and Warburg Limited and Simon Schuster for extracts from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) by William Shirer; David Higham Associates and Butterworth for, The Case of Rudolph Hess by J.R. Rees; Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, Stuttgart, for, In Memoriam Albrecht Haushofer by Walter Stubbe, in an article from The Quarterly Bulletin for Contemporary History, (Munich, July I960); Atlantis Verlag for Memoirs by Ulrich Von Hassell (1948); Professor von Weizsaecker for In Memoriam Albrecht Haushofer by Carl F. von Weizsaecker; Weidenfeld and Nicolson for Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer. The publishers have been unable to trace the copyright holders of some extracts and photographs but will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

I also wish to thank Peter Janson-Smith, Harold Lind, Bill Campbell, Patrick Janson-Smith, Dr Ursula Laack, Peter Padfield, the late Mrs Johnson, Mrs Christa Wichmann, Ben Barkow and their colleagues at the Wiener Library, Mr Mellor and Wing Commander Lambert of The National Archives at Kew, John Campsie, the House of Commons Library and everyone who has given assistance.

In particular, I wish to record my gratitude to my uncle, the Earl of Selkirk, for his comments, and to my father, who, whilst he was alive, provided me with the information which gave him the key to the rest of the story; and to Mr Theodore Kay for his kind and invaluable help in translating and checking the authenticity of the original German documents including the Sonnets of Moabit.

I wish also to thank Dr Eugene Pugatch and Mr Daniel Knutson for their translations into verse of the Sonnets of Moabit, to Roy Nesbit for all his assistance with research into the technical details of Hesss flight, to Dudley Cowderoy, and to Sebastian Cox of the Ministry of Defence Air Historical Branch. I am also grateful to Dr Martin Haushofer, member of the Bavarian Landtag, for access to the Hartschimmelhof Papers, General Professor Karl Haushofer being his grandfather, Albrecht his uncle and Field Marshal Hindenburg his great-uncle by marriage to his wife, Renata.

Finally I would thank my Oxford tutor, the late Martin Gilbert, who wrote Sir Winston Churchills official biography, for rousing in me a great interest in modern history, and in particular the late Lord Bullock who, with infinite patience, gave invaluable guidance at every stage of the researches of this book.