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Hess, Rudolf (b. April 26, 1894, Alexandria, Egypt), German National Socialist, Hitler’s deputy as party leader, cabinet member, and head of the Nazi Party organization. Second in the line of Hitler’s succession, he created an international sensation when in 1941 he secretly flew to Great Britain on an abortive self- styled mission to negotiate a peace between Britain and Germany.
The son of a merchant, Hess served in the German Army during World War I, later transferring to the air force. After the war, he studied at the University of Munich, where he engaged in nationalist and anti-Semitic propaganda and met Karl Haushofer, the propounder of geopolitics, who was to remain his lifelong friend. Hess joined the fledgling Nazi Party in 1920 and quickly became the F?hrer’s friend and confidant. Participating in the abortive November 1923 Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch, he escaped to Austria but returned voluntarily to Landsberg prison, where he took down and edited much of Hitler’s dictation for Mein Kampf. Promoted to Hitler’s private secretary, Hess was charged with creating a new centralized party organization after the defection of the leftist followers of Gustav Strasser (1932).
In April 1933, he became deputy party leader and in December entered the cabinet. During the later 1930s and the first years of World War II, when military and foreign policy preoccupied the F?hrer, Hess’s power waned; it was further undermined by his subordinate, Martin Bormann. Influenced by Haushofer, Hess decided in the spring of 1941 to bring the war to an end by means of a spectacular coup and at the same time restore his flagging prestige. On May 10, he secretly flew to Scotland with peace proposals, demanding a free hand for Germany in Europe in return for Germany’s promise to respect the integrity of the British Empire and the return of Britain’s former colonies. Hess’s proposals met with no response. He was treated as a prisoner of war and held throughout World War II. His action caused Hitler considerable public embarassment. After the war, Hess, whose sanity was by then in doubt, was tried at the NUrnberg war crime trials, convicted, and given a life sentence, which he was still serving in the 1970s.
