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Reunited Germany - The New Danger
GERMANY
Who was Rudolf Hess?
Searchlight October 2003
RUDOLF HESS, Hitler's deputy and the last to die of the Nazi war criminals
condemned at Nuremberg, committed suicide in Berlin's Spandau prison on 17
August 1987. Hess, 93, was held in Spandau for over 40 years despite his
family's efforts to secure his release, aided by nazis across the world.
Born in Egypt in 1894, he was a virulent German nationalist and Jew-hating
racist all his adult life. After serving in the First World War, in 1919
he joined the ranks of the paramilitary Freikorps in Bavaria, a festering
sore of extremism in the stormy period following Germany's defeat. There,
marauding bands of former soldiers calling themselves "true German
patriots" had a licence to kill, torture and maim anyone who got in their
way. With swastikas emblazoned on their steel helmets, these killers
organised a reign of terror against political opponents. Hess's unit, the
infamous Epp Brigade, was notorious for its murderous treatment of
Communists, socialists and Jews long before the Nazis held power.
Hess was a central figure in the the Nazi debacle that went down in
history as the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Their failure to establish power
from the barrel of a rifle landed Hess and Hitler in the soft-regime
Landsberg prison, where they drastically rethought the tactics of the Nazi
Party as outlined in Hitler's rantings in Mein Kampf. It was there that
they laid the plans for a mass movement, for the invasion and rape of
Eastern Europe and for the genocide of the Jews.
 Between 1925 and 1933, Hess ran the Nazi Party's organisation and acted as
Hitler's private secretary. In these roles, he helped build the Nazis into
a force capable of vying for power after the German economy collapsed in
the 1929 Wall Street crash and Germany's streets were filled with
swaggering hordes of brown-shirted Nazis.
Hess was a key figure in Hitler's seizure of power and the obliteration of
German democracy in 1933. He had a hand in all the fateful decisions that
followed. He knew about the pogroms against German Jewry, he knew about
the plans to launch war against Europe and he knew of all Hitler's other
schemes to install the "Thousand Year Reich".
Much speculation has surrounded his solo flight to Britain on the eve of
the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. Two things are
certain. Firstly, his proposals for a separate peace
with Britain were not in conflict with the Nazis' objective of reducing
Eastern Europe to slavery and exterminating millions
of Jews and Slavs. Secondly, he flew to Britain looking for support from
sections of the British Establishment that had enthused about the Nazi
experiment until 1939.
Sentenced to life imprisonment after the war, Hess
was lucky to escape execution. He remained totally unrepentant and the
Soviet  Union,
ever mindful of its 20 million citizens killed by the Germans, refused to
countenance his release, a move that would have been an insult to all
those who died in the war against fascism.
World View on Germany:
Nazis honour Hitler deputy unopposed
Over 3,500 nazis, including around 500 from outside Germany, marched
under heavy police protection through the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel
to commemorate their idol...
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17-10-03 |
