Hitler Deputy Hess Acted Alone, Records Say

LONDON —  Secret Foreign Office records released Wednesday show that Adolf Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess acted alone when he flew to Britain on a “peace” mission in one of World War II’s most bizarre episodes.

The documents, kept locked away for decades but now available at London’s Public Records Office, shed new light on Hess’ May, 1941, flight to Scotland and his subsequent arrest and interrogation before the Nuremberg war-crimes trials.

“Hess has come on his own initiative,” Lord Simon, then lord chancellor who spoke to Hess in a cell at the Tower of London, told wartime leader Winston Churchill, according to the documents.

“When he contemplates the failure of his mission, he becomes emotionally dejected and fears he has made a fool of himself.”

The records indicate that Hess, sentenced to life imprisonment after the war, believed there was a strong peace movement in Britain that would welcome his mission.

The motive behind the Hess mission has been hotly debated. Some historians believed he was sent by Hitler, others that British intelligence persuaded him to come to Britain to appeal for peace in an anti-Churchill plot.

Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in 1946 and spent the rest of his life in Berlin’s Spandau prison. He died at age 93 in 1987.