The
Death of Rudolf Hess
by
TempleofMysteries.com
Copyright 2012 TempleofMysteries.com
Smashwords Edition
Introduction
Background
to the Prisoner of Spandau
Hess’s
Mental & Physical Condition
Cause
of Death
Circumstances
of Hess’s Death
The
Key Questions
The
Suicide Note
The
SIB Investigation
Who
Was Responsible?
Motives
for Murder
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBooks may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Introduction
The first doubts about the official version were raised by Professor Spann's autopsy, which suggested that Rudolf Hess had been strangled with the cable, rather than hanging himself with it - which of course means that somebody else was involved.
Background - The prisoner of Spandau
Until his death in 1987, Nazi Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess had been imprisoned since his flight to Britain in May 1941. Sentenced to life imprisonment for Crimes against Peace at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials in September 1946, along with six other Nazi leaders, he was interned in Spandau prison in Berlin. Since names were forbidden in Spandau, he was known simply as Prisoner No. 7.
Hess's mental & physical condition
The official line is that Hess killed himself as the result of a premeditated decision to end his life. However, supporters of the murder theory claim that his actions and words in the days before his death reveal quite the opposite. Although this doesn't rule out suicide, it does mean that it must have been a spur-of-the-moment decision, the result of a sudden attack of despair - which already contradicts the official version.
Cause of death
There is no question about what caused Hess's death: asphyxia due to the electric cable round his neck. But how did it get there? Did Hess do it himself, as the official version insists - i.e. did he hang himself with the handy cable? Or did a third party use it as a murder weapon?
Circumstances of Hess's death
Hess's nurse Abdallah Melaouhi and others contend that (a) if Hess wanted to kill himself, he would not have chosen that location, but rather when he was unobserved in his cell, (b) he didn't have time - especially given his physical condition - to write a suicide note and to tie the knots in the flex. And he couldn't have predicted that he would be left alone in the garden hut.
The suicide note
According to the official account, a suicide note was found in Hess's pocket when his body was searched at the BMH. Why does Hess's son, Wolf Rüdiger, believe it to be a forgery.
Evasion by the British authorities
Although an investigation into Hess's death was carried out by a team from the Royal Military Police's Special Investigations Branch (SIB), the men began their investigation before the prison governors authorised it. If - as one eye-witness states - the report only confirms the suicide verdict, why has it never been made public?
Who was responsible?
If Hess was murdered, who did it? Was it an individual with a personal grudge against the prisoner - which could only have been one of the Spandau personnel? Or was it organised by some external agency, presumably one of the governments responsible for running the prison? Those are the only two alternatives.
Motives for murder
In the last 20 years of Hess's imprisonment, the official British line was that they were open to the idea of releasing him on humanitarian grounds, but that they were prevented from doing so by the Russians, who were the most insistent that he should serve out his life sentence to the very end. However, the Russians had already agreed to the early release of other inmates serving life sentences, on the grounds of old age and ill health. Wolf Rüdiger Hess, among others, has argued that this was simply an excuse by the British, who did not want his father released any more than the Russians.
On 17 August 1987 the former Deputy Führer of Nazi Germany, Rudolf Hess, who became the sole inmate of Spandau prison in Berlin, died after 46 years in prison.
Officially he committed suicide. However, in the years since his death, evidence has mounted to suggest that he was in fact murdered.
THE OFFICIAL VERSION
At around 5.00pm on Monday, 17 August 1987, the British Military Government in Berlin issued a short announcement, giving no details of the circumstances or the cause of death.
Two days later a post mortem was carried out by Professor J. Malcolm Cameron of the University of London, the Army's chief pathologist. Cameron had been on stand-by for this task for some years.
At 6pm on 19 August, the British Military Government issued a statement saying that Hess had committed suicide by hanging himself - although concluding that it was unclear whether the hanging 'was the actual cause of death'.
Further details were not released for another month. On 19 September a statement was released that said:
'Investigations have confirmed that, on the 17th of August, Rudolf Hess hanged himself from a window latch in a small summer house in the prison garden, using an electrical extension cord, which had for some time been kept for use in connection with a reading lamp.'
It added that a suicide note had been found in Hess's pocket, written on the back of a letter he had recently received from his daughter-in-law, Andrea Hess.
There was no inquest - unlike a similar death occurring in civilian life, the British Military Government laws in Berlin did not require one.
Hess's body was handed over to his family on 20 August. Originally it had been planned that his body, like those sentenced to death at Nuremberg, would be cremated and the ashes scattered in secret, but in 1982 Wolf Rüdiger Hess had managed to persuade the controlling powers to agree to return the body to the family. It was flown by RAF Hercules to an American air base at Grafenwöhr where it was handed over to Hess's son, Wolf Rüdiger Hess, and lawyer, Dr Alfred Seidl.
The next day the family arranged for a second autopsy by a team led by Dr Wolfgang Spann, a pathologist at Munich University's School of Forensic Medicine.
Rudolf Hess was secretly buried in the cemetery in the village of Wundseidl during the night of 21-22 August 1987. In April 1988 it was re-interred in the family plot.
Spandau prison was totally demolished, as was the garden hut where Hess had died.
Since then, no official account detailing the precise circumstances of Hess's death has ever been given.
The nearest to such an explanation was in the book by the last British governor of Spandau, Lieutenant Colonel Tony le Tissier, Farewell to Spandau (1994). Essentially, the story that emerges from le Tissier's book and the official announcements is:
It was Hess's habit to go out into the garden each afternoon and spend some time, sitting and reading or writing letters to his family, in a building described as a 'garden hut' or summer-house. This was, in fact, an old Portakabin, one side of which was made up of glass doors. It was the rule that Hess would always be accompanied by the duty cell warder - on the day of his death an American named Anthony Jordan - although he would usually sit outside the hut and watch his charge through the window.
On this day, the warder - having apparently been absent for a short while (why is a matter of controversy) - returned to find Hess lying on the floor of the hut with an electrical extension cable, normally used for a reading lamp, wound around his neck. He had effectively hanged himself in a sitting position, attaching the cord to a window latch less than 4 feet from the ground, then tying a 'noose' around his neck and slumping forward, causing the cable to tighten.
The sequence of events that followed is unclear, but the end result was that after attempts at resuscitation at the scene, Hess was removed by ambulance to the British Military Hospital, where he was declared dead at 4.10pm.
SUICIDE - OR MURDER?
The first doubts about the official version were raised by Professor Spann's autopsy, which suggested that Rudolf Hess had been strangled with the cable, rather than hanging himself with it - which of course means that somebody else was involved.
The case was taken up by Dr Hugh Thomas, a former Army surgeon who had examined Hess at the BMH in 1973. He caused something of a stir in 1979 with his theory that the prisoner in Spandau was not the real Hess, but a double or doppelgänger. Thomas published a revised version of his book in 1988, Hess: A Tale of Two Murders, presenting the case for murder.
On 28 February 1989 the prestigious BBC Newsnight programme broadcast the results of its investigation into the death of Rudolf Hess.
In it, Hess's nurse, a Tunisian named Abdallah Melaouhi, gave his account of his experiences on the day of Hess's death. Melaouhi had been Hess's nurse, looking after his daily care since 1982, and had formed a strong bond with his elderly charge. Subsequently, the nurse swore affidavits about what he had seen and heard that day.
In 2001, two books presented new evidence in support of the murder hypothesis: Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince and Stephen Prior's Double Standards: The Rudolf Hess Cover-Up and Alfred Smith's Rudolf Hess and Germany's Reluctant War.
The supporters of the murder hypothesis - who include senior British politicians - build their case on the following:
Rudolf Hess, aged 93 and infirm, could not have killed himself in the way described in the official accounts.
Discrepancies and missing information in official accounts and eyewitness testimony that suggest that something is being covered up.
Forensic evidence that casts doubt on the conclusions of the official post mortem examination and which, it is claimed, point to murder.
Evidence that the suicide note allegedly written by Hess is a forgery.