The second man after Hitler fell on the British heads like a star from the sky ... literally. Although no one in the UK wanted to negotiate with him, Churchill did his best to extract valuable information from him. Guards and specially selected guests had long talks with the highest-ranking prisoner of the Second World War. What did Rudolf Hess tell them about the Third Reich and Hitler?
I wrote about Hess' unexpected landing in Great Britain in 1941 in another article. His mission failed miserably, and he spent the rest of the war in isolation. Locked in four walls, he gradually lost his mind (he even tried to commit suicide), but he talked quite a bit at the same time. Extracts from the conversations the British had with him - and of course they were recording them - were collected in Stephen McGinthy's book The Secret Life of Rudolf Hess.
The Daily Record reports about the Hess landing.
It turns out that Hess was both blindly devoted to Hitler and… extremely naive. This powerful party member and deputy dictator was convinced that World War II was caused by Winston Churchill : before the war he was constantly behind the scenes to work out ways to destroy Germany ("Secret Life ...", p. 227) .
Apparently, Hess was unaware that Churchill was almost completely out of politics until September 1939. Another opinion is even more interesting. According to Hess' statements Poles were drawn into the war because of the behavior of the British (p. 227) . Apparently, Polish politicians assured the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they were ready to make concessions, but from negotiations with Hitler they were visited by - and how - by the British.
Even about the head of Polish diplomacy Józef Beck , author of the famous honor speech, Hess said he was basically ... a supporter of the Germans. He was going to come to an agreement [with us], a real understanding, I know it well - he assured in one of the interviews (p. 278). When the visiting British Minister Beaverbrook asked if Beck was then influenced by Germany and wanted nothing to do with Churchill, the prisoner replied: Yes, he was (p. 279) .
Hitler's deputy was blindly devoted to his leader. At the same time, he turned out to be an extremely naive man.
Hess had a peculiar opinion about the eastern allies of the Third Reich, the Japanese . In his opinion, they were not trustworthy and were… overexposed to Australia . On the other hand, Hess praised their ardent enemy, the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek. He considered him an honest and reliable man (p. 230) .
Much attention was paid by the former Hitler's deputy to religion, ensuring that Hitler would be completely rid of it. Admittedly, Hess admitted that he believed in destiny, clairvoyance and ghosts (p. 239), but he had no mercy for Christianity.
He said that soon the Germans would abolish Christianity, because it is only a Jewish fairy tale , and they will replace them with the new German religion (p. 226) . According to Stephen McGinthy, Hess himself believed in an afterlife, but not in heaven with a God resembling a bearded old man (p. 230).
The new faith was to be built from scratch and required the creation of new external aspects and rituals. Stalin - in his opinion - made a great mistake in destroying religion, but not proposing in its place an appropriate substitute (p. 230) .
The last broad subject of Hess' confessions is the war crimes of the Germans. In short, Hess did not believe in any crimes and was ready to defend the honor of the German soldier and the Third Reich to death.
Lord Beaverbrook had a chat with Hess about, among other things, the Polish Minister Józef Beck ...
Although he admitted that indeed Polish priests were shot, but they were guilty of espionage (p. 229) . But for sure the Germans did not hurt any Jews! According to Hess, Hitler had completely different plans for the Semites. Apparently he decided to: drive everyone out of Europe (p. 230) . Drive out, not kill.
Frank Foley. Among other things, he was entrusted with the task of extracting information from Hess…
Even after reading the reports on the concentration camps and the memories of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Hess did not change his mind. He was so hardened in his views and so open to discussion that it is fair to assume that did not know anything about the plans of extermination.
It seems amazing, counting that he was Hitler's immediate deputy! Yet he consistently called the Jewish victims alleged witnesses of the alleged treatment of prisoners (p. 236), allowing at best the thought that some middle-ranking officials exceeded their powers and acted against the will of the Nazi leadership.
Perhaps Hess was already too deranged to change his mind on any subject. He told British agents that was planning to build a country house in Scotland and therefore asked for books on the design of English country houses (p. 231) . On another occasion, he said, however, that he changed his mind and when Hitler finished conquering Europe, he would return to his homeland, instead of assuming the office of governor of one of the new colonies of the Third Reich ...
Source:
Stephen McGinty, The Secret Life of Rudolf Hess , Character Literanova 2012.