Dimensions
156 x 233 x 35mm
The flight of Rudolf Hess, the deputy leader of the Nazi Party, to Scotland in May 1941 remains one of the great unresolved mysteries of the Second World War.
Did he come on Hitler's commission or, as he always maintained, without his Fuhrer's knowledge? Was the man who parachuted out of the Messerschmitt Bf 110 really Hess or a double? What was his purpose, why was he later incarcerated for life in Berlin's Spandau prison, and was he, as his son W R Hess alleged, finally murdered to prevent him revealing some explosive secret?
The biographer of Heinrich Himmler and Karl Donitz, Peter Padfield navigates the controversies which still surround Hess with both clarity and confidence. He profiles both the man and his milieu, the uppermost echelons of the Nazi Party. Hess, he concludes, was indeed sacrificed, but he was a most willing victim.