Why Rudolf Hess Was Not Executed JJ

When the surviving leaders of Nazi Germany were placed on trial at Nuremberg after the Second World War, many faced the possibility of execution. A number of the defendants were eventually sentenced to death, including Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Yet one of Adolf Hitler’s oldest and most loyal followers escaped the gallows.

Rudolf Hess, who had once been Deputy Führer and effectively one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, was instead sentenced to life imprisonment. The reason Hess avoided execution was largely connected to one extraordinary event, his mysterious flight to Britain in May 1941. But Rudolf Hess had been long associated with Hitler before the Nazis came to power.

Born in 1894, he served in the German army during the First World War and later became involved with the growing Nazi movement. He participated in Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923. After the attempted coup failed, both Hitler and Hess were imprisoned at Landsberg Prison. Hess became one of Hitler’s most devoted followers and did help him whilst Hitler was working on Mein Kampf.

When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Hess was rewarded for his immense loyalty. He became the Deputy Führer of the Nazi Party. Although Hess did not possess the same independent powers as men such as Hermann Göring or Heinrich Himmler, his position was extremely important. He represented Hitler within the Nazi Party and did have authority over large parts of the organization.

He was therefore deeply involved in the creation and consolidation of the dictatorship. He approved and signed laws and decrees connected with Nazi rule and supported the regime’s persecution of political opponents and persecuted people. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler’s foreign policy and territorial ambitions.

When Germany began expanding across Europe, he did remain close to the center of the regime. Hess supported the annexation of Austria in 1938 and Germany’s acquisition of the Sudetenland. He also supported the aggressive policies that eventually resulted in the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and ultimately the beginning of the Second World War in Europe.

For this reason, the Allied prosecutors at Nuremberg considered Rudolf Hess a major Nazi criminal. However, his story was very different from any of those who were also sat in the dock with him. On the 10th of May, 1941, Rudolf Hess climbed into a Messerschmitt Bf 110 aircraft and he flew alone from Germany towards Britain.

His destination was ultimately Scotland. Hess apparently believed that he could make contact with influential British figures and help negotiate peace between Britain and Nazi Germany. His mission was, well, bizarre, crazy some would say, and it had not officially been authorized by Hitler. After reaching Scotland, Hess parachuted from his aircraft and was then quickly captured.

His hoped-for peace negotiations never happened. Instead, the British government treated him as a prisoner and he remained like that for the rest of his life. Hitler, though, was reportedly furious and publicly distanced himself from his former friend and deputy. Nazi propaganda portrayed Hess as mentally deranged and claimed he had acted without Hitler’s knowledge.

The flight effectively ended Rudolf Hess’s political career, but it also had a very unexpected consequence. It probably helped save him from the gallows and from execution 5 years later. From May 1941 onwards, Rudolf Hess was no longer participating in the government of Nazi Germany. He spent the remainder of the Second World War in British custody.

This was very significant because some of Nazi Germany’s greatest crimes escalated after Hess disappeared from the regime. Germany invaded the Soviet Union on the 22nd of June 1941, only 6 weeks after Rudolf Hess arrived in Britain. The invasion was accompanied by enormous atrocities. Einsatzgruppen and other German units murdered thousands of people behind the advancing German armies.

During the following years, the Nazi persecution ramped up into systematic mass murder. Extermination centers, including Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, became central parts of the Holocaust. Auschwitz-Birkenau also developed into the largest Nazi killing center. Millions were murdered alongside millions of other victims of Nazi persecution, occupation, and warfare.

But Rudolf Hess was not participating in these policies because, well, he was locked up in Britain. But this did not make him innocent. Nazi persecution had already been taking place while Hess was the Deputy Führer. He had supported Hitler’s dictatorship, his disturbing legislation, and aggressive expansion.

However, establishing individual criminal responsibility was very important at the Nuremberg trials. The tribunal was not supposed to sentence someone to death simply because he held an important Nazi title. The prosecutors had to demonstrate responsibility for specific crimes. Hess was charged under all four counts of the Nuremberg indictment.

These concerned conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The tribunal ultimately found him guilty on the first two counts, conspiracy and crimes against peace. His responsibility for aggressive war was particularly clear. Hess had clearly supported Hitler’s expansionist policies and had occupied an important position within the Nazi government during the years in which Germany prepared for war.

But Rudolf Hess was acquitted on the charges of war crimes and also crimes against humanity. That distinction was very important. Other defendants had much more direct connections to atrocities committed during the war. Let’s take Ernst Kaltenbrunner for example. He had become one of the most senior figures in the SS’s system.

There’s also Hans Frank, who governed occupied Poland, where millions of people suffered under brutal German occupation. Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl both occupied senior positions within the German military leadership and were implicated in criminal orders and the conduct of aggressive warfare. These men were all sentenced to death.

Hess’s criminal responsibility was very different. His most serious proven involvement concerned the Nazi conspiracy and preparation for aggressive war, rather than direct responsibility for the mass killing programs of the later war. The judges, therefore, sentenced Hess to life imprisonment.

 But the decision was not unanimous in every respect. The Soviet member of the tribunal, Major General Iona Nikitchenko, believed Hess should have received the death penalty. The Soviet descent demonstrates that death penalty was a genuine possibility. He literally escaped by the skin of his teeth. But another unusual part of the trial of Hess specifically concerned his mental health.

During his imprisonment, he behaved very strangely. He complained that his food was being poisoned, displayed very paranoid behavior, and claimed to suffer from memory loss. At one stage, he appeared to have completely lost his mind and memory. This raised an important legal question. Was Rudolf Hess mentally capable of standing trial? Doctors examined him and his mental condition was discussed extensively.

Eventually, the tribunal concluded that Hess was competent to face proceedings. During the trial, Hess himself suddenly announced that he claimed memory loss had been just a deception. His mental health, therefore, did not provide him with a legal escape from responsibility. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced like the other men.

Following the conclusion of the Nuremberg trials, he was transferred to Spandau Prison in Berlin alongside six other convicted Nazi leaders. This included Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth leader, and Admiral Karl Dönitz. Over time, the other prisoners were released after completing their sentences or, in some cases, because, well, they were very ill.

Hess remained because he’d been sentenced life imprisonment. When Speer and von Schirach were released in 1966 after serving 20-year sentences, Hess became the only prisoner remaining at Spandau. For approximately the next 20 years, the enormous prison existed primarily to hold one elderly man. There were repeated discussions about releasing Hess on humanitarian grounds as he became, well, a very old man and he became frail.

Britain, France, and the United States became slightly more willing at various points to consider Rudolf Hess’s release, but it was the Soviets and the Soviet Union that consistently resisted attempts to free him. Hess, because of this, remained at Spandau until his death. On the 17th of August, 1987, the 93-year-old Rudolf Hess was found in a small building in the prison garden with an electrical cord wrapped around his neck.

Attempts were made to revive him, but he had died. In the end, Rudolf Hess avoided the hangman at Nuremberg largely because of the unusual timeline of his Nazi career. He had unquestionably been an important member of Hitler’s regime. He had helped strengthen the Nazi dictatorship, supported the brutal policies, and played a significant role in the political system that prepared Germany for aggressive war.

But his flight to Scotland in May 1941 removed him from Hitler’s government as a very crucial moment when many of Nazi Germany’s worst crimes were being committed between 1941 and 1945. Rudolf Hess was already a prisoner of war in Britain. The Nuremberg Tribunal therefore found him guilty of conspiracy and crimes against peace, but acquitted him of war crimes and also crimes against humanity.

And that difference was very important. But Hess didn’t escape punishment. A life sentence meant he spent more than four decades imprisoned by the Allies from his capture in Scotland in 1941 to his death in Berlin in 1987. But he did escape the gallows. He probably would have preferred going there, though. Ironically, the strange flight that destroyed Rudolf Hess’s career and reputation in Nazi Germany also separated him from the later crimes of Hitler’s regime.

Had Hess remained Deputy Führer throughout the whole of the Second World War and become involved in more of the policies implemented during the Holocaust and the brutal occupation of Eastern Europe, the evidence against him might have been considerably greater and he would have been undoubtedly sentenced to death.

In that sense, Rudolf Hess’s failed attempt to make peace with Britain actually saved his life and ultimately saved him from execution. But eventually, he probably would have realized that he probably would have wanted to go that way because, well, he did tend to moan and complain and suffer throughout the last few years of his life.

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