Rudolf Hess served as deputy leader of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1941, standing only one place behind Adolf Hitler in the hierarchy of the regime. A World War I infantryman and later a pilot, Hess was complicit in the actions the Nazis took against their enemies.
That complicity included the promulgation of race laws against Jews and other groups in German society, as well as the plans for German territorial expansion that led to the Second World War.
Everything changed on May 10, 1941, when Hess flew a Messerschmitt 110 twin-engine fighter to Scotland and landed by parachute. He said he had come on a mission of peace.
Arrested and imprisoned by the British, Hess was tried at Nuremberg in 1946 and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1947 he was transferred to the austere Spandau prison in Berlin, where he would remain for the rest of his long life.
Initially Hess had six other inmates as companions, including top Nazis such as Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments minister, and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander of the Navy and the last leader of Nazi Germany.
One by one, the six other prisoners were released, either having served their sentences or being freed early because of ill health. The deputy Führer remained the sole prisoner in a prison designed to hold 600.
Spandau fell under the Four Powers Agreement signed in 1945, meaning it was under the joint control of the four victorious Allied powers: the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, which in turn occupied parts of Germany.
The four occupying powers alternated control of the prison on a monthly basis, each running it for three months of each year and flying their flag at the Allied Control Authority building. Each month a handover ceremony took place outside the prison as a new nationality of soldiers arrived to guard the building and its solitary prisoner.
The guard detail consisted of 37 soldiers and an officer. In addition there were four dozen cleaning women, a cook, a doctor, a chaplain, and other German staff members. In 1985 it was calculated to cost 670,000 US dollars to guard Hess each year, a cost borne entirely by West German taxpayers.
From 1966 to 1987 Hess was the only inmate in the vast building. Each time the British or the Americans brought up the idea of either releasing Hess or moving him to a different facility, the Soviets vetoed it.
Spandau prison was in the British sector of West Berlin, and a living Hess meant Soviet access to West Berlin, something the KGB was keen to maintain.
By the 1980s, prisoner number 7, as Hess was officially called, was allowed a more relaxed lifestyle than previously. He could move freely around the cellblock, keep to his own routine, and do what he liked to entertain himself, such as reading, gardening, watching films, or watching television. As he became very old and more infirm, an orderly was assigned to him from 1982 onwards.
His daily routine was remarkably unchanged over the course of more than 40 years of imprisonment. Hess would rise at 6:45 a.m., breakfast an hour later at 7:45, walk 28 rounds of the garden at 10:30, lunch at 11:45, walk again in the garden at 2:30, dine at 5:00, and retire to bed at 10:00 p.m.
Hess was permitted to write one letter a month and receive one letter a month in return. He was given four censored newspapers each day but was forbidden from reading anything about the Nazis. For security reasons his cell was shifted constantly, and there were plenty of empty cells to choose from.
When he was taken ill or for routine medical check-ups, he was taken in a heavily guarded convoy to the British military hospital, where an entire wing was closed off.
On August 17, 1987, Rudolf Hess was found dead inside a summer house in the prison garden. He was 93 years old. A lamp extension cord was strung from a window latch and around his neck, and the British judged that Hess had committed suicide.
Many historians and Hess's own family have stated that Hess was murdered by British intelligence. They doubt that such an old and frail man could have killed himself in this manner.
Whatever the truth of Hess's demise, the British were certainly in a hurry to get rid of Spandau prison. They moved quickly to demolish it, and the site was turned into a car park and a fishing centre for the British army, the Britannia Centre Spandau, nicknamed "ESCOs" after the British superstore Tesco.
The case of Rudolf Hess, the last prisoner in Spandau, continues to generate debate and conspiracy theories even today, more than 30 years after his death.