When surviving Nazi leaders were brought before the tribunal at Nuremberg after the Second World War, many faced the real possibility of execution. Several defendants were ultimately sentenced to death, including Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Yet one of Adolf Hitler’s earliest and most devoted followers escaped the noose. Rudolf Hess, once Deputy Führer and effectively one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, was instead sentenced to life imprisonment.
His survival rested largely on one extraordinary event: his mysterious flight to Britain in May 1941. Hess had been tied to Hitler long before the Nazis seized power. Born in 1894, he served in the German army during the First World War and later became involved in the growing Nazi movement. He took part in Hitler’s failed coup attempt in Munich, the Beer Hall Putsch, in November 1923.
After its collapse, both Hitler and Hess were imprisoned at Landsberg. Hess emerged as one of Hitler’s most loyal followers and even assisted him while Hitler worked on his book, Mein Kampf. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Hess was rewarded for his loyalty. He was made Deputy Führer of the Nazi Party.
Although he never wielded the independent power of men like Hermann Göring or Heinrich Himmler, his position was highly significant. He represented Hitler within the party and held authority over large parts of its organization. He was deeply involved in establishing and cementing the dictatorship, signing laws and decrees related to Nazi governance and supporting the regime’s persecution of political opponents and other victims. He was also a fervent supporter of Hitler’s foreign policy and territorial ambitions.
When Germany began expanding across Europe, Hess remained close to the center of power. He backed the annexation of Austria in 1938 and Germany’s seizure of the Sudetenland. He also supported the aggressive policies that ultimately led to the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the outbreak of war in Europe. For these reasons, Allied prosecutors at Nuremberg treated Rudolf Hess as a major Nazi criminal.
But his case was entirely different from those of the men seated beside him in the dock. On 10 May 1941, Hess climbed into a Messerschmitt Bf 110 and flew alone from Germany toward Britain. His destination was Scotland. He apparently believed he could contact influential British figures and help negotiate peace between Britain and Nazi Germany.
His mission was bizarre and unauthorized by Hitler. After reaching Scotland, Hess parachuted from his aircraft and was quickly captured. The peace talks he hoped for never happened. The British government treated him as a prisoner, and he remained one for the rest of his life.
Hitler, reportedly enraged, publicly distanced himself from his former friend and deputy. Nazi propaganda portrayed Hess as mentally disturbed and claimed he had acted without Hitler’s knowledge. That single flight effectively ended Hess’s political career, but it also produced a completely unexpected consequence: it may well have saved him from the gallows. From May 1941 onward, Hess no longer played any part in the Nazi German government.
He spent the remainder of the Second World War in British custody. That mattered enormously, because some of Nazi Germany’s greatest crimes escalated after Hess disappeared from the regime. Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, only six weeks after Hess reached Britain. That invasion was accompanied by terrible atrocities.
Einsatzgruppen units and other German forces killed thousands behind the advancing armies. In the following years, Nazi persecution escalated into systematic mass murder. Extermination centers, including Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, became central to the Holocaust. Auschwitz-Birkenau developed into the largest Nazi killing center.
Millions were murdered, alongside millions of other victims of Nazi persecution, occupation, and warfare. Rudolf Hess had no part in these policies because he was held in Britain. That did not make him innocent. Nazi persecution had already occurred while he was Deputy Führer.
He had supported Hitler’s dictatorship, its repressive legislation, and its aggressive expansion. But establishing individual criminal responsibility was crucial at Nuremberg. The court would not sentence a man to death simply because he had held an important Nazi title. Prosecutors had to prove responsibility for specific crimes.
Hess was charged with all four counts in the Nuremberg indictment: conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The court ultimately convicted him on the first two counts, conspiracy and crimes against peace. His responsibility for aggressive war was especially clear. He had openly supported Hitler’s expansionist policies and held a major position within the Nazi government during the years Germany prepared for war.
But Hess was acquitted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This distinction was vital. Other defendants had far more direct connections to atrocities committed during the war. Ernst Kaltenbrunner had become a senior figure in the SS security apparatus.
Hans Frank governed occupied Poland, where millions suffered under brutal German occupation. Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl held high positions in German military command and were implicated in criminal orders and the waging of aggressive war. All of those men were sentenced to death. Hess’s criminal responsibility was different.
His most serious proven involvement lay in Nazi conspiracy and the preparation of aggressive war, not direct responsibility for the mass murder programs of the later war years. So the judges 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.
That objection shows that execution was a genuine possibility. Another unusual aspect of Hess’s trial concerned his mental health. During his imprisonment, he behaved very strangely. He complained that his food was poisoned, exhibited erratic behavior, and claimed to suffer from amnesia.
At one point he appeared to have entirely lost his mind and memory. This raised an important legal question: was Rudolf Hess mentally fit to stand trial? He was examined by doctors, and his mental condition was discussed extensively. In the end, the court concluded that Hess was fit to face the proceedings.
During the trial, Hess suddenly announced that his amnesia claim had been a trick. His mental health therefore provided him no legal escape from responsibility. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced like the rest of the men. After the Nuremberg trials ended, Hess was transferred to Spandau Prison in Berlin, along with six other convicted Nazi leaders.
These included Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief 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 they were severely ill. Hess remained because he was serving a life sentence. When Speer and von Schirach were released in 1966 after serving their twenty-year terms, Hess became the only prisoner left in Spandau.
For nearly twenty more years, the vast prison existed primarily to hold one elderly man. There were frequent discussions about releasing Hess on humanitarian grounds as he became extremely old and frail. Britain, France, and the United States grew more willing at various times to consider his release, but the Soviet Union consistently resisted. Because of that, Hess remained in Spandau until his death.
On 17 August 1987, the 93-year-old 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 was already dead. Rudolf Hess escaped the Nuremberg noose largely because of the peculiar timing of his Nazi career. He was unquestionably an important member of Hitler’s regime.
He helped strengthen the Nazi dictatorship, supported brutal policies, and played a prominent role in the political system that prepared Germany for aggressive war. But his escape to Scotland in May 1941 removed him from Hitler’s government at a decisive moment. While many of Nazi Germany’s worst crimes were being committed between 1941 and 1945, Hess was already a prisoner of war in Britain. The Nuremberg court convicted him of conspiracy and crimes against peace but acquitted him of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
That difference was decisive. Hess did not escape punishment. He spent more than four decades under Allied detention, from his capture in Scotland in 1941 to his death in Berlin in 1987. But he escaped the hangman’s rope.
The strange flight that destroyed his career and reputation in Nazi Germany was the same flight that separated him from the later crimes of Hitler’s regime. Had Hess remained Deputy Führer throughout the war and become involved in the policies carried out during the Holocaust and the brutal occupation of Eastern Europe, the evidence against him would have been far greater, and he would almost certainly have been sentenced to death. In that sense, Rudolf Hess’s failed attempt to make peace with Britain actually saved his life.
The irony was complete: the mission that ended his power also spared him from the fate that awaited so many of his fellow Nazi leaders.