When the surviving Nazi leaders were put on trial in Nuremberg after World War II, many faced the possibility of execution. Several defendants were ultimately sentenced to death, including Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. But one of Adolf Hitler’s earliest and most loyal followers escaped the hangman’s noose.
Rudolf Hess, once the Deputy Führer and effectively one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, was instead sentenced to life in prison. His survival was largely due to one extraordinary event: his mysterious flight to Britain in May 1941.
Hess had been tied to Hitler long before the Nazis came to power. Born in 1894, he served in the German army during World War I and later became involved in the growing Nazi movement. He took part in Hitler’s failed Munich coup, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in November 1923.
After the coup failed, both Hitler and Hess were imprisoned at Landsberg Prison. Hess became one of Hitler’s most devoted followers and even helped 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 became Deputy Führer of the Nazi Party.
Although Hess did not hold the same independent powers as men like Hermann Göring or Heinrich Himmler, his position was highly significant. He represented Hitler within the Nazi Party and held authority over large parts of the organization. He was deeply involved in establishing and consolidating the dictatorship.
Hess approved and signed laws and decrees related to Nazi rule. He supported the regime’s persecution of political opponents and other targeted groups. He was also a fervent supporter of Hitler’s foreign policy and territorial ambitions. As Germany began expanding across Europe, Hess remained close to the center of the regime.
He supported the annexation of Austria in 1938 and Germany’s takeover of the Sudetenland. He also backed the aggressive policies that led to the invasion of Poland in September 1939, which started World War II in Europe. For this reason, Allied prosecutors at Nuremberg considered Rudolf Hess a major Nazi criminal.
But his story was very different from anyone else who sat with him in the dock. On May 10, 1941, Hess climbed into a Messerschmitt Bf 110 and flew alone from Germany toward Britain. His final destination was Scotland.
Apparently, Hess believed he could contact influential British figures and help negotiate peace between Britain and Nazi Germany. His mission was strange, even delusional, and it was not officially authorized by Hitler. After arriving in Scotland, Hess parachuted from his plane and was quickly captured.
The peace negotiations he hoped for never happened. Instead, the British government treated him as a prisoner, and he remained one for the rest of his life. Hitler was reportedly furious and publicly distanced himself from his former friend and deputy. Nazi propaganda portrayed Hess as mentally ill and claimed he acted without Hitler’s knowledge.
That flight effectively ended Hess’s political career. But it also had an unexpected result. It may have saved him from the gallows five years later.
From May 1941 onward, Hess was no longer involved in the Nazi German government. He spent the rest of World War II in British custody. This was highly significant because some of Nazi Germany’s greatest crimes escalated after Hess left the regime.
Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, just six weeks after Hess arrived in Britain. That invasion brought enormous atrocities. Einsatzgruppen death squads and other German units killed thousands behind the advancing German armies. In the following years, Nazi persecution escalated 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 war.
But Rudolf Hess was not involved in these policies because he was held in Britain. That did not make him innocent. Nazi persecution had already taken place while Hess was Deputy Führer. He supported Hitler’s dictatorship, its oppressive legislation, and its aggressive expansion.
However, establishing individual criminal responsibility was extremely important at the Nuremberg trials. The court would not sentence someone to death simply because he held an important Nazi title. Prosecutors had to prove responsibility for specific crimes.
Hess was charged with all four counts in the Nuremberg indictment. These involved 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. Hess had clearly supported Hitler’s expansionist policies and held an important position in the Nazi government during the years Germany prepared for war. But Hess was acquitted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
That distinction was crucial. Other defendants had far more direct connections to the atrocities committed during the war. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, for example, became a senior figure in the SS security system. Hans Frank governed occupied Poland, where millions suffered under brutal German occupation. Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl held senior positions in German military command and were involved in criminal orders and waging aggressive war.
All of those men were sentenced to death. Hess’s criminal responsibility was very different. The most serious involvement proven against him was Nazi conspiracy and preparation for aggressive war, rather than direct responsibility for the mass killing 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 court, Major General Iona Nikitchenko, believed Hess should have received the death penalty. That Soviet dissent shows the death sentence was a real possibility. Hess literally escaped by a narrow margin.
Another unusual part of Hess’s trial concerned his mental health. During his imprisonment, he behaved very strangely. He complained that his food was poisoned, showed paranoid behavior, and claimed to suffer from amnesia. At one point, he seemed to have completely lost his mind and memory.
This raised an important legal question. Was Rudolf Hess mentally fit to stand trial? Doctors examined him, and his mental state was discussed extensively. In the end, the court concluded that Hess was fit to face judicial proceedings.
During the trial, Hess suddenly announced that his amnesia claim had been a trick. His mental health did not provide a legal escape from responsibility. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced like the other 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, leader of the Hitler Youth, and Admiral Karl Dönitz.
Over time, the other prisoners were released after completing their sentences, or in some cases due to severe illness. Hess remained because he had been sentenced to life imprisonment. When Speer and von Schirach were released in 1966 after serving their twenty-year sentences, Hess became the only remaining prisoner in Spandau.
For nearly the next twenty years, the vast prison existed primarily to hold one elderly man. There were frequent discussions about releasing Hess on humanitarian grounds as he became very old and frail. Britain, France, and the United States were at various times more willing to consider releasing him, but the Soviet Union consistently resisted.
Because of that, Hess remained in Spandau Prison until his death. On August 17, 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.
In the end, Rudolf Hess escaped the Nuremberg gallows largely because of the unusual timing of his Nazi career. He was undoubtedly 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 flight to Scotland in May 1941 removed him from Hitler’s government at a very critical moment. While many of Nazi Germany’s worst crimes were committed between 1941 and 1945, Rudolf Hess was already a prisoner of war in Britain.
The Nuremberg court convicted Hess of conspiracy and crimes against peace, but acquitted him of war crimes and crimes against humanity. That difference was highly significant. Yet Hess did not escape punishment. He spent more than four decades in Allied custody, from his capture in Scotland in 1941 until his death in Berlin in 1987.
He escaped the noose, though he may have preferred it. Ironically, the strange flight that destroyed Hess’s career and reputation in Nazi Germany was the same event that separated him from the regime’s later crimes. If Hess had remained Deputy Führer throughout the war and been 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.
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. But he likely would have realized, in the end, that he would have preferred that fate, given how much he complained and suffered during the final years of his life.