As war between Germany and Brittain intensified, Rudolf Hess despaired at the total lack of peace negotiations. Hitler had several times proposed an honorable end to the war and ardently desired a negotiated peace but German diplomats were rebuffed repeatedly.

Rudolf Hess
Deputy Fuhrer of Germany.

Hitler offered to resign if that would assist the commencement of peace negotiations, but their efforts met with no response.

Visions of long rows of coffins of women and children haunted Rudolf Hess and getting peace negotiations moving became his top priority.

It was discovered that British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, had forbidden his diplomatic corps to entertain or forward any German peace proposals, even via neutral countries.

The British Duke of Hamilton was identified as a man sympathetic to the British "Peace Movement", who had personal contact with King George. Many British subjects openly opposed to the war had been imprisoned by Churchill, including a British member of parliament.

Rudolf wanted to bypass Churchill and take Hitler's peace proposals directly to the king, via the Duke. It proved too difficult to set up a meeting in a neutral country and therefore Rudolf decided to go to Scotland and do the job himself.

He thought the highest price he could pay was his own death. This assumption was mistaken. The price he would pay was much, much higher.

On 10 May, 1941, Rudolf Hess, Deputy leader of the German Reich, set out on the most important mission of his life. He left at night, in an unarmed Messerschmitt 110 fighter plane from Augsburg and flew across the North Sea to Brittain. He was determined to negotiate peace by bypassing Churchill and speaking directly with the British king.

After a four-hour flight, evading anti-aircraft fire and a persuing spitfire, he bailed out by parachute, the first and last parachute jump of his life, in the darkness of night, but broke his ankle on landing. This injury may have totally altered history as he could not walk to his destination. Rudolf was found and jailed.

How many millions of lives might have been saved if he had been able to see the Duke timeously can now only be speculated. It is not known if the King ever got to see Hitler's peace proposals. Winston Churchill not only rejected the offer to open peace negotiations, but kept Rudolf Hess as a prisoner in solitary confinement despite the fact that he had come unarmed and presenting a peace proposal.

It might seem strange that Rudolf hoped to be sent home after presenting Hitler's peace-offer, but there had always been a time-honored practice of not harming the courier of an honorable enemy. It was customary to send the messenger back with a reply, whatever the result of the negotiations. But this millennia-old custom ended with Churchill.

Rudolf would be imprisoned for life, so that he could not speak out and embarrass the Allies. British government files on him have been sealed until the year 2027.

He was incarcerated in Spandau, where conditions were so terrible that a formal protest was made by French Chaplain, Pastor Casalis in 1950. He charged: "It can safely be said that Spandau has become a place of mental torture to an extent that does not permit the Christian conscience to remain silent".

A photo of Rudolf Hess taken in his Nuremburg cell.
He had been kept in isolation until the court case.

Photo of Rudolf Hess walking in Spandau prison.
He is at the lower left, the only prisoner in the entire jail.

BRITONS OPPOSED TO WAR WITH GERMANY

During World War 2, hundreds of thousands of their own people were jailed by the Allies. This included thousands of British people who found themselves victims of suddenly drafted legislation known as "Regulation 18B". By this law all people suspected of being against the war with Germany were rounded up and jailed without any charges against them being necessary.

This legislation followed the largest ever indoor meeting held in Britain when a crowd of over 20,000 people crammed into Earls Court in support of a peace meeting.

"Among British Union members imprisoned were holders of every medal for valour which could be awarded to British servicemen except the Victoria Cross (one Blackshirt did hold the VC, but even Churchill shrunk from throwing him into jail). Some Blackshirts were arrested while serving in the Local Defence Volunteers and Civil Defence. Some Blackshirt servicemen rescued at Dunkirk were arrested back in England. One Blackshirt, an amateur yachtsman, was arrested immediately after returning from Dunkirk where he had helped to evacuate British troops. Men and women from all walks of life were rounded up. One notable victim was a farmer, Jorian Jenks, who was Prospective British Union candidate for Horsham, a pioneer of the ecology movement in Britain and later a founder of the Soil Association.
...
There seems no doubt, however, that many people involved in the operation of 18B against innocent people were deeply ashamed. This is evidenced by the fact that most public records relating to the detentions have been deliberately destroyed. When the records were released under the Thirty Year Rule, files of only 18 out of some 800 British Union detainees were made available. Initially it was claimed that they had 'gone missing'. Then it was admitted that they had been destroyed as 'of no historical interest'. "

Churchill issued the following order:

By 1950 Winston Churchill had changed his stance:

Reflecting upon the whole of the story, I am glad not to be responsible for the way in which Hess has been and is being treated. Whatever may be the moral guilt of a German who stood near to Hitler, Hess had, in my view, atoned for this by his completely devoted and frantic deed of lunatic benevolence. He came to us of his own free will, and, though without authority, had something of the quality of an envoy. He was a medical and not a criminal case, and should be so regarded.

Of the Nuremburg trials that sentenced Rudolf Hess, who could not have committed a crime
because he was in a British jail during the war, the following are typical comments:

US Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone:

"[Chief US prosecutor] Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg. I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas."

Associate Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

The Allies at Nuremburg were guilty of "substituting power for principle... I thought at the time and still think that the Nuremberg trials were unprincipled. Law was created ex post facto to suit the passion and clamor of the time."