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BiographyRudolf Hess was born in 1894 in Alexandria, Egypt, the son of a German merchant. During the First World War he served in the German Army and was seriously injured at Verdun in August 1917. In the same year he got promoted to Lieutenant and voluteered for the flying corps. From autumn 1918 onwards he fought in the fighter squardon 35 at the western front. After the end of the war he became a volunteer in the "Freikorps von Epp", a right wing paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic. In June 1920 he joined the NSDAP and took part in the unsuccessful coup de etat on 9th November 1923 in Munich, which had the aim to overthrow the Bavarian government. Together with Adolf Hitler he was imprisoned at Landsberg. On his release from prison he became Hitler's private secretary and accompanied him on most of his political travels throughout Germany. |
When the Nazis came into power, in 1933, he was elevated to the rank of a minister and became a member of Hitler's cabinet and at the same time became Hitler's dedicated deputy. During the Second World War, in 1941 he made his famous solo airplane flight in a ME 110 to Scotland. On landing he was immediately taken as a prisoner of war by the British. While the Nazis declared him mental unconscious, he explained that the reason for his flight to Great Britain was because he wanted to persuade the British government to conclude peace with Germany. |
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