In this thread I will narrate the life of Rudolf Hess from his birth in 1894 until his death in 1987 at the age of 93.
I intend to cover:
>his childhood and adolescence
>his experience during and after the First World War
>his involvement with the Nazi party
>his infamous flight to Britain
>his long years of imprisonment
Please bump to keep this thread alive if it interests you.
Other urls found in this thread:
unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com
youtube.com
twitter.com
bump.
please focus on his flight to Britain.
On Rudolf's birth
>"His father, Friedrich Hess, was living in Alexandria at the time f his son's birth on 26 April 1894. [...] The family on the father's side came from Bavaria, and in 1892 Friedrich married Clara Muench, the daughter of an industrialist from Hof"
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On Rudolf's parents
>"His father was a stern disciplinarian, at least while his children were young; meals were served at exact hours, the boys did not speak unless their father first addressed them; bedtime was fixed and unalterable [...] Frau Hess was more lenient, her tastes were artistic, and she was interested in music."
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On young Rudolf's family and expectations
>"The source of [his father's] wealth was a trading firm, Hess & Co., that Fritz Hess had inherited from his father, and which he managed with considerable success. [...] His eldest son, Rudolf, was a pupil at the German Protestant School in Alexandria. His future appeared to be determined by both family tradition and his father's strong hand: he would inherit the property and the firm, and would, accordingly, become a merchant. Young Rudolf, though, was not very inclined toward this kind of life."
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bumperino
some comment on the unibrow please.. what did he mean by it?
asking for a friend.
holy unibrow batman!
>become a merchant
kek
More please.
UNSER FRIEDENSENGEL WURDE ERMORDET!!!!
On Rudolf writing to his mother about his youth in Egypt
>"How many times must you have sat with us children upon some bench beneath the shining star-lit night of Egypt, while you explained to us the great brilliant stars, giving names to them all [...] what a paradise it was in our garden on the edge of the desert."
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On Rudolf's love for his mother
>"The East Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant had written, ‘I shall never forget my mother. She implanted in me and nurtured the first seed of good; she opened my soul to the lessons of Nature; she aroused my interest and enlarged my ideas. What she taught me has had an everlasting and blessed influence upon my life.’ Chancing upon these words in 1949, Rudolf Hess would reflect, ‘This holds true not just for the mother of Kant.’"
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On Rudolf being sent to a boarding house in Germany
>"At school in Germany Hess is said to have suffered [...] because his fellow pupils regarded him as a foreigner. This only served to sharped his patriotism, and the history teacher at Godesberg also had a marked influence upon him."
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bump
On Rudolf volunteering for the First World War
>"Rudolf Hess, then 20 years of age, did not hesitate for a moment before reporting as a volunteer with the Bavarian Field Artillery. A short time later, he was transferred to the infantry, and by November 4, 1914, he was serving as a poorly trained recruit at the front, where he took part in the trench warfare of the first battle of the Somme. [...] Along with most young Germans of that time, Rudolf Hess went to the front as a fervent patriot acutely conscious of Germany's cause, which he regarded as entirely just.""
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On Rudolf's memory of the war
>"I have fought for the honor of our flag where a man of my age had of course to fight, where conditions were at their worst, in dirt and mud, in the hell of Verdun, Artois and elsewhere. I have witnessed the horror of death in all its forms, been hammered for days under heavy bombardment, slept in a dugout in which lay half of a Frenchman's dead body. I have hungered and suffered, as indeed have all frontline soldiers."
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On Rudolf's war injury
>"He showed a reckless disregard for injury: in France he was wounded at Verdun on June 12, 1916, but fought on; in Rumania he was injured in his left arm on July 25, 1917 at Oituz Pass, but stayed with his unit; two weeks later he was finally felled by a rifle bullet in his left lung during a charge by the 18th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment at Unguereana. He nearly bled to death when the field dressing came adrift as he was manhandled down the mountain on an ammunition cart."
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Bump because I have no idea who this guy was.
I love these life narration threads
Have a bump user
agreed.
holy fuck yes
are you the same guy that did joseph goebbels?
also where can i find more?
On Rudolf being transferred to Adolf Hitler's regiment
>"After his convalescence he was commissioned with the rank of lieutenant, serving in the ill-fated List Regiment, which was celebrated for the number of intellectuals who died while serving in it during the earlier years of the war. It was also the regiment in which Hitler served as an officer's runner, though Hess and his future Fuhrer never consciously came into contact with each other at this time."
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On Rudolf's life after the war
>"Scarred by the hardships and wounds of front line duty, on December 12, 1918 [...] Rudolf Hess was "discharged from active military service to Reicholdsgrün without maintenance," as the official army record rather baldly puts it. That is, without pay, pension or disability allowance. [...] Already during the war, the family had lost its considerable holdings in Egypt as a result of British expropriation. Now the defeat of the German Empire in the First World War brought wrenching, even catastrophic changes in the life of the Hess family."
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On Rudolf's opinion of the war and its aftermath
>"The catastrophic state of affairs he found in Munich after his return from the front defied his ability to describe them. Like most of his comrades, Hess was drawn into the war in 1914 to fight for a free, strong and proud Germany. Now, in 1919, the 26-year-old had to witness the establishment in Bavaria of a "Soviet republic" headed by communists and Jews. In his eyes, military defeat had given way to national catastrophe."
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High ranking SS officer who was in charge of aushwitz. Tortured during Nuremberg show trials to false confessions
My dad dated a descendent of Hess. He drove like an hour to visit her.
He said that she was beautiful, and was crazy about him. Yes, her last name was Hess.
these threads are pure gold, god bless you OP please paste all the old threads at end again i forgot to read a few last time.
OP here. I believe you are referring to Rudolf Hoss, not Rudolf Hess.
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On Rudolf's new life in post-war Germany
>"The social and political upheaval in post-war Germany affected him much as it affected Hitler and Goring and other ex-Army men with fiercely-held, right-wing views. They felt betrayed and disgraced by their leaders; they faced a Germany they did not recognize subject to mob-rule. [...] The civilians in the streets were openly hostile to anyone in officer's uniform, and for a while it seemed certain regions in Germany might turn communist, reflecting the revolution already taking place in Russia."
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On Rudolf's Thule society friends being executed
>"They were strange and turbulent months for him. He narrowly escaped a Red massacre of hostages by turning up for a Thule meeting late – in time to see his less fortunate friends laden on to the truck which took them to their execution."
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On Rudolf the anti-communist streetfighter
>"Though the socialist revolution openly proclaimed in many German cities [...] it determined many officers and men with right-wing views to establish the so-called volunteer Free Corps to oppose the development of any regional activities by the Left. [...] During the spring of 1919, Bavaria had had for a while a communist state government, and Hess had taken full part in the street fighting which led to its overthrow."
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Pretty sure OP did Hitler too
THIS!! (kek)
bump
this is kinda freaky i strongly resemble this guy but without the unibrow and strong aesthetic cheeks
dat unibrow
On Hess meeting his future wife
>"Ilse Prohl, whose family lived in Berlin, first met her husband in the spring of 1920 in Munich, where she had been sent to complete her qualifying examinations (Abiturium) for the university. She and Hess were fellow boarders in [...] Schwabing, the 'Latin quarter' of Munich. She was attracted by 'this young man in field-grey uniform, the orange lion of the Free Corps on his sleeve.'"
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On Ilse's first impression of her future husband
>"she wrote, 'he rarely smiled, did not smoke, despised alcohol, and had no patience with young people enjoying dancing and social life after a war had been lost.' When she had first met him on a staircase [...] he had clicked his heels, but had given her a 'none too friendly glance from under his bushy eyebrows.'"
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bump
On Hess winning a writing prize in university
>"a wealthy German [...] had established a prize at the University of Munich for a thesis on the nature of the man who could lead Germany back to her former glory. This subject attracted Hess, who wrote down his own portrait of the future leader. He won the prize"
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On Hess's prize-winning portrait of Germany's future leader
>"For the sake of national salvation the dictator does not shun to use the weapons of his enemy, demagogy, slogans, street parades, etc. Where all authority has vanished, only a man of the people can establish authority. [...] The deeper the dictator was originally rooted in the broad masses, the better he understands how to treat them psychologically, the less the workers will distrust him, the more supporters he will win among these most energetic ranks of the people. He himself has nothing in common with the mass; like every great man, he is all personality [...] When necessity commands, he does not shrink before bloodshed. Great questions are always decided by blood and iron. And the question at stake is: Shall we rise or be destroyed? Parliament may go babbling, or not - the man acts. It transpires that despite his many speeches, he knows how to keep silent. [...] The lawmaker, acting with awesome harshness, does not shrink from punishing with death those who expose the finest part of the people to starvation – the profiteers and usurers. The Stock Exchange’s gamble with the nation’s wealth is ended. The betrayers of the people are banished. A terrible Day of Judgement dawns for those who betrayed the nation during and after the war. The leader remains free from the taint of Jews [...] One day we shall have our new, Greater Germany, embracing all those who are of German blood."
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>On Hess's prize-winning portrait of Germany's future leader
Damn
On Rudolf's first experience of hearing Adolf speak
>"It was sometime in May 1920, at an evening meeting of this small group in a room adjoining the Sternecker brewery in Munich, when Hess first heard Hitler speak. When he returned home that evening to the small guest house where he was living, he enthusiastically told [...] Ilse [...]: "The day after tomorrow you must come with me to a meeting of the National Socialist Workers' Party. Someone unknown will be speaking; I can't remember his name. But if anyone can free us from Versailles, he is the man. This unknown man will restore our honor." [He became member] number sixteen of the group on July 1, 1920."
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On Rudolf writing of Adolf's early speeches
>"You won't find more than once a man who at a mass meeting can enrapture the most left-wing lathe operator just as much as the right-wing senior executive. This man, within two hours, made the thousand communists who had come to break up [the meeting] stand and join in the national anthem at the [as in Munich in 1921], and this man, within three hours, in a special address to a few hundred industrialists and the Minister President [or provincial governor], who had come more or less to oppose him, secured their full approval or speechless astonishment."
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>Asshole father
>Loving mother bordering on oedipus complex
>intelligent but not motivated
>Frontline ww1 veteran
No wonder he got along with Hitler.
On Rudolf's first experience of hearing Adolf speak
>"It was sometime in May 1920, at an evening meeting of this small group in a room adjoining the Sternecker brewery in Munich, when Hess first heard Hitler speak. When he returned home that evening to the small guest house where he was living, he enthusiastically told [...] Ilse [...]: "The day after tomorrow you must come with me to a meeting of the National Socialist Workers' Party. Someone unknown will be speaking; I can't remember his name. But if anyone can free us from Versailles, he is the man. This unknown man will restore our honor." [He became member] number sixteen of the group on July 1, 1920."
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On Rudolf writing of Adolf's early speeches
>"You won't find more than once a man who at a mass meeting can enrapture the most left-wing lathe operator just as much as the right-wing senior executive. This man, within two hours, made the thousand communists who had come to break up [the meeting] stand and join in the national anthem [...], and this man, within three hours, in a special address to a few hundred industrialists and the Minister President [or provincial governor], who had come more or less to oppose him, secured their full approval or speechless astonishment."
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>"They were strange and turbulent months for him. He narrowly escaped a Red massacre of hostages by turning up for a Thule meeting late – in time to see his less fortunate friends laden on to the truck which took them to their execution."
What was the Thule group about?
You the man OP
>Nazis LARP as übermensch
>has pic related as a top tier leader
Are you the same guy that did a thread like this on Hitler?
The Thule society were one of many Volkisch (right-wing populist) groups in Germany at the time, this one traditionally having an interest with the occult.
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On Rudolf writing of Adolf's early strategy
>"The letter is dated 17 May 1921: "Hitler is convinced that revival is only feasible if it is possible to lead the masses, particularly the working class, back to nationalism. But this can only be done in conjunction with some reasonable, honest socialism [...] Actually, a good many former Communists and USP men have joined the NSDAP. [...] As for Herr Hitler, I know him very well, since I speak to him almost daily and have a close personal relationship with him."
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On Rudolf the SA organizer
>"As well as speaking for the party, Hess was an active leader in the ranks of the SA. On 4 November 1921 he took the lead in a brawl with the Social Democrats and Communists which resulted in his fourth injury in battle - this time a gash on his head left a permanent scar. Hess saw a beer-mug being aimed at Hitler, and stood in its path to protect his leader."
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On Rudolf commanding the SA
>"In a few moments the hall was filled with a yelling and shrieking mob. [...] It was a mad spectacle. I stood where I was and could observe my boys doing their duty, every one of them. [...] my Storm Troops, as they were called from that day onwards, launched their attack. Like wolves they threw themselves on the enemy again and again, in parties of eight or ten, and began steadily to thrash them out of the hall. After five minutes I could see hardly one of them was not streaming with blood. [...] The two pistols shots rang out from the entrance to the hall in the direction of the platform and now a wild din of shooting broke out from all sides. One's heart almost rejoiced at this spectacle which recalled memories of the War."
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bumpu
Bump
OP here. I will post links to similar threads at the end of this thread if that's alright.
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On the training of the SA
>"The SA were drilled in a military style at more or less secret sessions held in the woods outside Munich, while everything was done to persuade other individuals and organisations with nationalistic leanings to make common cause with the National Socialists."
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On Rudolf's role in the Munich Putsch
>"Hess too was active. He sent storm-troopers to round up opponents of the Party and bring them to the Burgerbaukeller to be held as hostages. Two of them, both ministers, Hess bundled into a car and took under guard into the mountains to a hide-out where they could be kept in custody. [...] When news of the collapse of the coup in Munich reached them, the small party in the car disintegrated like leaves in the wind. [...] Utterly disillusioned, Hess took a mountain trail which would enable him to cross the border into Austria."
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On Rudolf handing himself in to defend Adolf
>"When he learned the outcome of Hitler's trial, Hess, still in exile, had decided he should return and take his proper place beside his Leader. [...] So Hess joined Hitler in Landesberg [prison]."
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Love these threads OP, great work.
On Rudolf's life in prison
>"Life in confinement proved easy and pleasant for him - prolonged conversations with Hitler, reading connected with his university studies, and visits from his friends, including Professor Haushofer and Ilse Prohl, the girl he was eventually to marry who visited him every week. He looked after his health, practising physical training and the high-jump in the garden of the fortress."
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On Adolf reading to Rudolf in prison
>"One day that summer Hitler came into Hess’s cell and read out a passage from the book describing the life and death of their fellow soldiers in the First World War. ‘The Tribune,’ wrote Hess to Ilse Pröhl on July 3 1924, ‘finally read slower and slower and more and more haltingly. His face expressionless, he groped around his seemingly boundless concept; the pauses grew longer and more frequent until he suddenly put down the pages, dropped his head into his hands and sobbed out loud.’ After a while, continued Hess, Hitler pulled himself together and burst out: ‘Oh I shall exact a pitiless and terrible revenge on the very first day I can! I shall take revenge in the name of all whom I shall then see before my eyes.’ For Hess this was a turning-point in his life. ‘I am more beholden to him now than ever before,’ he wrote at the end of this letter to Ilse. ‘I love him!’"
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Traitorous faggot.
Bump for the man of peace
There's a well known segment of Unsolved Mysteries, the Robert Stack years, about Rudolf Hess and a possible impersonator in the crash. With eye witnesses. Highly recommended
unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com
On Adolf Hitler's speech to fellow prisoners shortly before his release
>"The short speech that Hitler delivered was just beyond description. It wrenched us inside-out. Those few words from him had each of these betimes rowdy and boisterous men going back to their cells subdued. For half an hour none of us could get out a single word. What people outside would have given to hear this man speak on this evening! Hitler stood in our midst in the little room and addressed us as though we were seven thousand people in the Circus [Krone] . . . Today, Sunday, Hitler came over to us at 1 p.m. and said simply: ‘Men, at this moment one year ago your comrades were lying dead among you!’ Then he thanked us for being so loyal to him then and now and shook our hands. When he had gone round the whole circle he stepped back. ‘And now, to our dead comrades! Heil!’ The Heil that burst out of twenty throats could have rent those walls in twain."
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On Rudolf's role within the party after his release
>"After Hess's release on New Year's Eve [Professor] Haushofer offered him the post of his assistant at the Deutsche Akademie [...] but Hess turned this down in February in favour of becoming Hitler's secretary, a position he would hold until 1932. [...] He was at the administrative heart of the conspiracy for power during this seven year period which was to culminate in Hitler's seizure of power in 1933. [...] Hess, unlike Roehm, seldom addressed Hitler with the familiar 'du'. He was, it must be remembered, several years younger than his leader. For him, Hitler was always to be 'The Chief' or 'Mein Fuhrer'. According to Hanfstaengl, it as Hess who originated the title in imitation of Mussolini's 'Duce'."
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>For Hess this was a turning-point in his life. ‘I am more beholden to him now than ever before,’ he wrote at the end of this letter to Ilse. ‘I love him!’
Das pretty gay.
bump
please somebody post hitler screencaps
On Rudolf's relationship with Adolf after their release
>"Konrad Heider [...] implies a almost mystical link between the two men: "Suddenly, in the midst of conversation, Hitler's face grows tense as with an inner vision; [...] His eyes peer into the distance, as though he were reading or gazing at something which no one else sees; and if the observer follows the direction of this gaze, sometimes, it has been claimed, Rudolf Hes can be seen in the far corner, with his eyes glued to the Fuhrer, apparently speaking to him with closed lips. [...] it is certain that in the decisive years of his career Hitler used his young friend as a necessary complement to his own personality,"
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On Rudolf's jealousy
>"Ernst ('Putzi') Hanfstaengl [...] describes Hess at this period as 'a moody introvert, jealously suspicious of anyone who approached Hitler too closely. [...] He was as morose and aloof with me as with everybody else'. However, Hanfstaengl recognized that Hess was at least an officer and a gentleman who, in contrast, to most of Hitler's entourage, should have shared with him the task he had set himself of teaching Hitler 'the norms and ideas of civilized existence'."
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bumpo
Intredasting thread, thank you, OP.
why does hess look so much like ataturk?
Damn, that's a real man right there.
Not willing to submit to any desire.
On Rudolf's marriage
>"In 1927 Hess married Ilse Prohl, one of the first women members of the Nazi Party and close enough to Hitler to be in the old Mercedes which his supporters hired in order to meet him when he had been released from Landesberg [...] Once they were married, Hess forbade his wife to take any further direct part in political activities."
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On Rudolf writing to his parents about his wife
>"I'm telling you about a wedding and a honeymoon when, perhaps you aren't even aware of your elder son intending matrimony. [...] Maybe you took it for granted that one day I'd ask that good comrade of so many years, the partner of so many mountaineering and skiing excursions, the loyal friend in both good days and bad, the constant visitor to the fortress, the one who thinks and feels alike with me - that one day I would ask Ilse Prohl to sail with me into the heaven of matrimony. [...] I don't have to assure you, like a good son, that she is an angel, and why she is an angel. Or, to use a metaphor employed by Schopenhauer in a letter, I don't have to explain to you why I am convinced I have fished out of a sack full of snakes the one eel that had strayed into it. [...] we know each other and we are fond of each other, and what we look forward to on our joint path may well be better than 'heaven' in the conventional sense."
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On Rudolf's mother's response to the news of her son's marriage
>"We remember how at the beginning of the war you wrote to us, 'Share my joy. I'm in the infantry!' Frankly we weren't all that pleased, but we didn't want to spoil your fun. And now once again you end, 'Share my joy'. This time, I can assure you, we do so most sincerely and heartily."
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damn those are some thick eyebrows
Bump, thanks OP for a quality thread
bump. love your threads user
I'm surprised by the formality of his conversation with his mother. Times sure have changed.
this a good thread OP
Haven't seen one of these for a while. Comfy
translating colloquial conversational german is notoriously difficult
Bump. Very informative. Thank you and keep it coming.
On Joseph Goebbels meeting Rudolf
>"A series of amusing glimpses occurs in The Early Goebbels Dairies [...] Hess was quite different -'Alone with Hess,' he writes. 'Talk. He is a kind fellow.' [...] 'Serious discussions. Hess is quite enthusiastic'."
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On Rudolf writing of the Nazi victory in 1933
>"Am I dreaming or am I awake -- that is the question of the moment! I am sitting in the Chancellor's office in the Wilhelmsplatz. Senior civil servants approach noiselessly on soft carpets to submit documents "for the Reich Chancellor," who is at the moment chairing a Cabinet meeting and preparing the government's initial measures. Outside, the public stands patiently, packed together and waiting for 'him' to drive away -- they start to sing the national anthem and shout "Heil" to the "Führer" or to the "Reich Chancellor." [...] The evening torchlight procession marched before the delighted old gentleman [President von Hindenburg], who bore it until the last SA man [stormtrooper] had passed at about midnight. Then came the jubilation directed to the Führer, mixing with that directed to the Reich President. The hours of men and women pushing past, holding up their children facing the Führer, young girls and boys, their faces radiant when they recognized "him" at the window of the Reich Chancellery -- how sorry I was that you were not there! The Chief behaves with incredible assurance. And the punctuality!!!! Always a few minutes ahead of time!!! I have even had to make up my mind to buy a watch. A new era and a new time schedule has dawned!"
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>This man, within two hours, made the thousand communists who had come to break up [the meeting] stand and join in the national anthem [...], and this man, within three hours, in a special address to a few hundred industrialists and the Minister President [or provincial governor], who had come more or less to oppose him, secured their full approval or speechless astonishment.
Holy duck. Charm level over 9000.
Seems to be a recurring theme, Himmler and Goebbels ones had similar outpourings.
On Rudolf as the Nazi conscience
>"Hess's range of duties were the subject of comment in the National Zeitung [...] "Rudolf Hess was once called the 'Conscience of the Party'. If we ask why the Fuhrer's Deputy was given this undoubtedly honourable title, the reason for this is plan to see. There is no phenomenon of public life which is not the concern of the Fuhrer's Deputy. So enormously many-sided and diverse is his work and sphere of duty that it cannot be outlined in a few words [...] Few know that many Government measures taken [...] which meet with such hearty approbation when they are notified publicly, can be traced back to the direct initiation of the Fuhrer's Deputy."
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On Rudolf's legislation regarding the Jews
>"it was the legislation against the Jews which Hess signed that most troubled the American ambassador in Berlin, William E. Dodd, Junior; he makes a number of references to this in his published diary, for example: 'I received a copy of formal instructions to the Nazi Party that they must refuse all associations with Jews, must not, if lawyers, assist Jews in any way, and, if clerks in Jewish stores, must not wear their Party badges. And the 'wicked race' must in no public places be recognized or allowed to associate with the Aryans. [...] This copy bore the name of Rudolf Hess, personal adjutant to Hitler."
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Bumparino
Great stuff, OP
On Rudolf's response to the Night of the Long Knives
>"What happened then is well known. Hess’s precise role in the massacre of June 30, 1934 was often misrepresented by the malicious or ill-informed in later years, mostly on the basis of the history published by the [Jewish] author Konrad Heiden. From the account of his adjutant Alfred Leitgen, who was with Hess in Bavaria that day, it is plain that he pleaded with Hitler not to shed the blood of their closest friends. ‘The Röhm putsch,’ Leitgen stated afterwards, ‘was probably one of the worst strains on Hess. He was in Munich at the time . . . He fought tooth and nail with Hitler to save some of those men, and refused to be intimidated by even the most violent outbursts from Hitler. He saved a lot of men’s lives – we’ll never know how many.’"
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On Rudolf's administrative duties
>"Government by decree was the order of the time, and since Hitler detested documentation and despised any form of detailed administrative work, it remained for Hess and his officials to put into more formal language many of the arbitrary, never-ceasing demands of the Fuhrer"
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>loving the man who saved your country and people from a communist revolution and Jewish monopolization of the fatherland.
>gay
The Dutch really are some of the worst people in existence.
here ya go user.
...
ICH BEREUE NICHTS
On Rudolf's curious beliefs
>"Hess was already becoming highly peculiar and went for vegetarianism, nature cures, and other weird beliefs. It got to the point where he would not go to bed without testing with a divining-rod whether there were any subterranean watercourses which conflicted with the direction of his couch."
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On Rudolf bringing his own food to restaurants
>"Hess was a vegetarian as well as a teetotaller and non-smoker [...] According to [Albert] Speer: 'About once a fortnight Hess would appear at luncheon, followed by his adjutant carrying a container with his food to be warmed in the [...] kitchen. For a long time Hitler did not notice that Hess used to bring his own vegetarian dishes. When he learned about it, he turned to Hess at the table and said in some annoyance; '[...] You cannot bring your own food here.' Hess argued stubbornly trying to explain to Hitler that his food should contain certain biologically dynamic ingredients. Whereupon he was told that if that were so he might as well have his meals at home. After this, Hess's appearances at lunch were even rarer.'"
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Based thread
Wtf
What did he think of Sepp Dietrich ?
,,
On one doctor's memory of Rudolf
>"Writing in his diary the following year [...] [Felix] Kirsten said: 'In Hess I encountered a man who was quiet, friendly and grateful. He frequently spoke of his home in Egypt, for which he longed. He often said too that he would be happiest if he could retire to the loneliness of the Bavarian mountains. Hess was a good and helpful person, very modest in his way of life. He was a vegetarian, surrounded himself with clairvoyants and astrologers and despised official medical views.'"
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On Kurt Luddeck's memory of Rudolf at the time
>"There sat a man not easy to read. Luxurious, dark hair crowned a strong angular face; he had grey-green eyes under heavy, bushy brows; a fleshy nose, a firm mouth, and a square determined jaw. Slender and lean-limbed, he was goodlooking and rather Irish in appearance. There was a restrained fanaticism in his eyes, but his manner was collected and quiet. [...] Hess didn't put me at my ease. I couldn't make him out, and he didn't help me a bit. He was polite, too polite, very cool, and I couldn't get at him, couldn't draw anything out of him."
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was interesting at first but lost interest
i'll make sure to keep an eye on your posts for Himmler though
Can you do Julius Evola ?
300 posts x 2000 characters
>really?
On Sir Nevile Henderson's memory of Rudolf
>"Sir Nevile Henderson, [...] British Ambassador in Germany [...] also describes Hess, whom he met on a number of occasions: "[...] Tall and dark, with beetling eyebrows, a famous smile and ingratiating manners, Hess was perhaps the most attractive-looking of the leading Nazis. He was not inclined to be talkative, and in conversation did not convey the impression of great ability. But people who knew him best would have agreed that first impressions - and I never got further with him than that - were deceptive, and he certainly wielded in Germany more influence than people generally believe. I would have summed him up as aloof and inscrutable, with a strong fanatical streak which would be produced whenever the occasion required it."
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On Rudolf's private life and disposition
>"Both at home and in his office he was a quiet, reserved, but also very domesticated man. [...] In his private life Hess was very different from most of the other Nazi leaders, particularly Goring and Goebbels, who acquired great wealth and set up luxurious establishments. Like Himmler, he belonged to the more austere and puritan wing of the party hierarchy. He lived in relatively modest comfort in a house in the Harthauster Strasse"
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Bump
On Rudolf's secretary recalling her employer
>"‘He was so kind and noble that one felt obliged to be the same way,’ Miss Fath recalled, still pained from the shock of seeing him handcuffed and in a prison cell. She described one occasion when he got home so late that his supper had to be warmed again and again; Ilse Hess scolded him for making the cook and serving-maid stay up so late. Afterwards the maid whispered to Miss Fath: ‘Please tell him we’re quite willing to work any time of day or night for him. We never mind that. We’re glad to do something for him.’ ‘Perhaps,’ reflected Miss Fath, ‘that was his mistake: he was too kind; he presumed everybody else was as honest and upright as himself.’"
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On Rudolf's love of animals
>"His kindness to animals was almost ludicrous: grief-stricken when his brother Alfred’s dog was shot by a stranger, he was visibly hurt when Miss Fath gently mocked his tears"
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On Rudolf's love of Wagner
>"The one art to which he always responded was music [...] He comments on Wagner, for example: "You have to be present in Bayreuth to get the most out of the music. The finest effect - surpassing all the others, I thought - was produced, not by Meisersinger but by Tannhauser. Ever since I saw it performed in Bayreuth in 1930 [...] that has stood out as one of the most wonderful experienced of its kind in my life."
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On British ministry worker Geoffrey Shakespeare's meeting with Rudolf
>"In 1933 he had begun staying for weekends at a clinic in Bavaria. It was here that Geoffrey Shakespeare, an under-secretary at the British Ministry of Health [...] Shakespeare saw [...] He was ‘entirely devoted to Hitler, who is his God’; an intensely patriotic man of ‘superb courage’ but no great intellectual gifts; a simple soul with ‘a queer streak of mysticism,’ and a ‘glance and countenance’ that gave the impression of an unbalanced mind. But if Hess betrayed one fixed idea when they met it was this: ‘That there was no reason why Germany could not exercise supreme power in Europe, without lessening the power of the British empire in the world.’"
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On Rudolf stressing the importance of a British alliance in 1934
>"On April 7, 1934 Hess very privately met the Japanese Naval Attaché Admiral Yendo on Professor Haushofer’s glass-walled porch [...] Initially both men were guarded in their remarks, but then Hess threw caution to the winds: ‘Well, I can inform you – and I’m speaking in the name of the Führer – that we sincerely want Germany and Japan to draw together. But I must stress that this can’t involve anything that might jeopardize our relations with Britain.’"
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On Rudolf protecting his friend's half-Jewish wife
>"In the worsening climate of hatred against the Jews, Hess’s secret actions also spoke far more eloquently than public words. He never forgot the Haushofers, nor what he owed to them. Three days after the Nuremberg Laws were passed in September 1935 he privately telephoned the Professor to reassure him that neither his half-Jewish wife nor either of his sons need have any fear so long as he was there to protect them."
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>Whereupon he was told that if that were so he might as well have his meals at home.
Why do you have to be so mean Hitler senpai?
>OP here. I believe you are referring to Rudolf Hoss, not Rudolf Hess.
On Rudolf preventing violence against Jews
>"on August 2 [1935], Hess [...] issued a secret circular decree No. 160/35 prohibiting any kind of excesses by Party members against ‘Jews or Jewish provocateurs’ and insisting on the most rigorous prosecution of anybody causing criminal damage or bodily harm to Jews, or guilty of riotous assembly against them. [...] ‘We are a soldierly movement,’ he said, ‘and we must keep discipline in this too!’"
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On Rudolf's discussing the white race with an English visitor
>"Hess’s basic political concept was that the Nordic countries had a duty to avoid fighting any more wars with each other, if their influence throughout the world was not to be totally destroyed. So he always made time to receive visitors from Britain, particularly if they were old soldiers like himself. He never forgot the visit that the British Legion’s president, General Sir Ian Hamilton, paid to Berlin. General Hamilton [...] made plain to Hess that he too felt it would be suicidal for the white race if Britain and Germany fell out once more."
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On Rudolf' cosy holiday with Adolf in 1938
>"I have been up to the Obersalzberg [...] with the Führer. As there was wonderful snow I was able to go skiing a couple of times. On his rest days up there the Führer likes to stay up far into the night: he watches a film, then chats [...] then reads a while. It’s morning before he goes to sleep. At least he doesn’t ask to be woken up until 1 or 2 p.m., in contrast to Berlin where he doesn’t get to bed any earlier but is up again after only four or five hours. [...] It’s really cosy sitting at the big open fire at a large circular table which just about fills the equally round building. The illumination is provided by candles on holders around the walls."
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Bump
This was before he did either of those
On Adolf and Rudolf in 1938 again preventing violence against Jews
>"When another Jew, Herschel Grünspan, fatally wounded a high German embassy official in Paris, violent pogroms broke out all across Germany. Jewish businesses and synagogues were burned and wrecked and many Jews were murdered: again Hitler and Hess intervened to stop the violence. That same night (November 10, 1938 – the ‘Night of Broken Glass’) Hess’s office sent out telegrams to all the gauleiters ordering them to protect the Jews and their property, and he issued secret decree No. 174/38 [...] 'On express orders issued at the highest level of all there is to be no arson whatever against Jewish businesses or the like, under any circumstances.'"
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On Rudolf's role following the beginning of the war
>"During 1939 Hess was a mere bystander. He watched helplessly as Britain, provoked by Hitler’s seizure of Czechoslovakia in March, issued her ill-considered guarantee to Poland. [...] Hitler appointed Hess a member of a six-man ‘little Cabinet,’ the Ministerial Council for Reich Defence that would pass laws while he was at the front. This appointment too would be held against Hess at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; in fact its sessions were dominated by the blustering, forceful personality of Field Marshal Hermann Göring, and Hess never attended."
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bump
On Adolf and Rudolf in 1938 again preventing mob violence against Jews
>"When another Jew, Herschel Grünspan, fatally wounded a high German embassy official in Paris, violent pogroms broke out all across Germany. Jewish businesses and synagogues were burned and wrecked and many Jews were murdered: again Hitler and Hess intervened to stop the violence. That same night (November 10, 1938 – the ‘Night of Broken Glass’) Hess’s office sent out telegrams to all the gauleiters ordering them to protect the Jews and their property, and he issued secret decree No. 174/38 [...] 'On express orders issued at the highest level of all there is to be no arson whatever against Jewish businesses or the like, under any circumstances.'"
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On Rudolf's role following the beginning of the war
>"During 1939 Hess was a mere bystander. He watched helplessly as Britain, provoked by Hitler’s seizure of Czechoslovakia in March, issued her ill-considered guarantee to Poland. [...] Hitler appointed Hess a member of a six-man ‘little Cabinet,’ the Ministerial Council for Reich Defence that would pass laws while he was at the front. This appointment too would be held against Hess at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; in fact its sessions were dominated by the blustering, forceful personality of Field Marshal Hermann Göring, and Hess never attended."
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A great, noble-hearted man.
F
On Rudolf's relatively minor role in the Nazi war effort
>"Over the next year, there was little public trace of Rudolf Hess. He withdrew into his family, particularly now that his son had been born, and came home as frequently as his official duties permitted. [...] As the war progressed he became moody and monosyllabic; his secretaries saw him brooding at his desk, with nothing of consequence to do. [...] Hess’s part in the actual war was still minimal. The German naval files contain scattered evidence of his personal interest in the technical problems of naval blockade and mine warfare; but if the Admiralty gave him a polite hearing, it was only out of deference to his high station. And all the time he itched to be back in the cockpit of a fighter plane, as he had been when the First World War ended."
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On Adolf's talk with Rudolf following the British declaring war
>"‘My entire work is undone,’ lamented Hitler to Rudolf Hess after the British joined in the war against his ‘little thunderstorm’; and the Führer’s young secretary Christa Schroeder heard him add, ‘My book has been written in vain.’ It was true: how often in Mein Kampf had Hitler underlined his aspirations for a common cause, even a great alliance, with Britain!"
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On Adolf Hitler's plea to the British early in the war
>"Hitler, still unhappy, made his final pleas on 19 July 1940 in another speech to the Reichstag: 'Mr Churchill ought perhaps, for once, to believe me when I prophesy that a great Empire will be destroyed - an Empire which it was never my intention to destroy or even to harm [...] In this hour I feel it to be my duty before my own conscience to appeal once more to reason and common sense in Great Britain as much as elsewhere. [...] I can see no reason why this war must go on.'"
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PRESENTE
On Rudolf's early optimism of a German-British alliance
>"[Felix] Kersten at Bad Godesberg-on-Rhine notes on 24 June 1940 in his secretly-kept diary: '[...] Hess replied: 'We'll make peace with England in the same way as with France. Only a few weeks back the Fuhrer again spoke of the great value of the British Empire in the world order. Germany and France must stand together with England against the enemy of Europe, Bolshevism. [...] I can't imagine that cool, calculating England will run her neck into the Soviet noose, instead of saving it by coming to an understanding with us."
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On Churchill's refusal to consider any of Adolf's appeals
>"Hitler made his ‘last appeal to reason’ in the Reichstag on July 19. It was rejected; on July 20 Churchill began a different kind of war altogether – summoning his bomber force commander privately to his country house and ordering him to prepare to unleash the heaviest bombers that British genius and skill could manufacture to discharge their cargoes of high explosives and incendiaries over the centre of Berlin as soon as he gave the word."
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On Churchill escalating the war between Britain and Germany
>"the battle of britain had begun lamely, with Göring’s squadrons trying to neutralize the British air force and its airfields. London had still not attracted any raids. The British and German records show that Hitler had prohibited any attacks on British towns at all, and had totally embargoed London as a target. This was known to Churchill from deciphered German air-force orders. At 9 a.m. on August 25, however [...] he personally telephoned bomber headquarters and ordered them to raid Berlin that night with the heaviest possible force. Berlin too had not been attacked before, but he had personal, political, tactical and strategic reasons for desiring to provoke enemy retaliation against his own capital city. The RAF attack on Berlin that night changed the picture dramatically"
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Vive la France!
