Rudolf Hess (redirected from Rudolph Heß)

Hess, Rudolf 

Born Apr. 26, 1894, in Alexandria, Egypt. One of the principal war criminals of fascist Germany.

Hess became a member of the National Socialist Party in 1920. In 1925 he became Hitler’s personal secretary, and in April 1933 his acting deputy in the party. Hess was one of the principal organizers of terror against antifascist forces and of Germany’s preparation and unleashing of World War II. In May 1941 he traveled by airplane to Great Britain and in Hitler’s name proposed that that country conclude a peace with Germany and participate in the attack on the USSR. He was interned as a prisoner of war in Great Britain. At the Nuremberg trial of 1945-46 he was condemned to life imprisonment, which he has been serving since 1946 in the Spandau Prison in West Berlin.

REFERENCES

Niurnbergskii protsess nad glavnymi nemetskimi prestupnikami: Sb. mat-lov, vols. 1-7. Moscow, 1957-61.
Trukhanovskii, V. G. Vneshniaia politika Anglii v period vtoroi mirovoi voiny. Moscow, 1965. Pages 190-98.