Right after news of his death was announced in 1987, you may be interested
to know, I sent off a letter about Hess and his legacy to The New York
Times, which was published a few weeks later:
The New York Times
Published Sept. 8, 1987
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/08/opini ... ong-shadow
-of-history-ambassador-of-peace-548087.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/08/opini ... ng-shadow-
of-history-ambassador-of-peace-548087.html
RUDOLF HESS AND THE LONG SHADOW OF HISTORY
To the Editor:
History will remember the 46-year imprisonment of Rudolf Hess as an act of
injustice and inhumanity.
Rudolf Hess
Hitler's one-time deputy flew from Germany to Britain on May 10, 1941, in a
courageous effort to end the war between the two nations. His plea for peace
was promptly rejected, and he was imprisoned.
The British historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote in 1969: ''Hess came to this land
in 1941 as an ambassador of peace. . . . He acted in good faith. He fell
into our hands and was treated as a prisoner of war, completely contrary to
international law. We could have released him at the end of the war. . . No
crime was ever proven against Hess. As the records showed, he was never
present at even a single secret conference at which Hitler discussed his war
plans.''
Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg for ''crimes against
peace,'' a charge invented for the occasion. As Robert A. Taft and other
Americans pointed out, this was a blatant violation of our own tradition
against ex post facto laws.
From 1966 until his death, Hess was the only inmate of Spandau prison in
West Berlin. Although the American, British and West German Governments
favored releasing him on humanitarian grounds, the Russians refused to
cooperate. Some groups in this country also insisted that Hess remain in
prison until his death as a symbol of the Hitler regime, regardless of guilt
or innocence.
Rudolf Hess will be remembered as a prisoner of peace and a victim of a
vindictive age.
MARK WEBER
Atkinson, Neb., Aug. 18, 1987
Similar points are made in “The Legacy of Rudolf Hess,” which is posted on
our website: https://ihr.org/journal/v13n1p20_Weber.html