The Hess Connection
Rudolph Hess was born in Egypt in 1896, the son of a rich exporter and wholesaler from Bavaria who moved to Alexandria. When Rudolf was fourteen he was sent back to Germany to attend school.
Like Adolf Hitler, Hess always felt strongly attracted by the occult.
He volunteered for the army as soon as World War I began, and soon was
placed as officer in an infantry regiment. During the war Hess was wounded
twice. When the war ended he went to Munich and joined the Thule Society.
He was only 22.
Hess was one of the hundreds of war veterans recruited in Munich by
Baron von Sebottendorf [1] to join the
Freikorps. Hess joined the Freikorps and became an expert street fighter
helping them in getting the leftist revolutionaries out of Munich.
Later Hess joined the German Workers Party. It was
in one of its
meetings where he saw Adolf Hitler for the first time and was instantly
captivated by Hitler's charismatic powers. When the would-be Führer
ended his inflammatory speech Hess was already one of Hitler's followers.
A few months later Hess became Hitler's personal secretary. With Hitler
he participated in the frustrated Munich Beer Hall putsch of 1923. He escaped
to Austria, but when Hitler was sent to prison he gave himself up to the
authorities in order to join the Führer at Landsberg. Some people
believe that Hess was instrumental in Hitler's decision of adopting the
swastika as the Nazi symbol.
Sharing the prison tied even more the homoerotic bond between the two
men. Hess helped Hitler in writing Mein Kampf. It was there when he told
Hitler about his professor, the geopolitician Karl Haushofer. He introduced
Hitler to Haushofer and the professor became a frequent visitor to Hitler's
cell at Landberg.
When the Nazis took power over Germany and Hitler became the Führer
of he Third Reich, Hess fortune seemed linked forever to Hitler's. The
Führer himself named Hess his heir-apparent. On May 10, 1941, however,
a strange incident occurred. Apparently following Haushofer's suggestion,
Rudolf Hess astonished the world by flying alone from Germany to Scotland
and parachuting near the state of the Duke of Hamilton to contact some
British members of the Golden Dawn and deliver a peace proposition.
But the British government paid no attention to Hess' message and put
him in jail for the rest of his life.