The Legacy of Rudolf Hess. The Legacy of Rudolf Hess. By Mark Weber. On the evening of May 1. Deputy F. Under cover of darkness, Rudolf Hess took off in an unarmed Messerschmidt 1. Augsburg airfield and headed across the North Sea toward Britain. Nuremberg Trial Judgements: Rudolf Hess. Hess was an informed and willing participant in German aggression against Austria.His plan was to negotiate peace between Germany and Britain. Four hours later, after successfully evading British anti- aircraft fire and a pursuing Spitfire, Hess parachuted, for the first time in his life, and sprained his ankle landing in a Scottish farm field. An astonished farmer found the injured pilot and turned him over to the local Home Guard unit. Rudolf Hess, ambassador of peace, was to remain a prisoner until his death in August 1. For many, the passing of the one- time Deputy F. But his true legacy is something far different. He spent 4. 6 years - - half his life - - behind bars, a victim of a cruel victor's justice. More than any other man, Rudolf Hess symbolizes the vindictiveness and hypocrisy of the Nuremberg Tribunal. In November 1945, in the German city of Nuremberg, the victors of the World War Two began the first international war crimes trial. Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial (2006–) 7.2 / 10. The Mission. Hess was deeply shaken by Britain's declaration of war against Germany in September 1. With Hitler's approval, he began a secret effort a few months later to negotiate a peace agreement between the two . I do not think I could have arrived at my final choice . The British government took the extraordinary step of sealing dozens of Hess documents for release only in the year 2. ![]() Sefton Delmer, the wartime head of Britain's propaganda broadcasts to Germany, has speculated that the British government might have had good reasons for the secrecy: . There was a large peace party in Britain, and Churchill probably feared that this party would throw him from his Ministerial seat because he had not agreed to Hess' peace proposals. Victor's Justice. At the end of the war, Hess was taken to Nuremberg to be tried, along with other German leaders, by the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and France as one of the . Many prominent men in America and Europe pointed out that the process violated two cardinal principles. First, it was a trial of the victors against the vanquished. The former were their own law maker, prosecutor, judge, alleged victim and, in part, accomplice (in the case of the Soviets, in the division of Poland). Find out more about the history of Nuremberg Trials, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com. Testimony of Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz . Robert Jackson (archival): 'The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating. Second, the charges were invented for the occasion and defined after the fact (. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old- fashioned ideas. Douglas charged that the Allies were guilty of . Law was created ex post facto to suit the passion and clamor of the time. Nikitchenko, who presided at the solemn opening session, had been a judge at the infamous Moscow show trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev in 1. Before the Tribunal convened, Nikitchenko explained the Soviet view of the enterprise: . The whole idea is to secure quick and just punishment for the crime. Besides the Tribunal's dubious legal standing, it held Hess and the other German leaders to a standard to which the Allies were never held. In sharp contrast to his public utterances, the chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert Jackson, privately acknowledged in a letter to President Truman that the Allies . The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of . We are prosecuting plunder and our Allies are practicing it. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest. Nothing better points up the essential injustice of the Nuremberg process than the court's treatment of Rudolf Hess. He was in the dock primarily because of his important- sounding but somewhat hollow title of Deputy F. His duties as Hitler's stand- in were almost entirely ceremonial: He delivered the annual Christmas address to the nation, welcomed delegations of ethnic Germans from abroad, appeared at charitable functions, and presented the F. It is this image of the wide- eyed and ecstatic Hess that much of the world remembers best, most of all from a brief clip of him from the Leni Riefenstahl film of the 1. Congress, . In his detailed study, Justice at Nuremberg, which is generally very critical of the German defendants, historian Robert E. It went on to absurdly claim that . This complete devotion to the success of the conspiracy was climaxed by his flight in Scotland in an attempt to end the war with England . The Party's crimes are his. In fact, the Allied case against Hess was weak. It was clearly established at Nuremberg that Hess had not been present at any of the meetings at which Hitler discussed his military plans. These laws allegedly . And even so, the laws were domestic statutes that have had counterparts in numerous other countries, including the United States. Unlike fellow defendant Albert Speer, the wartime armaments minister who did far more than the Deputy F. He expressed no remorse for his loyal support of Hitler and the National Socialist regime. In his final statement to the court on August 3. I had the privilege of working for many years of my life under the greatest son my nation has brought forth in its thousand- year history. Even if I could, I would not wish to expunge this time from my life. I am happy to know that I have done my duty toward my people, my duty as a German, as a National Socialist, as a loyal follower of my F. I regret nothing. No matter what people may do, one day I shall stand before the judgment seat of God Eternal. I will answer to Him, and I know that He will absolve me. When it came time to decide his sentence, the judges were not inclined to deal leniently with such an unrepentant defendant. The Soviet judge and his alternate thought he should be executed. The British and American judges and the American and French alternates voted for life imprisonment, while the French judge suggested a sentence of twenty years. The British alternate abstained. They settled on life imprisonment. Taylor summed up the injustice of the Hess case in a 1. He fell into our hands and was quite unjustly treated as a prisoner of war. After the war, we could have released him. No crime has ever been proven against Hess .. As far as the records show, he was never at even one of the secret discussions at which Hitler explained his war plans. He was of course a leading member of the Nazi Party. But he was no more guilty than any other Nazi or, if you wish, any other German. All the Nazis, all the Germans, were carrying on the war. But they were not all condemned because of this. That Rudolf Hess - - the only one at Nuremberg who had risked his life for peace - - was found guilty of . Regulations stipulated that . He was addressed only as . He was, in the words of Spandau's American Director, Lt. In addition, each of the four Allied powers had to provide an officer and 3. The permanent maintenance staff of 2. In the final years of his life, Hess was a weak and frail old man, blind in one eye, who walked stooped forward with a cane. He lived in virtually total isolation according to a strictly regulated daily routine. During his rare meetings with his wife and son, he was not allowed to embrace or even touch them. Whatever may be the moral guilt of a German who stood near to Hitler, Hess had, in my view, atoned for this by his completely devoted and frantic deed of lunatic benevolence. He came to us of his own free will, and, though without authority, had something of the quality of an envoy. He was a medical and not a criminal case, and should be so regarded. In a 1. 97. 7 interview, Sir Hartley Shawcross, who was Britain's chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, called the continued imprisonment of Hess a . It was, rather, a wrong that went on, day after day, for 4. Rudolf Hess was a prisoner of peace and a victim of a vindictive age. Notes. 1. Ilse Hess, Rudolf Hess: Prisoner of Peace (Torrance, Calif.: IHR, 1. Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess (London: W. H. Bird, Prisoner # 7: Rudolf Hess, (New York: Viking Press, 1. Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess, pp. Ilse Hess, Rudolf Hess: Prisoner of Peace, pp. Hess statement to Sir John Simon, June 1. Quoted in: Ilse Hess, Rudolf Hess: Prisoner of Peace, p. Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess, pp. Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law (New York: Viking, 1. Douglas, An Almanac of Liberty (1. Bosch, Judgment on Nuremberg (Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. Report of Robert Jackson, United States Representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1. Washington, DC: US State Dept., 1. Whitney R. Harris, Tyranny on Trial: The Evidence at Nuremberg (Dallas: S. M. U. Jackson letter to Truman, Oct. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (New York: Harper & Row, 1. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (New York: Harper & Row, 1. Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (1. Washington, DC: US Gov't., 1. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, pp. Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess, p. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, p. Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess, pp. Sunday Express, London, April 2. Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess, pp. Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess, pp. Bird, Prisoner # 7: Rudolf Hess, p. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1. Interview with Bild am Sonntag, April 1. Hess, My Father Rudolf Hess, p. From The Journal of Historical Review, Jan.- Feb.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2017
Categories |