On May 10, 1941, at about 11 pm in the skies over Scotland, Hitler's deputy for the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess, turned off the engine of his Messerschmitt-110 and jumped out of the cockpit with a parachute. Soon, guarded by members of the local self-defense squad, he was taken to a nearby farm. The estate of Duke Dang Hamilton, who was one of the close associates of King George VI of England and an active member of an influential pro-fascist group in British political circles, where, as it turned out later, Hess was traveling, was about 20 miles away.
SENSATIONAL EVENT
The professional military man Rudolf Hess fought in the regiment of the future Field Marshal von List during the First World War. He was wounded three times. Despite being seriously injured, he made his dream come true - he became a military pilot. In 1919 he was sentenced to death by a court of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, but narrowly escaped punishment.
Soon, the military pilot Hess made a dizzying career in the Nazi party. After the National Socialists expelled Hitler from the party in 1921, publicly tearing his membership card, he managed to convince them and achieve the restoration of the future Fuhrer in the party ranks. Since then, Hess and Hitler have become inseparable friends.
Hess enjoyed Hitler's almost unlimited confidence. For example, on September 1, 1939, the day the Second World War began, Hitler declared in the Reichstag: “If anything happens to me during this struggle, my first successor will be party comrade Goering. If something happens to Goering, then his party comrade Hess will be his successor. You will then be obliged to show in relation to them the same blind trust and obedience as to me."
In the circles of the Nazi Party of Germany, the dark-haired Hess was called Black Bertha behind his back. Under the same pseudonym, he also figured in the operational affairs of the Soviet foreign intelligence.
What actually happened on the evening of May 1941 in Scotland and what caused this event? Let us dwell on some of the versions with which they tried to explain it at that time and which are in circulation to this day.
Officially, the leadership of the National Socialist Party announced the disappearance of Hess only on May 12. The official communiqué stated that “Hess flew in an unknown direction by plane from Augsburg on May 10 at 18 o'clock and has not returned until now. The letter left by Hess testifies, in view of his incoherence, to the presence of signs of mental disorder, which raises the fear that Hess was the victim of insanity. " At the same time, Nazi propaganda began to actively promote the idea that Hess, being an idealist, "became the victim of an obsession to achieve an agreement between England and Germany."
In turn, the British press reported on May 13 that Hess had landed in Scotland and suggested, apparently also of a purely propaganda nature, that "Hess fled as a result of serious disagreements and a split in the leadership of the National Socialists." Considerable attention was paid to this issue in the mass media of other countries.
Interest in the mysterious flight of Hess across the North Sea was also indicated at the highest level. Thus, US President Franklin Roosevelt demanded additional information from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill about the flight of a prominent Nazi leader. Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano in his diary admitted that "much remains unclear in this mysterious case."
FROM THE NAZI'S BIOGRAPHY
Who was Rudolf Hess, who caused the universal commotion?
He was born on April 26, 1894 in Alexandria. Until the age of 14 he lived in Egypt with his parents. Then he left for Switzerland, where he graduated from a real school. After moving to Munich, Hess got a job in a retail store. During the First World War he became a military pilot. After the war, he graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Munich. At the university he was a diligent student of Professor Karl Haushoffer - the father of the theory of "geopolitics", directly related to the ideology of Nazism. Under the influence of Professor Hess, he became a staunch revanchist, anti-communist and anti-Semite. In 1920 he became a member of the National Socialist Party, in which he later played a prominent role. And then followed the events of 1921, which we have already described above, and his rapprochement with Hitler. Hess was Hitler's right-hand man during the Munich Beer Putsch in November 1923. After the defeat of the rebellion and the arrest of Hitler, Hess voluntarily surrendered to the authorities in order to be with him.
It should also be emphasized that Hess was to a certain extent co-author of Hitler's book Mein Kampf, which became the program of the Nazi movement, which they wrote together while in the Landsberg Fortress. Although Hess typed the text on a typewriter mainly under the dictation of the Fuehrer, it was he who introduced into the book the ideas of "geopolitics", which he had gleaned from Professor Haushoffer.
From 1925, Hess was Hitler's personal secretary, and from April 1933 - his deputy in the party and the third person in the official Nazi hierarchy. He often replaced Hitler at official Reich events.
INTELLIGENCE INFORMES THE KREMLIN
Naturally, the flight of such a person to Great Britain - to the enemy - during the war should have caused and, of course, caused a sensation.
In this regard, the Kremlin also showed increased attention to news from London. The Soviet leadership was well aware that the desperate position of England in the Middle East, where the fate of the British Empire hung in the balance, opened up the opportunity for the Germans to begin negotiations with the British "from a position of strength", which could result in a deal at the expense of the USSR.
The external intelligence of the Soviet state security organs received the first message about the flight of Hitler's deputy to England on May 14, 1941. It was short and said:
“According to Zenchen (the operational pseudonym of the Soviet intelligence officer, a member of the“Cambridge Five”Kim Philby. - VA), Hess, having arrived in England, said that he intended first of all to turn to Hamilton, whom he knew from joint participation in the 1934 air competition. of the year. Kirkpatrick, the first official of the "Back Street" to identify Hess (as the British Foreign Office was called at that time in the secret operational correspondence of intelligence - VA), Hess remarked that he had brought peace proposals with him. The essence of the peace proposals is still unknown to us."
For Soviet intelligence, Kim Philby's message was a signal that foreshadowed the danger of a possible collusion between London and Berlin. The chief of foreign intelligence Pavel Fitin imposed a resolution on the cipher telegram: “Immediately wire to Berlin, London, Stockholm, Rome, Washington. Try to find out the details of the proposals."
London residency was one of the first to respond to Moscow's request. The message dated May 18, in particular, stated:
“According to information obtained by Zenchen in a personal conversation with his friend Tom Dupree, deputy head of the Back Street department:
1. Until the evening of May 14, Hess did not give the British any valuable information.
2. During conversations with British military intelligence officers, Hess claimed that he had come to England to conclude a compromise peace, which should halt the increasing exhaustion of both belligerents and prevent the final destruction of the British Empire as a stabilizing force.
3. According to Hess, he continues to be loyal to Hitler.
4. Lord Beaverbrook and Anthony Eden visited Hess, but official reports refute this.
5. In an interview with Kirkpatrick, Hess stated that the war between the two northern peoples is a crime. Hess believes that in England there is a strong anti-Churchill party standing for peace, which with his (Hess's) arrival will receive a powerful stimulus in the struggle for the conclusion of peace.
Tom Dupree, when asked by Zenchen whether he thinks that an Anglo-German alliance against the USSR would be acceptable to Hess, replied that this is exactly what Hess wants to achieve.
Senchen believes that now the time for peace negotiations has not come, but in the process of further development of the war, Hess may become the center of intrigue for a compromise peace and will be useful for the "peace party" in England and for Hitler."
From a source in the US State Department, who was in touch with the agent-group leader of the NKVD station in Washington Sound, Moscow received the following message: “Hess arrived in England with the full consent of Hitler to begin negotiations on an armistice. Since it was impossible for Hitler to offer an open truce without prejudice to German morality, he chose Hess as his secret emissary."
The source of the Berlin station Yun reported: "The head of the American department of the Ministry of Propaganda, Eisendorf, said that Hess was in excellent condition, flew to England with certain tasks and proposals from the German government."
Another source (Frankfurt) reported from Berlin: "The action of Hess is not an escape, but a mission undertaken with the knowledge of Hitler to offer peace to England."
The information received by the Berlin station from a reliable source Extern emphasized:
"Hess was sent by Hitler to negotiate peace, and if Britain agrees, Germany will immediately oppose the USSR."
Thus, in the Center, a real picture was formed that behind the "flight" of Hess was the implementation of the secret plan of the Nazi leadership to conclude peace with Britain on the eve of the attack on the Soviet Union and thereby avoid a war on two fronts.
Recall that, despite the fact that Hitler dissociated himself from Hess and called him crazy, the British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and Lord Beaverbrook visited the Nazi emissary and probed his intentions. Although Churchill's conservative cabinet did not respond to Hitler's proposals to divide the territory of the USSR between the two countries, Stalin did not rule out a collusion between them in the future on an anti-Soviet basis. He drew attention to the fact that the British formally rejected Berlin's proposals, but did not inform Moscow about their essence.
It should also be emphasized that soon any information about Hesse completely disappeared from the pages of English newspapers, and he himself, interned by the British authorities as a prisoner of war, was better guarded by the highest officials of the kingdom.
Today, when we know from the declassified materials of the Third Reich and the results of the Nuremberg trials over the main Nazi criminals that Hitler really wanted to agree with Britain on a joint military campaign against the USSR, it becomes clear that Stalin could not trust England, whose pre-war policy was distinguished by duplicity and hypocrisy. … He did not trust Churchill either, for in the British prime minister's office there were many "Munichites" who hated the USSR more than Germany.
This, in particular, is evidenced by the directive of the British leadership of the British intelligence MI-6 of May 23, 1941, which became known to Soviet intelligence, to begin a disinformation campaign of the Soviet government using the "Hess case." Thus, in the instruction to the British Ambassador to the USSR, Stafford Creeps, the task was set to inform through unspoken channels that “Hess’s flight is an indicator of growing disagreements due to Hitler’s policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union … and that he would be forced to abandon this course and violate any promises to the Soviet Union that he may have already made."
Thus, information from trusted sources that came to Moscow from London and the capitals of other states could not but increase the suspicion of the Soviet leadership both in relation to Germany and in relation to England.
At the same time, it should be emphasized that another of the important versions of the events in question is the version that the flight of Black Bertha to Scotland is the result of a rather cunning operation of the British special services to lure the Deputy Fuhrer into a trap set in front of him. And this operation was based on the correspondence between Hess and Duke Dang Hamilton that took place.
It should be noted that in Nazi circles, Rudolf Hess was known as an Anglophile. From a racial point of view, he considered the English to be the "northern brothers of the Germans" by blood. The former head of the Nazi political intelligence Walter Schellenberg claimed in his memoirs that even an employee of the British special services was in Hess's circle for many years. In the pre-war years, Hess, as one of the Nazi leaders, met with many prominent political figures in England: the newspaper king Lord Rotemir, the Duke of Windsor, the aide-de-camp of the English king, Captain Roy Feyers, and the Duke of Hamilton. With the latter, Hess maintained tacit contacts even after the outbreak of World War II.
Meanwhile, the London residency continued to find out the secret of Hess, even in the conditions of the Great Patriotic War. On October 20, 1942, the Center received important information from a reliable source regarding Hess's flight to England. It, in particular, said:
“The widespread belief that Hess flew to England unexpectedly is wrong. Correspondence on this matter between him and Hamilton began long before his flight. However, Hamilton himself did not participate in this case, since letters addressed to him by Hess ended up in the Intelligence service. The answers to them were also compiled by the Intelligence Service, but on behalf of Hamilton. Thus, the British managed to deceive and lure Hess to England.
The source said that he personally saw the correspondence between Hess and Hamilton. The Germans wrote quite clearly about their military plans against the USSR, convincing the British of the need to end the war between Germany and England. There is written evidence that Hess and other Nazi leaders were guilty of preparing an attack on the USSR."
On the basis of this information, an intelligence message was prepared by the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD of the USSR, sent to the country's leadership.
Which of the above versions of the last flight of Black Bertha is true is still a mystery. As well as the content of Hess's negotiations with British representatives.
Apparently, it was no coincidence that the British authorities classified archival materials related to Hess's flight for a long time. More than 70 years after Black Bertha's flight, they prefer to keep such information in the deepest secret. And it is possible that in the British intelligence itself, which was preparing letters to Hess on behalf of the Duke of Hamilton, there were people who were playing a very dangerous game in order to leave the Soviet Union alone in the upcoming struggle with Hitler.
In conclusion, a few words about the fate of Black Bertha.
At the 1945-1946 Nuremberg Trials, Rudolf Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment, which he served since 1946 in Berlin's Spandau prison. Since 1966, he remained in a huge prison alone, guarded by a regularly changing guard of soldiers from the four victorious powers. In 1987, two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, 93-year-old Hess was found hanging in his cell.
