1941 年 5 月 10 日晚上，一位名叫戴维·麦克莱恩 (David McLean) 的苏格兰农民发现一架德国梅塞施密特飞机在他的田地里着火，还有一名自称上尉阿尔弗雷德·霍恩 (Alfred Horn) 的跳伞员。麦克莱恩的妈妈很快就在小屋的炉边给他喝了一杯茶，但他们的惊喜客人并不是普通的德国空军飞行员。令人难以置信的是，他至少可以说是希特勒的长期忠实拥护者鲁道夫·赫斯。赫斯于 1920 年加入纳粹党，在啤酒馆政变中与他的朋友阿道夫·希特勒并肩作战，并在兰茨贝格监狱服刑，在那里他听写了《我的奋斗》的大部分内容。作为副元首，赫斯在纳粹政权的继任等级中仅次于赫尔曼·戈林，欧洲牢牢地踩在脚跟之下。
赫斯出现在苏格兰土地上，自称为和平使命，就在希特勒发动对苏联的不幸入侵的几周前，这是战争中最奇怪的事件之一。寻找解释的工作从第二天早上开始，一直持续了好几年，催生了一些既有趣（第二次世界大战可能会以不同的方式结束）又奇怪（这个人根本不是赫斯，而是一个替身）的理论。和任何幻想一样有趣——但仍然不能完全确定发生了什么。
赫斯飞行本身就很了不起。下午 6 点左右，他乘坐一架小型梅塞施密特战斗轰炸机离开慕尼黑附近的一个机场，沿着莱茵河飞过北海。赫斯在一个雾蒙蒙的黑夜里，在基本不熟悉的地形上，仅使用图表和地图，独自在这样的航线上航行，展示了相当高的技巧，同时避免了被英国防空系统击落。 10点30分，赫斯飞越苏格兰上空，燃料耗尽，被迫在距目的地仅12英里处跳伞。
这个不太可能的地点是邓加维尔宅邸，汉密尔顿公爵的住所。赫斯希望与一位英国高层人士取得联系，与丘吉尔不同，他愿意按照希特勒的条件与纳粹讲和。赫斯相信汉密尔顿是这类人的领导者，并立即要求将抓捕他的人带到他身边。但赫斯被误导了。汉密尔顿当晚没有回家，而是负责指挥英国皇家空军空军基地，他致力于他的国家和对抗德国的战斗。
这位不太可能的特使的任务很快就变得更糟。第二天，赫斯获准与汉密尔顿会面，但他的请求却被置若罔闻。对赫斯来说更糟糕的是，他从一开始就否认希特勒对他的使命一无所知，这意味着英国没有给予他任何他认为自己应有的外交尊重。相反，他被监禁了，到了 6 月 16 日晚上，他的任务明显失败，这让赫斯精神崩溃，他试图从楼梯上跳下去自杀。
赫斯在英国人手中度过了整个战争，被限制在多个地点，包括（短暂地）伦敦塔和一家军事医院，他甚至被允许在该国有人看管的情况下开车。渴望探知秘密的情报官员和渴望探究纳粹思想的精神病学家经常拜访他——在赫斯的案例中，纳粹思想日益显示出严重的精神疾病迹象。精神病学检查的根源不是对赫斯心理健康的担忧，而是希望这位狂热的纳粹分子能够为他们提供有关统治德国的罪犯（包括希特勒本人）如何思考的宝贵见解。
1945 年 10 月，赫斯被转移回纽伦堡接受战后审判，他在那里逃脱了刽子手的追捕，但被判处终身监禁。在其他纳粹分子获释后，他作为七号囚犯在斯潘道度过了余生，即 46 年。赫斯是该设施 20 多年来唯一的囚犯，直到 1987 年 8 月，人们发现这位 93 岁的老人在一栋花园建筑的灯线上吊死时，他的刑期才结束。自己的儿子，他怀疑自己被压制住了。
但赫斯的死并没有结束这些疑问。他真的是一个人来的吗？是有人派他去苏格兰还是有人派人来接他？
赫斯出逃的消息在柏林引起了轰动，纳粹当局迅速采取行动，将他与政权划清界限。德国公众很快被告知赫斯患有精神障碍和幻觉。
纳粹宣传家约瑟夫·戈培尔（Joseph Goebbels）对这种策略了如指掌，他担心英国人会利用赫斯作为打击德国士气的毁灭性战役的一部分。他在 5 月 14 日的私人日记中担心，德国公众“正确地询问这样一个傻瓜怎么能成为仅次于元首的人”。
但风波逐渐平息。尽管赫斯拥有强大的头衔，但到 1941 年，他在纳粹统治集团中的实际影响力已急剧减弱，以至于一些人猜测，他出走是希望通过与英国达成一项协议来重新获得希特勒的青睐。相反，他的离开只是巩固了他雄心勃勃、善于操纵的前副手马丁·鲍曼的权力。
然而，一种持久的理论表明，赫斯命运多舛的和平使命实际上是在希特勒知情的情况下进行的，而且希特勒也明白，如果任务失败，他将被视为精神错乱。
2011 年，莫斯科德国历史研究所的马蒂亚斯·乌尔 (Matthias Uhl) 发现了一些支持这一说法的证据。赫斯的副官卡尔海因茨·平奇在飞行后的第二天早上向希特勒递交了一封赫斯的解释信，乌尔在俄罗斯联邦国家档案馆中发现了一份报告，其中包含平奇对那次遭遇的描述。
平奇声称希特勒平静地收到了他的报告。平奇写道，这次飞行是“根据与英国人的事先安排”进行的，并补充说赫斯的任务是“利用他所掌握的一切手段来实现德国与英国结成对抗俄罗斯的军事联盟，至少实现对英国的中立”。
这个版本与苏联自斯大林本人的说法非常吻合，即英国情报部门曾与赫斯接触并欺骗他乘坐飞机。事实上，它们可能太吻合了，因为这份声明是在平奇经常遭受酷刑的苏联囚犯的十年间制定的，其语言带有冷战宣传术语的味道——表明苏联人强迫平奇提供了这个版本。
事实上，其他目击者的反应与希特勒截然不同。会议期间，纳粹核心人物阿尔伯特·施佩尔（Albert Speer）在希特勒办公室外等候，他将纳粹领导人的反应描述为“口齿不清、近乎动物般的愤怒呐喊”。 “令他困扰的是，丘吉尔可能会利用这一事件向德国盟友假装希特勒正在伸出和平触角，”施佩尔在《第三帝国内部》中写道。 “‘当我说赫斯不是以我的名义飞到那里，整件事不是我盟友背后的某种阴谋时，谁会相信我呢？日本甚至可能因此而改变政策。”他引用了希特勒的话，同时还指出希特勒希望赫斯可能幸运地坠毁并死于北海。
25 年后，施佩尔与赫斯本人讨论了这次逃亡事件，当时两人都被关押在斯潘道。 “赫斯非常严肃地向我保证，这个想法是他在梦中受到超自然力量的启发，”他说。 “我们将保证英国的帝国；作为回报，她将让我们在欧洲放手一搏。”这就是他向英国传达的信息——但未能传达出去。这也是希特勒在战争之前、偶尔甚至在战争期间经常使用的公式之一。”
英国历史学家彼得·帕德菲尔德在《赫斯、希特勒和丘吉尔》中探讨了“英国受骗的赫斯”理论。与赫斯事件的大部分事件一样，缺乏明确的证据，但存在一些诱人的可能性。帕德菲尔德从历史资料中挖掘出了一些有趣的东西：一位地位显赫的捷克流亡者的日记，他看到了一份暗示英国陷阱的报告，还有一些苏联间谍的报告，他们现在发现了同样无法追踪的证据。 2010年，一名受雇于英国的芬兰情报人员的儿子声称他的父亲参与了这一阴谋。
或许并不令人意外的是，已公布的官方记录显示英国情报部门并没有扮演这样的角色。如果这一阴谋曾经存在的话，最合理的动机是英国希望它能说服希特勒放弃或至少推迟对英国的入侵；和平解决将使他不再需要采取如此激烈而危险的步骤，并使他能够集中精力对抗他最讨厌的敌人——苏联。
2004 年解密的军情五处文件显示，赫斯确实让他的顾问阿尔布雷希特·豪斯霍费尔 (Albrecht Haushofer) 在 1940 年给汉密尔顿写了一封信，建议中立现场会议可以推进秘密和谈。英国情报部门截获了这封信，对汉密尔顿进行了调查（并证明其无罪），称其参与了支持和平的纳粹阴谋，并认真考虑了回信以设置出卖的可能性。
但官方文件显示，他们驳回了该计划，只是将此事搁置，而不知道赫斯是这次通讯的幕后黑手。
然而这些文件还远未完成。据了解，有关赫斯事件的一些情报档案已被“除草”或销毁。他们掌握的任何信息都会丢失，但其他机密文件仍然存在且尚未公布。
本周早些时候，汉密尔顿公爵的儿子詹姆斯·道格拉斯·汉密尔顿呼吁英国政府公布有关该事件的剩余机密文件。
阴谋论者怀疑这些文件不仅包含审讯笔录，还包含赫斯与包括乔治六世在内的其他人物之间的通信。但就赫斯事件写过自己的书的道格拉斯·汉密尔顿怀疑，他们不会让那些真正想与赫斯打交道的英国知名人士感到尴尬，而是很可能会证实标准的故事。
“证据表明英国在与第三帝国作战方面有着光荣的记录，并且没有偏离这一立场，”他告诉《苏格兰人报》。 “对相关材料的发布过度保密已经并且可能会掩盖这一现实。”
近年来，还出现了一些其他秘密文件。 2013年，一家美国拍卖行提供了一个令人震惊的文件夹，里面装着大约300页的文件，仍然被标记为绝密，这些文件似乎是赫斯本人在战时被囚禁期间撰写的，并随身携带到纽伦堡审判主要战犯。从那以后他们就失踪了。
这些档案笼罩在好莱坞式的阴谋之中；谁得到了它们，到底是如何得到的，为什么他们然后通过匿名电话将它们免费赠送给当前的卖家？但报纸本身倾向于消除谜团而不是揭开谜团，而且这是假设内容是真实的。拍卖行公开了一些这些物品的扫描件和笔录以供拍卖，目前尚不清楚它们是否曾易手。在一份数字化文件中，赫斯描述了他在飞行后的第二天早上对汉密尔顿的采访，其中一段话或许提供了了解构想这一不寻常尝试的思维运作方式的最佳窗口。
文件指出：“如果不与德国达成协议，英国就无法继续战争……通过我来到英国，英国政府现在可以宣布他们能够进行谈判……确信元首的提议是真实的。”
但英国统治者并不相信这样的事情。前外交大臣西蒙勋爵是已知见过赫斯的最高职位的人，他于 6 月 10 日采访了赫斯，就在他第一次自杀未遂的前几天。 “赫斯是主动来的，”西蒙在谈到这次会面时写道。“他并不是按照希特勒的命令、事先许可或事先知情而飞过来的。这是他自己的一次冒险。”
赫斯就这样被关了起来，度过了余生，尽管温斯顿·丘吉尔在《大联盟》中写道，至少对他的命运有些悲痛。
他写道：“在我看来，无论一个接近希特勒的德国人在道德上有什么罪责，赫斯都通过他完全奉献和疯狂的仁慈行为来弥补这一点。” “他自愿来到我们这里，虽然没有权威，但具有特使的品质。他是一起医疗案件，而不是刑事案件，应该如此对待。”
在被囚禁期间，赫斯经常怀疑他的饭菜被下了毒。令人难以置信的是，他在纽伦堡包装并密封以供将来分析的食品包已在马里兰州的地下室放置了 80 多年。
我认为 1941 年英国人想要阻止入侵的理论只是纯粹的猜测，到 1941 年入侵的威胁已经是无稽之谈
On the night of May 10, 1941, a Scottish farmer named David McLean found a German Messerschmitt airplane ablaze in his field and a parachutist who identified himself as Captain Alfred Horn. McLean's mum was soon serving him a cup of tea by the cottage fireside, but their surprise guest was no ordinary Luftwaffe pilot. Incredibly, he was Rudolf Hess, a longtime Hitler loyalist, to say the least. Hess joined the Nazi party in 1920, stood with his friend Adolf Hitler at the Beer Hall Putsch, and served in Landsberg prison -- where he took dictation for much of Mein Kampf. As deputy Fuhrer, Hess was positioned behind only Hermann Goering in the succession hierarchy of the Nazi regime that had Europe firmly under the heel of its jackboot.
Hess's appearance on Scottish soil, a self-described mission of peace just weeks before Hitler would launch his ill-fated invasion of the Soviet Union, was one of the war's strangest incidents. The search for explanations began on the morning after and has roiled on now years, spawning theories both intriguing (World War II might have ended differently) and bizarre (the man wasn't Hess at all but a body double.) The truth is likely as interesting as any of the fantasies—but it's still not entirely certain what happened.
The Hess flight was remarkable in itself. He left an airfield near Munich in a small Messerschmitt fighter-bomber a little before 6 p.m., flying up the Rhine and across the North Sea. Hess displayed considerable skill by navigating such a course alone, using only charts and maps, on a foggy dark night over largely unfamiliar terrain—all while avoiding being shot down by British air defenses. By 10:30, Hess was over Scotland, out of fuel, and forced to bail out just 12 miles from his destination.
That unlikely site was Dungavel House, home of the Duke of Hamilton. Hess hoped to make contact with one of the highly placed British figures who, unlike Churchill, were willing to make peace with the Nazis on Hitler's terms. Hess believed that Hamilton headed a faction of such people and immediately asked his captors to be taken to him. But Hess was misinformed. Hamilton, who wasn't home that night but on duty commanding an RAF air base, was committed to his country and to its fight against Germany.
The unlikely envoy's mission quickly took a turn for the worse. When granted a meeting with Hamilton the next day Hess's pleas fell on deaf ears. Worse for Hess, he denied from the start that Hitler knew anything of his mission, which meant that the British afforded him none of the diplomatic respect to which he thought he'd be entitled. Instead he was imprisoned, and by the night of June 16, the obvious failure of his mission left Hess so mentally shattered that he attempted suicide by hurling himself down a flight of stairs.
Hess spent the war in British hands, confined in various locales including (briefly) the Tower of London and a military hospital at which he was even allowed guarded drives in the country. He was visited frequently by intelligence officers eager for secrets and by psychiatrists eager to plumb the Nazi mind—which in Hess's case increasingly showed serious signs of mental illness. The psychiatric examinations were rooted less in concern for Hess's mental health than in the hope that this fanatically devoted Nazi could provide them valuable insights about how the criminals ruling Germany, including Hitler himself, thought.
Hess was transferred back to Nuremberg for the post-war trials in October, 1945, where he escaped the hangman but was sentenced to life in prison. He spent the rest of his long life, 46 years, as Prisoner Number 7 in Spandau where he lingered long after the other Nazis were freed. Hess was the facility's only prisoner for more than 20 years, his term ending only when the 93-year-old was found hanging from a lamp cord in a garden building in August 1987. The suicide was denounced as a murder by those, including Hess's own son, who suspected he'd been silenced.
But Hess's death didn't end the questions. Had he really come alone? Had someone sent him to Scotland or had someone sent for him?
News of Hess's flight was a bombshell in Berlin, and Nazi authorities quickly moved to disassociate him from the regime. The German public was quickly told that Hess suffered from mental disturbance and hallucinations.
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist who knew much about such tactics, feared that the British would use Hess as part of a devastating campaign targeting German morale. He worried in his private diary on May 14 that the German public was “rightly asking how such a fool could be second to the Fuhrer.”
But the furor gradually died down. Though Hess held a powerful title, his actual influence in the Nazi hierarchy had waned dramatically by 1941, so much so that some have speculated that his flight was born of hopes to regain Hitler's favor by delivering him an agreement with the British. Instead his departure simply consolidated the power of his ambitious and manipulative former deputy Martin Bormann.
Yet a persistent theory has suggested that Hess's ill-fated peace mission was actually carried out with Hitler's knowledge—and the understanding that he'd be disavowed as insane if it failed.
In 2011, Matthias Uhl of the German Historical Institute Moscow unearthed some purported evidence for this claim. Hess's adjutant, Karlheinz Pintsch, had handed Hitler an explanatory letter from Hess on the morning after the flight, and Uhl discovered a report featuring Pintsch's description of that encounter in the State Archive of the Russian Federation.
Pintsch claimed that the Hitler received his report calmly. The flight occurred "by prior arrangement with the English,” Pintsch wrote, adding that Hess was tasked to "use all means at his disposal to achieve, if not a German military alliance with England against Russia, at least the neutralization of England."
This version aligns well with Soviet claims dating back to Stalin himself that British intelligence services had been touch with Hess and duped him into the flight. In fact they may align too well, for the statement was produced during the decade when Pintsch was an often-tortured Soviet prisoner and its language smacks of Cold War propaganda terminology—suggesting the Soviets coerced the version from Pintsch.
Indeed other witnesses reported a very different reaction from Hitler. Inner circle Nazi Albert Speer, waiting outside Hitler's office during the meeting, described the Nazi leader's reaction as “an inarticulate, almost animal out-cry” of rage. “What bothered him was that Churchill might use the incident to pretend to Germany's allies that Hitler was extending a peace feeler,” Speer wrote in Inside the Third Reich. “'Who will believe me when I say that Hess did not fly there in my name, that the whole thing is not some sort of intrigue behind the backs of my allies? Japan might even alter her policy because of this,'” he quotes Hitler, while also noting Hitler's hope that Hess might luckily crash and die in the North Sea.
Speer discussed the flight with Hess himself 25 years later when both were incarcerated in Spandau. “Hess assured me in all seriousness that the idea had been inspired in him in a dream by supernatural forces,” he said. "We will guarantee England her empire; in return she will give us a free hand in Europe." That was the message he took to England— without managing to deliver it. It had also been one of Hitler's recurrent formulas before and occasionally even during the war.”
British historian Peter Padfield explores the “British duped Hess” theory in Hess, Hitler & Churchill. As with much of the Hess affair definitive evidence is lacking but a few tantalising possibilities exist. Padfield has unearthed intriguing nuggets from period sources: the diary of a well-placed Czech exile who'd viewed a report suggesting an English trap, reports of Soviet spies who'd uncovered now untraceable evidence of the same. In 2010 the son of a Finnish intelligence agent who'd been on Britain's payroll claimed that his father was involved in the plot.
The official records that have been made available, perhaps not surprisingly, reveal no such role for the British intelligence services. The most plausible motivation for such a plot, were it ever to have existed, was that the British hoped it would convince Hitler to scrap or at least postpone an invasion of Britain; a peace settlement would make such a drastic and dangerous step unnecessary and free him to focus on the battle against his most hated enemy—the Soviet Union.
MI5 files declassified in 2004 suggest that Hess did have his adviser Albrecht Haushofer pen a letter to Hamilton in 1940, suggesting that a neutral site meeting could advance secret peace talks. British intelligence intercepted that letter, investigated (and exonerated) Hamilton for being part of a pro-peace Nazi plot, and seriously considered the possibility of replying to set up a double-cross.
But they dismissed the scheme and simply let the matter drop without ever knowing that Hess was the man behind the communication, the official files suggest.
However those files are far from complete. Some of the intelligence files on the Hess affair are known to have been 'weeded,' or destroyed. Whatever information they held is lost—but other classified files remain and have yet to be released.
Earlier this week, the Duke of Hamilton's son, James Douglas-Hamilton, called for the British government to release its remaining classified documents concerning the affair.
Conspiracy theorists suspect that the documents could contain not only transcripts of interrogations but correspondence between Hess and other figures including George VI. But Douglas-Hamilton, who has written his own book on the Hess affair, suspects they won't embarrass prominent Britons who really did want to deal with Hess but rather they'll likely confirm the standard story.
“The evidence shows Britain had an honorable record in fighting the Third Reich and did not swerve from that position,” he told The Scotsman. “Excessive secrecy with regard to the release of relevant material has, and can serve to, obscure that reality.”
In recent years a few other secret files have emerged. In 2013 a U.S. auction house offered an astounding folder of documents, still marked top secret, some 300 pages that appear to have been authored by Hess himself during his wartime captivity and carried with him to the Trial of the Major War Criminals in Nuremberg. They had been missing ever since.
The files are shrouded in a Hollywood-style intrigue; who got their hands on them, and how exactly, and why did they then simply give them away to the current seller for nothing via an anonymous phone call? But the papers themselves tend to dispel mysteries rather than raise them, and that’s assuming that the contents are genuine. The auction house made some scans and transcripts of them public for the sale, and it’s unclear if they ever changed hands. In one of the digitized documents, Hess described his interview with Hamilton on the morning after his flight in a passage that perhaps provides the best window into the workings of the mind that conceived this unusual attempt.
“The British cannot continue the war without coming to terms with Germany…By my coming to England, the British Government can now declare that they are able to have talks…convinced that the offer by the Fuhrer is genuine,” the files note.
But the rulers of Great Britain were convinced of no such thing. Former Foreign Secretary Lord Simon, the highest-placed person known to have met Hess, interviewed him on June 10 a few days before his first suicide attempt. "Hess has come on his own initiative,” Simon wrote of the meeting. “He has not flown over on the orders, or with the permission or previous knowledge, of Hitler. It is a venture of his own.”
With that Hess was simply locked up for the rest of his long days, though Winston Churchill, writing in The Grand Alliance, claimed at least some distress at his fate.
“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 wrote. “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.”
During his captivity Hess often suspected that his meals were being poisoned. Incredibly, food packets that he wrapped and sealed at Nuremberg for future analysis have been sitting in a Maryland basement for over 80 years.
Very well written!
I think the theory that the Brits in 1941 wanted to deter an invasion is just pure speculation, by 1941 the threat of invasion was a dead duck
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