Rudolf Hess Archives

Rudolf Hess

Soviet Military Intelligence: Richard Sorge

By Pat McTaggart

The Siberians are coming!” It was a cry that spread terror through the ranks of the German Wehrmacht in the winter of 1941. Read more

Building façades were bedecked with flags of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during Hitler’s state visit to Rome in May 1937.

Rudolf Hess

The Strange Death Of Air Marshal Italo Balbo

By Blaine Taylor

On May 26, 1940, as the armies of Nazi Germany roared across prostrate France and the British Expeditionary Force was in the midst of its evacuation by sea from the European continent, Italian Army Marshal Pietro Badoglio, 69, was in the waiting room of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome. Read more

Rudolf Hess

Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess: Foe or Ally?

By Sherman Gengler

Throughout the reign of the Nazi Party in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s, Adolf Hitler’s inner circle comprised a diverse group of men from many walks of life. Read more

The Duke of Windsor, fourth from right, accompanies the Viscount Gort and a contingent of British Army officers during an inspection of troops in France early in World War II.

Rudolf Hess

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor: A Dark Royal Secret?

By Peter Kross

One of the most interesting yet little known aspects of World War II was the role played by the Duke of Windsor, previously King Edward VIII of England, and his covert relationship with Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Read more

Rudolf Hess

Julius Streicher, Der Sturmer, and Fueling the Nazi Propaganda Machine

By Blaine Taylor

It was May 23, 1945, roughly a year before the execution of Julius Streicher, founder and publisher of the vilest anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda of the war. Read more

Rudolf Hess

Hitler’s Experience in the Trenches of the Great War

By Kirk A. Freeman

In the months before the outbreak of World War I, 25-year-old Adolf Hitler was living the starving artist’s life in the Bavarian city of Munich, selling his paintings door-to-door and in the city’s numerous beer halls. Read more

Rudolf Hess

Rudolf Hess—a Life (and Death) Shrouded in Mystery

By Bob Gordon

In October 1939, British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill famously described Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Read more

In jackboots and civilian clothes, Irma Grese (along with Bergen-Belsen commandant Josef Kramer, right) stands in the courtyard of the prison at Celle during their war-crimes trial, June 1945.

Rudolf Hess

Why Was Irma Grese, the Beast of Belsen, so Hated?

By Cynthia Southern

“She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every line, her face clear and angelic, and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine. Read more

Rudolf Hess

Heinrich Himmler: The Rise and Fall of Hitler’s Third Reichsführer-SS

By Blaine Taylor

On the evening of May 23, 1945, in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, five men in a British Army jeep were driving down a dark road. Read more

In this photo published in Signal magazine in August 1943, Albert Speer is shown at the wheel of a prototype tank.

Rudolf Hess

Albert Speer: Chief Architect of the Third Reich

By Blaine Taylor

On October 6, 1943, Dr. Albert Speer, Reich minister of armaments and war production for the Third Reich, gave a 50-minute address to the assembled top officials of Nazi Germany at Posen Castle in occupied Poland’s Reich Gau (Region) of Wartheland on the critical state of World War II at that point. Read more

Rudolf Hess

German Military’s Emissary for Peace

By Jon Diamond

Many accounts have been written about the peace mission flight of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess and his parachute landing in a farm field in Scotland in May 1941 to discuss with the Duke of Hamilton a proposal to end hostilities. Read more

Rudolf Hess

Michael Prestianni: Guarding the War Criminals at Nuremberg

By Roscoe C. Blunt

Perhaps the most feared group of accused criminals in the annals of history was a potpourri of personalities who had been associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Read more

Rudolf Hess

Adolf Hitler: Rhetoric’s Overlord of Darkness

By John Perry

When Nazi architect Albert Speer surrendered in 1945, he made a strange remark: “So now the end has come. Read more

Rudolf Hess

Grand Mufti al-Husseini: Britain’s Deadliest Enemy?

By Blaine Taylor

Like all Palestinians and most Arabs, Haj Amin al-Hussaini not only looked forward to an Axis Pact victory in World War II but also saw it as a means of defeating what he believed was a joint British-Jewish conspiracy to foist an Israelite homeland on the Middle East that would be to the detriment of his own people. Read more

Rudolf Hess

Adolf Hitler’s Time in Landsberg Prison

By Michael Haskew

When the Nazi party attempted to seize power in the Bavarian capital of Munich in November 1923, a number of Adolf Hitler’s brown-shirted ruffians were killed or injured when the right-wing marchers were confronted by troops loyal to the government. Read more

Hitler chats with Göring and Grand Admiral Erich Raeder prior to the launching of Graf Zeppelin.

Rudolf Hess

The Nazi Aircraft Carrier Program: Erich Raeder vs. Hermann Göring

by Blaine Taylor

On June 6, 1944, as the massive Allied naval armada made its way from ports in England across the English Channel to launch the projected D-day invasion at Normandy, a German fleet sortie swept down from its home ports on the North Sea and from occupied Norway. Read more