For educational purposes
Rudolf Hess was the first of Hitler's aides to follow the Fuhrer and was also the last survivor of the regime's innermost circle of command.
To the very end he believed absolutely in the "Movement". As Hitler's deputy he embraced the cult of the Fuhrer as no other, but his actual influence within the circle of power remained minor.
As face value Hess embodied the archetypal totalitarian underling, but film recordings from the Hess family's private collection actually show an ambition to lead.
The death of Spandau's last inmate in 1987 made headlines world-wide and on each anniversary Neo-Nazis clash with police as they attempt to mark Hess's martyrdom.
For the first time on camera witnesses speak about the final days of Hess and the persistent rumours that Hess may not have taken his own life.
Rudolf Hess was the first of Hitler's aides to follow the Fuhrer and was also the last survivor of the regime's innermost circle of command.
To the very end he believed absolutely in the "Movement". As Hitler's deputy he embraced the cult of the Fuhrer as no other, but his actual influence within the circle of power remained minor.
As face value Hess embodied the archetypal totalitarian underling, but film recordings from the Hess family's private collection actually show an ambition to lead.
The death of Spandau's last inmate in 1987 made headlines world-wide and on each anniversary Neo-Nazis clash with police as they attempt to mark Hess's martyrdom.
For the first time on camera witnesses speak about the final days of Hess and the persistent rumours that Hess may not have taken his own life.
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LearningTranscript
00:00May the 10th, 1941, 500 German bombers take off for the war's heaviest air raid on London,
00:13a desperate attempt to bring Britain to her knees.
00:23The same evening, a plane takes off from Augsburg, in the same direction.
00:28The pilot wants to bring matters to a head, in his own way.
00:32It's his last day of freedom.
00:37The man is an idol, even today, to people like these.
00:41They never learn.
00:42We live, so long live Germany!
01:12My father has repeatedly said that he thinks these aspirations, which these young right-wing
01:34radicals pursue, are absolutely wrong, because they do more harm to Germany than they do
01:41to the people of Germany.
01:42He is a fool, and not very intellectually capable.
01:43My Führer, you are Germany.
01:44When you act, the nation acts.
01:45When you judge, the people judge.
01:46Hess had no regret for his past, what he'd tried to do, and his previous career as a
02:07Nazi.
02:08He was one to the end, no question about that.
02:11He firmly believed that what he'd done was right, and so on.
02:16So in that case, to me, he wasn't a very choice character.
02:40Of all Hitler's henchmen, he was the truest believer.
03:10The party is Hitler!
03:20Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler!
03:30Hitler, Sieg Heil!
03:35Hess was born in Alexandria, outside Germany, just like the man under whose spell he was
03:40to fall.
03:47The Hess family made their money from colonial trade.
03:50Their firstborn grew up in grandeur among the elite.
03:58Hess's father possessed all the virtues of an expatriate German.
04:02The Hess family was very German-national.
04:06In his office, behind his chair, he always had a large painting of Emperor Wilhelm.
04:22On his birthday, he had a glass of wine and drank to the Emperor's well-being.
04:33The family spent every summer here, in the remote Fichtel Mountains, cut off from the
04:37reality of the Empire.
04:44A carefree youth, Rudolf's father saw him as the crown prince.
04:52He was sent to boarding school.
04:54They wanted him to become a merchant.
04:56Rudolf wasn't asked what he wanted.
05:15That way took him to war.
05:17August 1914.
05:19People were carried away by the deceptive euphoria of a feeling of national unity.
05:33Hess was a volunteer in the 1st Bavarian Infantry Regiment.
05:37At their farewell, the crowd was confident of victory.
05:43To the Western Front.
05:50Trench warfare.
05:54The battlefield put its stamp on the young lieutenant's view of the world.
05:58Military obedience, just like home, and a sense of security.
06:05Elated, he wrote to his parents,
06:07Burning towns, breathtakingly beautiful.
06:11War.
06:13Even a severe wound did not quell his enthusiasm.
06:16As soon as he recovered, he volunteered for the new elite troop.
06:21The Air Corps.
06:26He arrived too late for any heroic deeds.
06:29The war had been lost before he finished his training.
06:38But he stayed faithful to flying, in his own way.
06:47As a front-line soldier, Hess was allowed to enter university without a school-leaving certificate.
06:54At the University of Munich, he formed an acquaintance with far-reaching consequences.
06:59General Haushofer lectured in geopolitics and demanded Lebensraum in the East.
07:05The time was not yet ripe for this madness.
07:08Munich, November 1918.
07:10The brief socialist revolution was to Hess a stab in the back, explaining Germany's defeat.
07:16He soon found a scapegoat.
07:19Until then, I myself was not an anti-Semite.
07:22The facts of 1918 and later were so striking that I had to turn to anti-Semitism.
07:33Hess was not the only one with such thoughts.
07:36He found a sanctuary in a secret circle of the elite in Munich.
07:40The Tourist Society.
07:47Their headquarters, an elegant hotel.
07:51Their symbol, the swastika.
07:56Their ideal, Aryan man.
08:00Communists wiped out the aristocratic leaders of the secret launch.
08:04Hess only just escaped with his life.
08:10In May 1919, the rule of the Red Workers' Councils came to an end.
08:15In a violent struggle, paramilitary gangs of thugs, the Freikorps, grabbed power in Munich.
08:22The student Hess joined this counter-revolution.
08:25Here he found a political home.
08:27And in the smoky atmosphere of Munich beer cellars made another acquaintance with far-reaching consequences.
08:34The one who created the Reich, the one who fought, the one who gained, the new Reich.
08:42The one who is honoured, the one who is powerful, the one who is glorious, the one who is just. Amen.
08:51In 1920, when my father came out of prison, and Rudolf took my brothers to play German football,
09:03I remember how Mother Hess came to us and said,
09:09There is a man, you must hear him, he speaks, you must hear him, he is fantastic.
09:17Adolf Hitler, a revelation that transformed Hess' life.
09:28And a revelation to many others, too.
09:31In 1920, Hess signed up unconditionally with the demagogue, membership number 16.
09:37He recruited students to the SA, the stormtroopers.
09:42He was always prominent in brawls, such as the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923,
09:49when Hitler tried to seize power in Bavaria and failed miserably.
09:57The death cult, centred on those who died in the Putsch, later became the ritual of the regime.
10:04At the front, as always, Rudolf Hess.
10:08And all this, we owe it to the first men.
10:14Because if no one had found them at that time,
10:18to stand up for this future empire with body and with life,
10:23no one could have asked for it.
10:26But these first men first found themselves behind bars.
10:57In this luxurious detention, Hitler appointed his fellow prisoner as his secretary.
11:02Hess' career began where it ended, in prison.
11:06With his help, Hitler wrote his political manifesto, Mein Kampf.
11:11Hess wrote to his girlfriend, I am devoted to him now more so than ever.
11:16I love him.
11:19The slow rise to power.
11:22A party rally, in their cups, in uniform.
11:29Hitler was uniquely gifted in exploiting the fears of the time.
11:36Always one step behind his private secretary.
11:44Hess organised the long campaign for the voters' favour.
11:52In the service of his master, he was happy to take a back seat.
12:23Hess was of service in the air, too.
12:28He used the party plane on the campaign,
12:31and also to scatter left-wing rallies by hedge-hopping over them.
12:40He was twice convicted for this by the district court.
12:45The convicted man and his fiancée, Ilse Pröll,
12:50one of the first women to join the party.
12:53He had taken his time over proposing.
12:56Hitler finally talked him into going ahead with the wedding,
12:59at which Hitler was a witness.
13:02Ilse Hess had to share her husband's love with him.
13:05In January 1933, Hess wrote from Berlin,
13:09that he would not marry her,
13:12but that he would marry her,
13:15and that he would marry her,
13:18and that he would marry her,
13:22In January 1933, Hess wrote from Berlin,
13:26My dear girl, am I dreaming or am I awake?
13:29I'm sitting in the Chancellor's study in the Reich Chancellery.
13:35He'd got what he wanted.
13:44His secretary stepped into the limelight with him,
13:47and was rewarded for his dedication.
13:50Hitler appointed him the party's Deputy Führer.
13:56A promising title.
14:21Hess's vocation,
14:24the most servile of his master's servants.
14:36Building for the dictatorship.
14:39In the capital city of the movement,
14:42the party headquarters was erected under the deputy's direction.
14:45Megalomania in hewn stone.
14:51But behind the colossal façade hid a machine,
14:55which was to work its way into every aspect of life.
15:04Seduction and brutality.
15:07The National Socialist Party used both.
15:10The Nazi Party,
15:13the Communist Party,
15:17the National Socialist Party used both.
15:22Blind obedience was the foundation of the new Reich.
15:28The party, the cornerstone of Hitler's power.
15:32Hess, the administrator, loyal and harmless.
15:46There was nothing more to say.
15:49The German Reich was slowly turning into an authoritarian one,
15:54where Hitler could rule without asking anyone.
16:00The party was seen as a singing club.
16:11A choral society with tough rules.
16:14They did more than sing here.
16:21Anyone who danced out of step was brutally punished.
16:26Chief of staff of the SA stormtroopers, Ernst Röhm,
16:30wanted too much power at the expense of the German army.
16:34He was gunned down.
16:36Hess justified this murder as necessary for the good of the state.
16:44A man is loyal to the Führer,
16:47as the Führer is loyal to his old SA.
16:53The Führer has punished the guilty.
16:57Our relationship with the SA is thus again the same.
17:03Power games.
17:05The deputy needed an assistant too.
17:08Martin Bormann, single-mindedly ambitious,
17:11unscrupulous and glad to do the dirty work.
17:14A master of intrigue who slowly undermined Hess's power.
17:42Hess depended more and more on his secretary.
17:48Like Hitler, Hess shunned tedious paperwork.
17:51He preferred to play the foreign minister of the party.
17:59When expatriate Germans gathered in Stuttgart every year,
18:03the expatriate Hess was on home ground.
18:06His fervour was as fatal as it was genuine.
18:10You are standing in front of me as a fragment
18:14of the great German people's community.
18:19The people's community
18:21that extends beyond the borders of our Reich.
18:27Go out and report.
18:31Germany lives and will live
18:35because an Adolf Hitler lives.
18:39Hess loved to play the role of high priest of the party.
19:09He was a very good role model for the party.
19:12Because one could not doubt his integrity.
19:15And under this integrity, enormous scams arose.
19:19Atrocities Hess knew about.
19:22He hid the terror of the regime
19:25under a cloak of terse, bureaucratic Germany.
19:28He was a man of great ambition.
19:31He was a man of great ambition.
19:34He was a man of great ambition.
19:37Terse, bureaucratic German.
20:08In the party, Hess was a moral zealot.
20:11In his private life, a picture of respectability.
20:14No alcohol, no cigarettes, no dancing even.
20:20At home in Harlaching, he led a quiet life.
20:23The naming ceremony of his son,
20:25a small party, a handful of guests.
20:29Adolf Hitler was godfather.
20:32His name immortalised in the family visitor's book.
20:37The night of November the 9th, 1938.
20:43The Kristallnacht pogrom.
20:45Hess did not know about the order to set fire to the synagogues.
20:49He was no longer in the inner circle.
21:06We sat down for dinner and he came in.
21:09He had a green face, I would say.
21:13Of course, everyone said, what's going on?
21:17I noticed how uncomfortable it was for him
21:20because he could not defend what had happened.
21:27But some things he did know about and supported.
21:31For example, the Nuremberg race laws of 1935.
21:36Signed by Reichsminister Hess.
21:39The barring of Jewish doctors and lawyers.
21:43Signed by Reichsminister Hess.
21:46Corporal punishment for Jews in occupied Poland.
21:51Proposed by Reichsminister Hess.
21:54He was an absolute accomplice.
21:59He was a person who never in any way
22:04criticised the events of that time.
22:09On the contrary, he was a person
22:13who was loyal to the Führer.
22:21Still, the deputy saw his Führer less and less.
22:25When, at a reunion of the old fighters
22:27of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch,
22:29Hitler escaped an assassination attempt,
22:31Hess saw him as a medium for higher powers.
22:36The foresight with the Führer was always
22:40and always he did everything
22:43that his opponents did against him
22:47ultimately to his own advantage.
22:51And thus he won over the future of the German people.
22:57Hurt by the loss of Hitler's favour,
22:59Hess started to flee reality.
23:01His behaviour appeared increasingly odd.
23:05Rudolf Hess tried to keep the chair in balance.
23:10And the moment he tried to do that,
23:14he started on this chair
23:18and when he took his hands away,
23:21he fell back or forward again.
23:27I found that very strange.
23:30I asked my father,
23:33and he said,
23:35yes, that is indeed a bit strange.
23:38Mr. Hess believes in telekinesis.
23:42And, in an agreement with Britain,
23:45the Duke of Windsor on a visit to Germany,
23:48for Hess, a sign of rapprochement
23:50between the two Germanic peoples.
23:53Hess did not realise that the Duke's
23:55alleged Nazi sympathies
23:57would find no support in Britain.
24:04With Hitler at a reception for British frontline soldiers,
24:07a reunion of veterans of the Great War.
24:16We British never felt anything but great respect...
24:21For Hess, friendship with Britain was a credo.
24:25For Hitler, merely a strategic goal.
24:40At first, the British played along,
24:42the Munich Agreement.
24:44The Western powers wanted to win time
24:46and thought they could appease the dictator with concessions.
24:54Hess had nothing to do with any of this.
24:56Hitler no longer took his idiosyncratic deputy seriously.
25:15In his bedroom, on Wilhelmstraße,
25:18he lay flat on the floor.
25:20He called it relaxing.
25:23It was quiet for 15 minutes.
25:26Then he got up and was fresh again.
25:31Hess withdrew into his private life.
25:35Where the dictator was steering Germany,
25:37he refused to see.
25:39With his head in the air,
25:41he spoke of the German will for peace
25:43when war was already on the doorstep.
26:14Those voices fell silent when Hitler invaded Poland.
26:21Blitzkrieg.
26:25Rapid victory.
26:28Hess was overjoyed,
26:30but the commander-in-chief was gathering others around him.
26:43If Comrade Göring can do something,
26:46then my first successor will be Comrade Göring.
26:57If Comrade Göring can do something,
27:00then my next successor will be Comrade Hess.
27:04The Third in Command in the Third Reich.
27:08At a coffee clutch with the League of German Girls,
27:11something of a comedown.
27:16When Hitler invaded France,
27:18Hess saw it as a war on the wrong front.
27:24Victory after six weeks.
27:27The trapped British army escaped across the sea at Dunkirk.
27:31Did Hitler let them get away?
27:33Hess thought so.
27:41A friendship.
27:43But love cannot be offered only from one side.
27:52The victory in the West was a personal triumph for Hitler.
27:55From then on, he regarded himself as infallible.
28:00The Greatest Commander of All Time.
28:04He no longer listened to advice,
28:06especially not from his deputy.
28:10Hess, meanwhile, had taken up astrology.
28:30The Greatest Commander of All Time
28:40Did Hess suspect the high point of jubilation was also a turning point?
28:45He believed that war with England was based on a misunderstanding
28:49and secretly looked for a solution.
28:55But Churchill did not want peace with this Germany.
29:00Hitler's plan did not work.
29:02Neither bombs nor promises could make the British change their minds.
29:29Hitler could not, but Hess could.
29:34He came to a solitary decision.
29:39Professor Haushofer, his old teacher, acted as advisor.
29:45Hess tried to make contact with the enemy,
29:48but he could not.
29:50He was forced to leave the country.
29:54By now, he wanted to fly to Britain himself.
29:57Without consulting Hitler, it was high treason.
30:00During a walk in the woods with Haushofer, he made his decision.
30:23I wanted to know where Hess was going to give his speech.
30:26How did he get hold of English officers?
30:28We were not sure.
30:30But he took the word of honor from me
30:33that I was not allowed to speak to anyone about this speech.
30:53Then he made his last speech here, of all places.
31:13And no one suspected a thing.
31:24To prove this, he wanted to make longer flights.
31:29Yes, Mr. Prime Minister.
31:31We did not need to take this into account.
31:36We took into account what was happening to us.
31:44On May 4th, Hess went to Berlin again.
31:47It was the deputy's last public appearance.
31:54The Fuehrer gave the German people a report
31:57about the unique achievements of our Wehrmacht
32:00in the field movement in the south-east.
32:02At the same time, he held a sharp account
32:04with the World War II founder, Churchill.
32:09At this point, Hitler had only one thing on his mind.
32:12Preparations for the Russian campaign.
32:15He wanted to risk a war on two fronts.
32:19He met his deputy in the Reich Chancellery.
32:22Their last private conversation lasted four hours.
32:31There has been much speculation about what they discussed.
32:34Only one thing is certain.
32:36Hess thought he was acting in accordance with Hitler's wishes.
32:49It was not a modern diplomatic policy,
32:52as you might imagine,
32:54in the sense of Talleyrand or Bismarck.
33:18His goal was the country estate of the Duke of Hamilton.
33:23Hess had met him briefly in 1936.
33:26He hoped to find in him an influential go-between.
33:33An irony of history,
33:35Hamilton was head of air defence in Scotland.
33:38At his command,
33:40pursuit planes took off to shoot down the intruder.
33:49But Hess was lucky.
33:51In Scotland, air defence was weak.
33:53He just managed to escape his pursuers.
33:58So we couldn't have done any more at that time.
34:01I mean, he was going far too fast, too high, too fast.
34:06But, of course, we didn't reckon
34:09that one aircraft was going to do all that much damage.
34:12We hoped.
34:15Just a few miles short of his goal,
34:18Hess parachuted to the ground,
34:20a leap into the unknown.
34:34At the Berghof,
34:36they still suspected nothing of the deputy's flight.
34:40Until Hess's adjutants arrived with a farewell letter,
34:44Hitler was appalled.
35:10Hess's plane.
35:12It crashed on a hill near Glasgow.
35:19The pilot found himself on a Scottish farm.
35:22The Home Guard took Hess prisoner
35:24and locked him up in a scout hall.
35:29And then the Duke of Hamilton and Ivan Cook-Patrick,
35:34they arrived about midnight.
35:38So they went in to see my prisoner.
35:41I withdrew from the room,
35:43but I had a shaving mirror, which I produced,
35:47put it above the door so that I could see what was going on,
35:51because this was obviously a very important meeting.
35:54And there was Hess, sitting up in bed,
35:57talking very vigorously to the two senior people.
36:07London the following day.
36:10Scenes of devastation after the German air raid.
36:13Even the Houses of Parliament had been hit.
36:18Churchill inspecting the damage.
36:23He wasn't told about the mysterious German pilot until the evening.
36:27When my father told Churchill the story,
36:30and he told him alone with the Secretary of State for Air,
36:35Churchill said to him,
36:36Do you mean to tell me that the Deputy Führer of Germany is in our hands?
36:42And he looked at my father as though he was having hallucinations.
36:46And my father said that was who he said he was.
36:49And Churchill replied,
36:51Well, Hess or no Hess, I am going to see the Marx Brothers.
36:59Damage control at the Berghof.
37:01What would Germany's allies think?
37:03Hitler hesitated for a while, then acted.
37:06With Bormann, he drew up his statement for the radio.
37:33The party comrade Hess was killed in the war.
37:37The Führer ordered that the assistants of the party comrade Hess be arrested.
37:43In the Gestapo prison they gave me the letter,
37:47maybe it was a letter of resignation,
37:51the letter of resignation to the Führer,
37:56which particularly impressed me.
38:00He said,
38:01Don't let my people,
38:04the adjutants, the drivers and the criminals,
38:08find out about this.
38:12So maybe he was expecting a temporary anger of the Führer.
38:21There was anger on all sides.
38:24Hess was put in the Tower of London.
38:28He had come at an extremely bad time for the British government.
38:34Churchill feared it might seem,
38:36particularly to the Soviet Union,
38:38that the British were secretly negotiating with Nazi Germany.
38:45Stalin was still Hitler's ally.
38:47He ignored warnings of a German invasion.
38:50Hess's flight increased Stalin's mistrust of Churchill.
38:55He suspected the wrong man.
38:57By the time Hess came to England,
39:00we had our secret information,
39:02which we passed on to Stalin,
39:06that Hitler intended to attack Russia,
39:09which meant that we would have another ally in Russia.
39:12Hitler's Operation Barbarossa ended the Hess Affair.
39:26Hitler could finally stage the campaign he had always wanted,
39:30the war of annihilation over the Soviet Union.
39:33The war of annihilation over the Soviet Union
39:37Hitler could finally stage the campaign he had always wanted,
39:40the war of annihilation over Lebensraum in the East.
39:44The deputies' flight did not leave a gap in the Nazi leadership.
39:51Martin Bormann became his closest confidant.
39:54Hitler did not appoint a new deputy.
39:57Hitler said that he would ask for a peace treaty,
40:03and that Hess would be executed.
40:11A farewell letter to Hitler from his place of imprisonment.
40:15Hess realised he had failed.
40:21He brooded over possible reasons.
40:26He made the first of three suicide attempts.
40:34Four years later, Germany, a country in ruins.
40:40In Nuremberg, where Hitler had held his party rallies,
40:44the Allies tried his henchmen.
40:57The return was a shock to Hess.
40:59In his mind, he was still living in the world he had left four years earlier.
41:30Hess was indicted on all counts,
41:33although he had flown to Britain before the Holocaust and the invasion of Russia.
41:54Amnesia is not of the type that's a complete blotting out of the personality.
41:59A sick man? Hess pretended to be suffering from amnesia.
42:03Was it a result of truth drugs during his imprisonment?
42:07Or mental derangement?
42:09After two weeks, Hess caused a sensation.
42:29The Soviet prosecutor demanded the death penalty.
42:33In the end, Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment.
42:37Looking backwards,
42:41it does seem...
42:46perhaps too severe.
42:51Hess is addressed to the court, a confession without remorse.
42:58I am honored to have spent many years of my life
43:02working for the greatest son
43:05that my people have produced in their thousand-year history.
43:14Even if I could,
43:17I did not want to erase this time from my existence.
43:22I am happy to know
43:25that I have fulfilled my duty to my people,
43:30my duty as a German, as a National Socialist,
43:34as a faithful follower of my Führer.
43:38I regret nothing.
43:47In Spandau prison, he shut himself off more and more from reality.
43:52He was isolated from his fellow prisoners.
44:03The others were released.
44:05The last in 1966.
44:08Waldorf von Schirach,
44:10former leader of all the youth movements,
44:12including the Hitler Youth.
44:16And Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments minister.
44:23From then on, Hess was the only one left in Spandau,
44:27deputizing for all the others.
44:52Remember one thing.
44:54I don't want to have a point on my vest,
44:58like Herr von Stein,
45:00from whom one knows that he has received a grace from Napoleon.
45:04Then comes the beautiful sentence,
45:06my honor is higher to me than freedom.
45:09Not until 1969 did Rudolf Hess let his family visit him.
45:13He was still interested in stargazing.
45:23About his flight, he was obliged to remain silent.
45:31In the end, I got him a more modern hospital bed,
45:36which could bend so that he could sit up comfortably in it.
45:41I got him a slightly lower one than he'd had before,
45:44so it wasn't so difficult getting in and out.
45:46And he'd have his hot plates on either side and eat his food slowly.
45:51He ate an awful amount, I mean a tremendous amount,
45:54for a person of his age.
45:56He selected his own choice of food.
46:00He had his own cooks to prepare it for him.
46:03No salt, part of his hypochondria.
46:07And then he would watch television.
46:10That was his other occupation.
46:12Particularly, he liked watching tennis and football.
46:18The monthly changing of the guard.
46:20As one of the occupying powers,
46:22the Soviet Union blocked the release of the world's most expensive prisoner.
46:27To keep the prison as a bridgehead in West Berlin,
46:30Hess became a bone of contention.
46:39People from across the political spectrum spoke in favor of his release.
46:50He had no more earthly hopes.
46:53What feeling, what human value,
46:56should such a punishment still serve?
47:00In the Hitler era, there was no mercy.
47:03And today?
47:07But there was to be no mercy for the deputy yet.
47:10Not until the Gorbachev era was the fourth Allied power ready to talk.
47:16But the will to live of the 93-year-old was ebbing away.
47:20Hess, during the time that I saw him,
47:23was generally asking for something.
47:27He wanted this, he wanted that.
47:29He complained of various and sundry medical kinds of conditions,
47:35pain here, upset stomach there.
47:38And for the two or three months before his suicide,
47:44he stopped complaining.
48:05The family believed he had been murdered and thought they knew why.
48:13What was the motive?
48:15And the motive was this.
48:17For 20 years now, the West Guards have,
48:20partly in public, partly behind the scenes,
48:23announced, I have letters about this,
48:26that they clearly say,
48:28we are ready to release Rudolf Hess for humanitarian reasons,
48:31without any charges.
48:33And they knew, they could say it over and over again,
48:36they knew that the Russian veto would come with absolute certainty.
48:39And suddenly this veto was no longer there.
48:42Was Rudolf Hess murdered?
48:44Even after his death, the deputy was posing riddles.
48:48But there was a suicide note,
48:50written a few minutes before my death,
48:53to all my loved ones,
48:54thank you for all the kind things you have done for me.
48:58To the family, it's a fake.
49:13And that's one point I have to mention.
49:16He doesn't mention the children in there just once,
49:18who were very dear to him.
49:20And I assume he would have said goodbye to them with extra security.
49:24An expert report found no evidence of forgery.
49:29The family had a second autopsy carried out.
49:32The results contradicted the Allies' post-mortem report in parts,
49:36and became the most important argument in the murder theory.
49:55The summer house in Spandau.
49:59The extension cord that was found around the dead man's neck.
50:05And then an alleged witness.
50:25The key witness.
50:48Two unknown men in American uniform,
50:51two unknown men in American uniform.
50:54We found one of them.
50:57The people that he's referring to, I would assume,
50:59is myself and my medical personnel that he didn't know.
51:04Obviously, we had no contact with him, so he wouldn't know us.
51:08That's the only two people that were in that room with him
51:11at the time when he showed up.
51:14The death of Rudolf Hess.
51:16There is still no evidence that a murder took place.
51:19But the case is not yet closed.
51:22Well, it's a good story, isn't it?
51:24I mean, it's a good mystery story, if you want to make it so.
51:28And because of the doubts that have been cast,
51:31I mean, not just in books, but on television as well,
51:36this is widespread.
51:38So it's an easy hook to hang a story on.
51:49Hess's last flight.
51:51The funeral had to be postponed
51:53because right-wing extremists had surrounded the cemetery.
52:01The fanatical beliefs that Hess held on to till the end
52:05have not been buried with him.
52:19MUSIC PLAYS
52:49MUSIC CONTINUES
53:19MUSIC FADES