Spandau Allied Prison Envelope from R. Hess

[max history]

I have a typed note from her in my collection dated February 19, 1979 on her personal letterhead displaying her address as Gailenberg 22, 8973 Hindelang, Allgäu. Frau Hess was writing to a recent correspondent, explaining her delay in response and stating that, “Should you be the person requesting an envelope from Spandau, then I let you know that you will have to send DM 125.– by money order to my above address."
Br. James

Hello Br. James,
You have alluded to your own collection on a number of occasions in numerous posts. It must be a remarkable collection. Is it possible to see some of the items please? I realise you have said in the past that you cannot afford a scanner, but scanners are so cheap nowadays and putting together such a collection must have cost a pretty penny. I fully understand if you wish your collection to remain private, but I'd love to see some of the things you have wetted our appetites with in the past.
In answer to your doubts over items coming out of Spandau, I have a friend who was an ex-Army guard at the prison. He told me that there were strict rules of no communication with Hess, but these rules were frequently broken. Hess was quite friendly and would sign his autograph readily. There was also the not so well publicised story of Hess' flight uniform being offered for sale in the UK. The authorities found out and the uniform was destroyed.
Regards,
Max.

[tgn]

There is some substance to what tgn is saying. It was the British who blocked the release of Hess, not the Russians and it was the British who promulgated the myth of Russian objections in the latter years of incarceration. The British certainly had something to hide regarding the Hess mission in May 1941 which they feared would become common knowledge had he been released. Parts of the files remain closed today and possibly could remain unaccessible for many years to come.
There are numerous unanswered questions over his death. Why would Hess commit suicide when the campaign for his release looked as if it was gaining so much international support that there was a realistic possibility of success? Who were the two unidentified men who appeared in the prison just before his death and mysteriously disappeared just after it? Why did the marks on his neck indicate throttling and not suspension? Why was the summerhouse furniture in disarray as if there had been a struggle? The light flex and attachment allegedly used in the suicide could not support the weight of a man. Why was this alleged method accepted so readily? Why was the scene of his death obliterated so drastically and quickly afterwards? Etc., etc.
Hess appeared to feign his mental state during the first years of capture and imprisonment. He was confronted with one of his former secretaries immediately after the war and pretended not to recognise her. He later remarked (I think to his son Wolf) that he felt so bad at pretending not to know her that it played on his mind for days.
I am no psychological, forensic or political expert, but I believe there remain so many unanswered questions regarding his capture, his mental state, his incarceration and his death that may only be resolved when the British archives release all their files on Hess, but don't hold your breath. British military intelligence is famous for "throwing away the key" and I suspect that the full story will never be revealed. There is one thing for certain. Don't believe everything you read in published books.
Max.

Thanks for posting this.

If Hess had been released, he would have talked and told secrets. So the British murdered him. I think that is pretty obvious now, since the job was not done convincingly for a suicide, and the whole crime scene, i.e. Spandau Prison, was quickly destroyed to cover it up.

The Hess affair is the greatest untold mystery of the 2nd World War.

Tom

[luftwaffe blue]

Thanks for posting this.

If Hess had been released, he would have talked and told secrets. So the British murdered him. I think that is pretty obvious now, since the job was not done convincingly for a suicide, and the whole crime scene, i.e. Spandau Prison, was quickly destroyed to cover it up.

The Hess affair is the greatest untold mystery of the 2nd World War.

Tom

Obvious? That's a hoot, he had all these HUGE secrets and didn't have any chance to say anything to the French, Russians and Yanks whilst they guarded him a month at a time? why wait 46 years to kill him if his secrets were so massively important?

[Br. James]

Hi Max, and thanks for your note. I can only offer as a reason for my original thinking that I must have bought into the claims that no one dared to disobey the ban on anyone, including guards, taking photos to be signed by the Spandau inmates during their long imprisonments. There is often more at play than most of us can know, and especially ME! That's why I value WAF as much as I do!

What do you think of tgn's autographed portrait of Hess, dated 1971 on the reverse? A good signature?

You're very kind to refer to my collections as "remarkable!" While I'm too close to the subject to be objective, I will say that I have been a student and collector of Third Reich and related history for 50+ years, and over those decades I have been exposed to much learning from fascinating publications and collectors and have occasionally been able to pick up pieces that interested me...and they still do. It is a joy to offer some of this ever-growing education and occasional insight to other collectors when the opportunity presents itself. But in terms of technology, I think of myself as a Troglodyte; I am a product of the typewriter and the hand-written letter, and the only way I have been able to cope with our ever-changing world of technical 'toys' such as computers has been the need to do so in my line of work. Left to myself, I'm sure I never would have learned the basics of using a computer (which I still think of as a smart typewriter), let alone photographic recording and transmitting technology. I had no choice but to seem to keep up with such things while I was working, but now in my third year of retirement, that extra push is no longer present in my life. Indeed, it took me a long time to realize that a computer could help me in my collecting -- after purchasing duplicates and sometimes triplicates of the same item, because I had forgotten that I already owned an example, it finally dawned on me that a computerized list of my collections could be a very good reference tool and would avoid my spending hard-earned money on duplicated items I already owned. It is not the cost of scanning equipment that puts me off; it is the knowledge of applying technology that I don't understand that keeps me from being able to photograph and share pix of pieces in my collections. Sorry to go on so long, but that is my sad story: I am technologically ignorant. When I was a boy in the 1950s and my friends were learning how to work on 'muscle cars' by taking engines and transmissions apart, I much preferred to sit and read Churchill's "The Gathering Storm" or Shirer's "The Rise and Fall..." Guess I've always been this way...which has probably made me the person I am!

Thanks again for raising this issue, Max, and I hope this over-long response clarifies my situation! Warmest wishes,

Br. James

[Br. James]

Sorry to veer slightly off-topic here -- the topic being autographed material smuggled out of Spandau Prison -- but I am wondering about the impetus for Rudolf Hess' flight to Scotland in 1941. In her autobiography, "He Was My Chief," Christa Schroeder mentions conversations she overheard in which Hitler seemed to be surprised by Hess' unforeseen action and he surmised that Hess must have been out of his mind to do this. Other authors seem to think that Hess did this at Hitler's request, hoping that Hess might be able to negotiate an agreement or understanding with the Churchill Government that could lessen the "two front" pressure Germany would surely be faced with the following month with the opening of Operation Barbarossa. I wonder whether another possibility could have been at work, namely, that Hess had felt that his close relationship with Hitler as his Deputy Führer had worn thin, now that war was Hitler's driving interest, and Hess was left to deal with matters of lesser importance, being Secretary of the NSDAP. Hitler's daily schedule was absorbed with conducting the war in Berlin and traveling to his field HQs, while Hess sat in his office at the Brown House in Munich. But if Hess could do something that could bring him back to the forefront of Hitler's inner circle, that might change his situation of lessening importance. So he did what he did on May 10, 1941, perhaps for self-serving motives and to regain the close personal relationship with Hitler that he was feeling he'd lost. Respected colleagues, what do you think?

Br. James

[randy@treadways]

The motivation for the Germans to call Hess 'crazy' isn't too deep. They obviously wanted to convey that no good Nazi would try to single-handedly negotiate with the enemy unless they were mentally deranged. There could be no other explanation that they could explain to the German public without calling into question Nazism itself, and without revealing the possibility of dissention in the upper ranks.

But what could the motivation for the British be, if indeed they lied about psychologists' reports? What could those alleged deep dark secrets be? That Hess claimed he expected to be let right in to talk to the Duke of Hamilton whose estate he's parachuted onto sounds outlandish, but no more so that Göring expecting to be led right in to talk to Eisenhower after he surrendered in 1945. The Germans seem to have been so full of themselves, that they assumed they could have access to the highest levels, even when they surrendered to the enemy!

If the British were lying, maybe it didn't have anything to do with a coverrup on behalf of the Duke of Hamilton (maybe the whole thing was an operation by the MI guys to suck Hess into a trap, and Hess fell for it)....but maybe was to avoid having the British people think there really might be a chance for negotiated peace rather than invasion or several years of hard war ahead. Perhaps Churchill and his ministers really were committed to unconditional surrender by the enemy and nothing less...-- NO NEGOTIATIONS.... but they thought that might be too bitter a pill to reveal to the public.

If that was indeed the motivation, then after the war why the secrecy? And what in the world would motivate them to "silence" Hess more than forty years later?

I'm sure we're now in for some juicy tales, including grassy knoll theories. Maybe it wasn't even Hess who was silenced in 1987, but a double! Which means... maybe the double signed TGN's photograph in 1971 !!!
This account should get you going... heehee http://www.eyespymag.com/intv.html

[tgn]

The motivation for the Germans to call Hess 'crazy' isn't too deep. They obviously wanted to convey that no good Nazi would try to single-handedly negotiate with the enemy unless they were mentally deranged. There could be no other explanation that they could explain to the German public without calling into question Nazism itself, and without revealing the possibility of dissention in the upper ranks.

But what could the motivation for the British be, if indeed they lied about psychologists' reports? What could those alleged deep dark secrets be? That Hess claimed he expected to be let right in to talk to the Duke of Hamilton whose estate he's parachuted onto sounds outlandish, but no more so that Göring expecting to be led right in to talk to Eisenhower after he surrendered in 1945. The Germans seem to have been so full of themselves, that they assumed they could have access to the highest levels, even when they surrendered to the enemy!

If the British were lying, maybe it didn't have anything to do with a coverrup on behalf of the Duke of Hamilton (maybe the whole thing was an operation by the MI guys to suck Hess into a trap, and Hess fell for it)....but maybe was to avoid having the British people think there really might be a chance for negotiated peace rather than invasion or several years of hard war ahead. Perhaps Churchill and his ministers really were committed to unconditional surrender by the enemy and nothing less...-- NO NEGOTIATIONS.... but they thought that might be too bitter a pill to reveal to the public.

If that was indeed the motivation, then after the war why the secrecy? And what in the world would motivate them to "silence" Hess more than forty years later?

I'm sure we're now in for some juicy tales, including grassy knoll theories. Maybe it wasn't even Hess who was silenced in 1987, but a double! Which means... maybe the double signed TGN's photograph in 1971 !!!
This account should get you going... heehee http://www.eyespymag.com/intv.html

Yeah, that is interesting. Maybe that is why they didn't want Hess to give autographs. His signature alone would have been enough to prove whether or not he was really Hess.

Anyhow, my example comes with further documentation, the writing on the back is in Col Bird's handwriting, so I am sure it is actually the one he mentioned in his book. Now, is it the signature of Hes, or the Hess double?