Talking to Rudolf Hess

Hess's thoughts on Hitler, Churchill's order to Hess's psychiatrist to falsify his report—here is the full story of Rudolf Hess’s imprisonment in Spandau Rudolf Hess was Adolf Hitler’s Deputy Führer until, in 1941, he flew to Scotland, ostensibly to negotiate peace between Germany and Britain. Captured by the British, he was held for the rest of the War, before being convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. Desmond Zwar collaborated with Col. Burton C. Andrus, who was Commandant of Nuremberg Prison during the Trials, on his book The Infamous of Nuremberg, and with Col. Eugene K. Bird, U.S. Governor of Spandau Prison, where Hess was held for more than 40 years, on The Loneliest Man in the World. For reasons of practicality, neither of these books told the full story, which is revealed here for the first time. As well as his interviews with Hess and others, Zwar tells the story of how this book came to be written, including how Hess hid proofs in his underpants, how Bird was fired by the U.S. Army, and how the CIA tried to recover the transcripts.