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BOOK REVIEW
Messerschmitt Bf110E-2/N? The book includes 32 photographs ran out of fuel, so he parachuted into Scotland. He was promptly
that are nicely illustrative of the text. The final section of the book captured, and initially treated as a high-ranking military officer
is spent debunking the many myths about Hess, his flight and his and kept in relative comfort, although he was isolated and pretty
life. Additionally there are a number of informative appendices. much ignored. He was ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment
at the Nuremburg Trials. After the trial he was transferred to Span-
This book gives us considerable information about Rudolf Hess: dau Prison in Berlin, where he lived much of the time as the only
He had flown in WWI, was a skilled pilot and had even won an prisoner. The Western Allies wanted to let him go after a few years,
air race around a mountain and gained considerable notoriety for but the Russians refused. He committed suicide at age 93 by hang-
it. He was an ardent disciple of Adolf Hitler, and I had the feeling ing himself with an extension cord. His survivors were his wife,
that he had suppressed his own personality and ambitions just to Ilse Pröhl Hess, (1900-1995) and his son, Wolf Rüdiger Hess,
be able to associate with the Führer. While he and Hitler were in (1937-2001) who became an architect.
prison after the failed 1923 “putsch” in Munich, Hitler dictated
large parts of Mein Kampf for Hess to transcribe. Hess was ap- You should read these two volumes for different reasons: Green’s
pointed Deputy Führer when Hitler was elected Chancellor of book is, in its way, escapist literature, and the Nesbit one is all in-
Germany in 1933. formation. I found that they complemented each other, and after
reading the second one, I went back to the novelization and read
At the 1936 Olympics, Hess had spoken briefly with the Duke large parts of it with new interest.
of Hamilton, a Scot and the scion of the oldest dukedom in Scot-
land. He somehow came to believe that, in 1941, during and after Fred H. Olin, MD, is a semi-retired orthopaedic sur-
the Battle of Britain, that there was a serious peace party in the geon who was born before WWII, but not long enough
British Government, and that if he turned up at Hamilton’s estate for him to be able to remember much about it.
with a plan for alliance that he would be welcomed. It didn’t turn
out that way at all, and therein lies the meat of this book. His plane
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