Hess, Hitler and Churchill Page 5

  Returning to Melaouhi’s account, Hess was lying apparently lifeless on the floor. Two men whom Melaouhi did not recognise, one large, one small, wearing ill-fitting US Army uniforms stood near the body. This seems to be a description of the US medical orderlies Four and Five, although by the other witness accounts medic Five did not arrive on the scene until after Melaouhi. Jordan, Melaouhi went on, was standing by Hess’s feet. He appeared overwrought; his shirt was soaked with sweat and he was not wearing his uniform tie.

  Melaouhi knelt to examine Hess, but could find no pulse or breathing. He thought he must have been dead for 30 minutes or more, and asked Jordan, accusingly, what he had done to him.

  ‘The swine is finished,’ the warder responded. ‘You won’t have to work any more night shifts.’12

  At this point, according to his book, Melaouhi felt suddenly scared, perceiving that he was in the presence of murderers who had killed his patient. For self-protection, to pretend he suspected nothing, he ordered Jordan to fetch the first aid apparatus, and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on what he knew to be Hess’s corpse. The larger of the unknown Americans knelt with him and pressed down rhythmically on Hess’s chest, but with such force that Melaouhi heard the ribs and breastbone crack.

  When Jordan reappeared with the first aid kit Melaouhi noticed he had changed his shirt, and although he, Melaouhi, had inspected the first aid apparatus that morning and found it in order, it was now useless, without a battery for the intubation set, and without oxygen.

  Such, in essence was Melaouhi’s story. In addition, he observed that Hess’s physical infirmities would have prevented him committing suicide in the manner described: he walked with a stick, could not rise if he fell and was nearly blind. Above all, he could not raise his arms above shoulder height, and his hands were so crippled with arthritis he could not tie his shoelaces. Melaouhi concluded his solemn declaration: ‘I am of the firm opinion that Herr Hess could not have committed suicide as claimed. In my view it is clear that he met his death through strangulation at the hands of a third party.’13

  The testimony of the US guards virtually rules out his conclusion. None reported a stranger in the prison grounds. The only possible murderer, therefore, was Jordan. On Melaouhi’s thesis he must have strangled Hess when letting him into the summer house, quickly arranged it to look like suicide, then gone outside, closing the door behind him and calmly sitting down on the nearby bench. It will be recalled that Thirteen, who had left switchboard duty and gone into the garden for the express purpose of seeing Prisoner Number Seven, saw Jordan in jacket and tie sitting outside the summer house as he approached. Passing the cabin, he noticed the single door closed and saw no sign of the prisoner through the window. The accounts of Jordan’s demeanour after he had looked in the cabin and seen his charge with a flex around his neck indicate a radical change: the warder dashed hither and thither in complete panic without a jacket or tie, not knowing what to do. He was either a consummate actor or he had not killed Hess. The latter is surely more likely; indeed, to believe Melaouhi’s interpretation it is necessary to postulate a complex conspiracy by the US guards and British and French warders who gave statements to the British Military Police investigation.

  BACK TO THE MILITARY POLICE INVESTIGATION

  At the time the US medics were called out, the British Military Hospital in Berlin, not far from the prison, was alerted to the emergency with the pre-planned code ‘Operation Paradox’. This was logged at 2.50 p.m. About 20 minutes later an ambulance from the hospital and a British medical officer in his own car arrived separately at the prison gate. The doctor, Lieutenant Colonel Six, was met by Jordan, who led him into the garden, telling him that the prisoner had been found hanged. Inside the summer house the doctor found cardiac massage being administered by the medics and oxygen being introduced to the prisoner’s lungs through an endo-tracheal tube, although the seal on the tube was faulty and causing a leak. He checked for signs of life, but could find no spontaneous pulse: ‘I also saw that the pupils were fixed and dilated and that Prisoner No. 7 was cyanosed – a bluish tinge was present on his exposed flesh.’

  US medical orderly Four had already noticed that the prisoner’s exposed flesh, initially pale, had taken on a bluish colour, particularly around the lips. The doctor set up an intravenous drip in the prisoner’s right arm, then informed the commanding officer of the British Military Hospital that resuscitation had been continuing for some 50 minutes, but there were no signs of life. He was instructed to transfer the prisoner to the hospital. The ambulance had by this time been manoeuvred into the garden, and the prisoner was stretchered in and driven off, the medics and Melaouhi still continuing their resuscitation efforts. Arriving at the hospital at 3.50, Hess’s body, as it must now be described, was taken up to his special ward on the second floor. At 4.10 he was officially pronounced dead.

  * * *

  At 6.45 p.m., some two and a half hours after Hess was pronounced dead at the British Military Hospital, the US prison director, Colonel Darold Keane, rang Hess’s son, Wolf Rüdiger Hess, and told him that his father had died at 4.10 that afternoon; he was not authorised to give further details.14

  It was almost 24 hours before Keane called Wolf Rüdiger again and read out an announcement prepared for the press: a preliminary investigation indicated that his father had attempted to take his own life:

  Hess, as he was accustomed to do, went escorted by a prison warder to sit in a small cottage in the garden of the prison. On looking into the cottage a few minutes later, the warder found Hess with an electrical cord around his neck. Resuscitation measures were taken and Hess was transported to the British Military Hospital. After further attempts to revive Hess, he was pronounced dead at 16.10. Whether this suicide attempt was the actual cause of death is the subject of a continuing investigation …15

  Wolf Rüdiger found the statement unbelievable. Why should his father attempt suicide just as hopes of freedom had begun to open up for him? In any case, like Melaouhi, he could not believe his father could have hanged himself in this way: he was barely able to walk without a stick and a warder’s assistance, and was so stooped and stiff he could not look much above the horizontal without overbalancing. And his hands were crippled with arthritis: how could he have looped an electrical flex around his neck and tied it in a knot? And how was it possible he had been left unsupervised for long enough even to attempt it?16

  It had been evident for years that Hess’s death, when it came, would be a political event; consequently a procedure had been laid down by the British directorate, agreed by the other three powers, for an autopsy to be conducted by the consultant forensic pathologist to the British Army, Professor J.M. Cameron. He was on holiday, but was swiftly recalled to fly to Berlin, and began his examination at 8.15 in the morning of 19 August, watched by other medical and military observers from the Four Powers on closed circuit television in an adjoining room.

  Apart from marks resulting from the resuscitation attempts, Cameron found ‘a circular bruised abrasion over the top of the back of the head’ and ‘a fine linear mark, approximately 3 in. (7.5 cms.) in length and 0.75 cms. in width’ running across the left side of the neck. He also found haemorrhagic spots in the conjunctivae (cornea and inner side of eyelid) of both eyes. Internally, he found ‘deep bruising over the top of the back of the head, noted on external examination’, ‘excessive bruising’ to the upper part of the right side of the thyroid cartilage, or voice box, and deep bruising behind the voice box.17

  Prior to receiving results from analysis of samples of blood and the contents of internal organs, Cameron established that the primary cause of death was asphyxiation, and an official announcement to this effect was put out at 6.00 that evening. With it came a statement that a note found while removing Hess’s clothing implied that he had planned to take his own life.

  The wording of the note was read out to Wolf Rüdiger Hess on the telephone. He fou
nd it clearly bogus. The content was simply out of date: it referred to an incident with Hess’s former secretary, ‘Freiburg’, which had been cleared up long ago, and the letter was signed off ‘Euer Grosser’ (Your Big One), a form his father had not used since the early 1970s.18 Wolf Rüdiger suspected it must have been written in November 1969 when his father had been very ill and believed he was dying. The note made reference to the Nuremberg trial, a subject Hess was forbidden to talk or write about, and Wolf Rüdiger concluded it must have been retained by the prison authorities at the time instead of being sent on, and had now been used to forge the ‘suicide note’.

  Disbelieving the official account, he commissioned a second post-mortem by German pathologists, and when his father’s body was handed over for private burial he had it taken instead to the Forensic Medical Institute of the University of Munich. There Professors W. Spann and W. Eisenmenger conducted a second examination.

  Their task was not made easy. They were provided with no evidence of how the body had been found or what had happened to it subsequently, and were not given Hess’s medical records; nor were they allowed to see the video made during Cameron’s autopsy or the X-rays taken previously. Furthermore, many of Hess’s internal organs were missing. These included the larynx and upper throat organs which Cameron had found to be so damaged. Nonetheless, Spann and Eisenmenger’s initial examination of the neck was suggestive. Whereas Cameron had found only ‘a fine linear mark approximately 3 ins. (7.5 cms.) in length … running across the left side of the neck’, they observed at the front of the neck a brownish-reddish marking of variable breadth extending from a high point under the left ear obliquely down to the middle of the throat and around to the right, and at the back an almost horizontal double-track discolouration typical of that left by a single cord squeezing the blood either side to form a tram line effect.19

  Cameron’s report was published later that month. On the basis of the internal damage to Hess’s neck and the linear mark about three inches long on the left side, which he described as ‘consistent with a ligature’, he concluded that Hess had died from ‘asphyxia’ produced by ‘compression of the neck’ as a result of ‘suspension’20. Speculation is no part of the forensic pathologist’s task and there is no requirement for a description of how the victim might have met his end or whether the injuries were consistent with the testimony of witnesses, although these things are frequently included in reports. Yet the whole purpose of the swift autopsy procedure laid down by the authorities had been to pre-empt and defuse political controversy. Cameron’s report had the opposite effect. His failure to address the circumstances in which the body had been found or the manner in which it might have acquired the deep bruising at the top of the head, or to elaborate on the single-word description of the manner of death as ‘suspension’ left all substantive questions open: had it been suicide, murder or misadventure?

  The Four Powers issued their ‘final statement’ on the matter on 17 September, a month after the event: ‘Rudolf Hess hanged himself from a window latch in a small summerhouse in the prison garden, using an electrical extension cord which had been kept in the summerhouse for use in connection with a reading lamp.’21 There was no explanation of how the old man might have contrived to do this, nor why he had been left so long unattended. ‘The routine followed by the staff,’ it was stated, ‘was consistent with normal practice.’ The statement added that the ‘suicide note was written on the reverse side of a letter from his daughter-in-law dated 20 July 1987’.

  Wolf Rüdiger found this to be so when the letter was returned to him the following week. Curiously, it had previously been examined by the senior document examiner at the laboratory of the British government chemist, who had concluded, ‘there is no reason to doubt that it was written by Rudolf Hess.’ The examination had clearly been rushed: the examiner had come from London and studied the letter in non-laboratory conditions at Spandau prison. He admitted to a ‘very limited knowledge of the German language’, and based his conclusions on ‘a marked area of resemblance together with detailed features’ which he considered characteristic of the writer and gave him ‘no reason to doubt that the author of the questioned writing was Prisoner Number 7.’22

  Wolf Rüdiger had every reason for doubt. The opinion he had commissioned from Professors Spann and Eisenmenger gave additional grounds. Whereas they agreed with Cameron that death had been caused by ‘an operation of force against the neck by means of a strangulation instrument’, their observation of the mainly horizontal mark left by this instrument pointed to throttling rather than hanging, or ‘suspension’, since it was lower than that associated with a typical hanging, and ‘obviously not above the larynx’. Moreover, they reported that in their experience such massive damage and haemorrhaging in such diverse areas of the neck organs and muscles as described in Cameron’s report were not usual in typical hangings, and even unusual ‘not to say rare’ in atypical hangings. While they lacked the data which might have allowed them to draw definite conclusions, they recorded that their findings did not conform to those of a typical hanging, although they could not exclude ‘a special type of atypical hanging’. They noted the fact that Professor Cameron had not described the course or height of the ‘fine linear mark’ he had found; nor had he discussed the possibility of throttling.23 The late Wolf Rüdiger Hess released them from their obligation of confidentiality and in reply to the present author they stated their opinion that in the light of their own findings Professor Cameron’s diagnosis of ‘suspension’ without discussing other possibilities was ‘not justifiable’.24

  Later, Wolf Rüdiger commissioned the eminent British pathologist, Professor David Bowen, to review the conflicting autopsy reports. Bowen came down on the side of the German professors, suggesting in particular that the bruising to Hess’s deeper neck tissues was unlikely to have occurred in a suicidal hanging, but was a feature of strangulation. He concluded that ‘doubts must remain on the reliability of the official statement’ concerning Hess’s death.25

  The bogus suicide note and doubts over the official post-mortem report created just the conditions needed to give credibility to Melaouhi’s allegation that Hess had been murdered, particularly as the British Military Police investigation report was not published. Rumours and political disinformation proliferated. Wolf Rüdiger received information allegedly emanating from Israeli Intelligence sources that the murder had been committed by two SAS soldiers on the orders of the British Home Office. A book he wrote, Mord an Rudolf Hess? (Murder of Rudolf Hess?), publicising the allegation became a bestseller in Germany.26

  Leaving aside the divergent views of the pathologists as interpretations only, the problem is how to reconcile the statements made to the British Military Police pointing conclusively to suicide with what appears to be a forged suicide note suggesting the prison authorities had something to hide. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the four-power prison directorate agreeing to have a suicide note forged to deflect the political difficulties his death would cause.

  A possible answer, the most credible in the author’s view, is that the note was indeed written by Hess himself, and was intended to sow doubt and confusion. The Military Police investigation ‘Final Report’ states that ‘Rudolf Hess – Prisoner Number 7, planned well in advance to take his own life’; this is supported by the witness testimony: for instance, the suicide note was found in Hess’s pocket after he was pronounced dead at the British Military Hospital; it was written on the back of a letter he had received on 29 July from Wolf Rüdiger’s wife, Andrea. But he could not have written it in the short time between his entry to the summer house and US soldier Thirteen passing the window and seeing no one inside. He must, therefore, have penned the note some time before and kept it in his pocket to be found on his death. If so, it can be concluded that he planned maximum embarrassment to the authorities who had kept him locked up for so long.

  Such a step would have accorded wit
h aspects of his character. While appearing idealistically naïve, even childish to some, he was also perverse and wily. He would not have survived at the top of the Nazi regime had he not been. Suppose he wrote the note referring to a long-defunct episode with his former secretary, ‘Freiburg’, and signed it off in a form he had not used for 20 years to indicate to Wolf Rüdiger and his family that it was a forgery. He would have thought it a fitting way to go. If so, the wonder is that at 93, after half a lifetime in prison, he retained the intellectual ability to carry it through.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The big question

  SOME DOUBTS ABOUT aspects of Hess’s death in Spandau remain. More important questions surround the circumstances of his flight to Great Britain in May 1941. The official British and German accounts depict a lone idealist, anxious to restore his position at Hitler’s court, flying without Hitler’s knowledge or approval unannounced into enemy territory on the off chance of finding the Duke of Hamilton at home at his Scottish seat and ready to talk peace. Obviously he was deranged. Yet doctors who examined him on arrival pronounced him sane and not a drug-taker; moreover how could a lunatic have planned and executed such a precise flight? These questions hardly disturb the academic historical community, which accepts the official account in whole or in part; and that version of events remains the received explanation.