Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

208. See Hewel’s description of the meeting, IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Hewel-Tagebuch, entry for 13 May 1941: ‘Chief and Göring on the mountain. 4 o’clock all Reichsleiter and Gauleiter up there. Bormann reads out Heß’s letters. Dramatic meeting. Great emotion. Fürer comes, speaks very personally, analyses deed as such and proves mental disturbance through illogicality… Very moving demonstration. Sympathy. “The Fürer is spared nothing.”’ (‘Chef und Göring auf dem Berg. 4 Uhr alle Reichsleiter und Gauleter oben. Bormann verliest Heß’ Briefe. Dramatische Versammlung. Große Ergriffenheit. Führer kommt, spricht sehr persönlich, analysiert Tat als solche und beweist Geistesgestörtheit an Unlogik…. Sehr ergreifende Kundgebung. Mitleid. “Dem Führer bleibt auch nichts erspart.” ‘) For a summary of Hitler’s remarks, drawn up in Gau Kurhessen on the basis of an eye-witness account, see Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer, ‘Hitler zum Fall Heß vor den Reichs- und Gauleitern am 13. Mai 1941. Dokumentation der Knoth-Nachschrift’, Geschichte und Gegenwart, 18 (1999), 95 –100.

209. Cit. Fest, Face, 292.

210. IfZ, MA 120/5, Fol.480, ‘Rede Hans Franks über Wirkung des Englandflugs von Rudolf Heß’: ‘Der Führer war so vollkommen erschüttert, wie ich das eigentlich noch nicht erlebt habe.’ ‘I was absolutely dismayed (Ich war geradezu entsetzt),’ Frank wrote after the war, in prison in Nuremberg (Frank, 411).

211. Robert M. W. Kempner, Das Dritte Reich im Kreuzverhör. Aus den Vernehmungsprotokollen des Anklägers, Düsseldorf, 1984, 107–9 (testimony of Gauleiter Ernst Wilhelm Bohle).

212. TBJG, I/9, 312 (14 May 1941).

213. Kempner, 106.

214. R. Schmidt, 5 n.20, points out that the bugging of Bodenschatz’s conversations with other former high-ranking officers of the Luftwaffe while he was in British captivity has undermined his evidence, and thereby the testimony on which so many have relied to claim that Hitler was implicated. Julius Schaub, Hitler’s longstanding adjutant and general factotum, was convinced, in post-war testimony, that Hitler knew nothing of Heß’s flight. (IfZ, ZS 137, Julius Schaub, Vernehmung, 12 March 1947, Fol. 14).

215. See R. Schmidt, 5 n.20.

216. Costello tries to make the case for a British Secret Service plot. But for criticism, see R. Schmidt, 5 n.20. I am most grateful to Ted Harrison for the opportunity to read in advance of publication his essay ‘“… wir wurden schon viel zu oft hereingelegt” ‘. ‘Mai 1941: Rudolf Heß in englischer Sicht’, in Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker, eds., Rudolf Heß. Der Mann an Hitlers Seite, Leipzig, 1999, 368–92, 523–6, which provides a thorough investigation of British intelligence and the Heß affair, plainly demonstrating the absence of any plan to lure Heß to Britain, or prior knowledge that he was coming.

217. After the war, Göring poured scorn on the notion that Hitler had been behind the Heß flight. Would he have sent him on such a lone mission without the slightest preparation, he asked? Had he wanted to deal with Britain, semi-official channels through neutral countries (as had been the case with Dahlerus) were open to him, and he, Göring, could through his connections have organized this within forty-eight hours (Irving, Göring, 323).

218. Cit. R. Schmidt, 14.

219. R. Schmidt, 15–16.

220. See also R. Schmidt, 26–7 for Heß’s third interrogation with Lord Simon and Kirkpatrick on 9 June. Here, too, Heß explicitly denied any knowledge of his escapade by Hitler. See also National Archives, NND 881102, US intelligence report on Heß, 28 Oct. 1941: ‘Hess has always insisted that Hitler had no knowledge of his flight.’

221. See Schmidt, 26.

222. Padfield, Hess, xiii for ‘Fräulein Anna’ and xiv for other unflattering nicknames. Sir John Simon concluded from his interrogation of Heß on 10 June ‘that Heß’s position and authority in Germany have declined and that if he could bring off the coup of early peace on Hitler’s terms he would confirm his position… and render an immense service to his adored Master and to Germany’ (cit. Schmidt, 28).