18. Wolf Hess dedicated his whole life to trying to get his father, the top Nazi Rudolf Hess, freed from prison
Not all children of Nazis spent their lives trying to distance themselves from their infamous parents. Some, like Wolf Rudiger Hess, actually dedicated their lives to trying to defend them. Indeed, Rudolf was his father’s number one supporter. He worked tirelessly for decades trying to show the world that, far from being a monster, his dad, Rudolf Hess, was innocent of war crimes and just did the job asked of him during the 1930s and early 1940s.
Rudolf Hess was, for a while, Hitler’s right-hand man. He was with the Nazi Party from almost the very beginning and rose to the position of Deputy Fuhrer of the Third Reich. However, his fall from power has always remained one of the great mysteries of the Second World War. In May 1941, Hess flew to Scotland solo. There, he announced his intention to hold peace talks with Britain. Whether or not he had the blessing of Hitler, or even from the British Royal Family, is not known. Either way, he was promptly caught and, when the war came to an end, stood trial at Nuremberg. Hess escaped the hangman’s noose but was sentenced to live the remainder of his life as the sole prisoner of Spandau Prison.
Wolf who was a teenager when his father made his ill-fated flight to Scotland, visited his father regularly. But he did much more than this. In the 1950s, he founded the Committee to Free Rudolf Hess. The movement had hundreds of thousands of supporters, including several prominent German politicians. Wolf also wrote several books outlining why Hess should be considered a German hero and not a criminal. And then, when Hess died behind bars, he argued that he had been murdered by his British captors.
After a lifetime advocating for his Nazi father, Wolf died in 2001. In his final book, he explained that he had no regrets about the life he had chosen. He said: “I never had time for myself; I spent all my free time on my father.” For all his dedication, however, Hess remains regarded as one of the key architects of the Third Reich, a regime that caused untold misery.