The Times

Saturday April 21 2001

New evidence that Hess died in Britain

BY MICHAEL EVANS

THE conspiracy theory that Rudolf Hess was not the man who died in jail in Berlin in 1987 has been revived.

A new book claims that there is evidence that Hitler’s deputy died in a plane crash a year after flying to Britain in 1941 to sue for peace with members of the Establishment. The man who was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg and spent the rest of his life in Spandau prison is said to have been a double planted by the British secret service. Lynn Picknet, Clive Prince and Stephen Prior, the authors of Double Standards: The Rudolf Hess Cover-up, claim to have evidence that Hess was killed while flying with the Duke of Kent over Wales in 1942.

Yesterday the Public Record Office released more material supporting the official line, covering Hess’s illness in 1970. However, the book backs the view of Hugh Thomas, a former army surgeon posted to Berlin in 1973 who examined the prisoner and became convinced that he was not Hess.

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