What are the half dozen most amazing plane flights in history? Such a list might include the flights of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, our manned space flights, and Voyager.
Another flight that deserves to be on a short list of remarkable flights took place on May 10, 1941. An unarmed Messerschmitt 110 took off from Germany in the early months of World War II, carrying barely enough fuel for a 900-mile flight to Scotland.
The solitary German plane dodged two British Spitfires before it reached its destination. The pilot, a 47-year-old man flying alone, then made his first and only parachute jump, landing in darkness on the property of the Duke of Hamilton.
The pilot was Rudolf Hess, one of the highest officials in Hitler’s government. He carried no weapons of war; he came on a mission of peace. He came, as he said, “at the risk of my life, to try to end hostilities between our people.”
To try to recapture the drama, the uniqueness, and the risk of the moment, just imagine that one night, our President’s National Security Adviser, impatient with the failed arms control talks with the Soviets, drove to a nearby U.S. military base, commandeered an unarmed Air Force plane stripped of weapons, climbed into the cockpit, flew alone to Moscow, strapped on a parachute, opened the door, and jumped. The customs of war for centuries have been to accord the emissary of peace a safe conduct pass. However, Rudolf Hess was arrested and has been in prison ever since. That’s 45 years, and he is now 92 years old.
Hess is the sole prisoner in a prison built for 600, Spandau Prison in West Berlin, which is under the joint control of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. All the other onetime prisoners are dead or released; only he remains.
Hess spends his time writing his memoirs. Every time he completes a section, it is taken from him and burned without his knowledge. The powers that be have decreed that no one shall ever hear or read what Hess has to say.
The other conditions of Hess’s imprisonment are most remarkable, too. His wife or son may visit him but once a month for one hour, but he may never touch either of them and has to keep distance between them. He has never been permitted to see his grandchildren.
During these few visits, several guards are always in his cell, and all exchanges must be spoken loudly to ensure that they can be heard by the jailers. He may receive one single letter per week from his family, and may mail one in return. No other mail is allowed.
Hess may read four daily newspapers (selected by the prison administration), and four books monthly, but everything pertaining to his own past is censored out. His cell is never without light.
His court-appointed lawyer has never been allowed to speak to him of his trial and sentence, and has not been allowed to see him for the past seven years. Even the International Red Cross and Amnesty International are not permitted to visit him.
When he dies, he will be cremated, his ashes scattered and not given to the family.
We are told that the number-one purpose of the current media controversy about the Iran/Contra connection is to find out what really happened. We are told that the first objective to be served is the public’s right to know.
Wouldn’t you think, regardless of Hess’s crimes when he was a participant in the Hitler regime prior to his solo flight to Scotland, that history would be served by finding out what really happened that night on May 10, 1941? Was Hess a mystic flying a desperate gamble to become a one-man peacemaker to stop World War II? Was Hess acting as Hitler’s agent in offering peace to the West?
It isn’t clear which of the three superpowers continues to impose on Hess history’s most famous protracted case of solitary confinement and isolation. We have a natural tendency to blame everything on the Soviets, but it hasn’t been proved that the Soviets are to blame in this case. Some speculate that it is the British trying to protect Winston Churchill’s reputation.
It’s too bad that Germany and Britain are not subject to the U.S. Freedom Information Act. There is so much we would like to know, and time is running out for the 92-year-old Rudolf Hess.
