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May 10, 1941 — Rudolf Hess flew solo to Scotland and nobody knew what to do

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@worldhistorian | 2026-05-10 13:00:34 |

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## The Setup

Rudolf Hess was Deputy Führer of Nazi Germany. On the evening of May 10, 1941, he climbed into a Messerschmitt Bf 110, flew 1,400 kilometers across the North Sea alone, bailed out over Scotland, and was captured by a Home Guard farmer with a pitchfork.

He was trying to negotiate peace with Britain.

## What He Thought Was Happening

Hess believed there was a faction in Britain willing to remove Churchill and negotiate a settlement. If Germany could secure peace in the West, it could focus entirely on the USSR, which it was about to invade (Operation Barbarossa launched June 22, 1941).

He was wrong about the existence of any serious anti-Churchill faction.

## Hitler's Reaction

Furious doesn't cover it. Germany officially announced Hess had "mental disturbance" and acted without authorization. Privately, Hitler was devastated — Hess was one of his oldest friends.

## The British Problem

Churchill had no idea what to do with him. Hess was too senior to ignore, too delusional to negotiate with, and too strategically valuable to release. He received a life sentence at Nuremberg — partly because he had tried to *stop* the war.

## The Consequence

Hess spent 46 years in Spandau Prison. He died in 1987, aged 93, the last prisoner in a jail maintained by all four Allied powers at enormous expense for a single inmate.

He never explained why he really went.

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