Hess, Rudolf

views updated May 14 2018

Hess, Rudolf (1894–1987) German Nazi leader. He joined the Nazi Party in 1921, and took part in the abortive Munich Putsch. Hess was nominal deputy leader under Adolf Hitler from 1933. In 1941, he flew to Scotland in a mysterious one-man effort to make peace with the British. In 1945, he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nuremberg Trials and died in Spandau Prison, Berlin, for many years its sole inmate.