Secret file Hess

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Movie
Original title Secret file Hess
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2004
length 72 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
production Olaf Rose , Michael Vogt
camera Holger Douglas, Johannes Haneke, Tobias Staab
cut Sascha Nölke, Markus Ohm

Secret Files Hess is a 72-minute long documentary by Olaf Rose and Michael Vogt from 2004 about Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess , his flight to Scotland in 1941 and the circumstances of his death in 1987. In the film, which is partly based on the book of British journalist and historical revisionist Martin Allen supports "Churchill's peace trap", it is alleged that Winston Churchill was responsible for the continuation of World War II after 1940, which historical scholars reject as erroneous and revisionist , and that Hess did not commit suicide in the Spandau war crimes prison committed, but was murdered. The latter thesis is mainly represented in right-wing extremist books, magazines and at the annual international neo-Nazi demonstrations and in their surroundings on stickers and posters.

content

According to the film, Hess flew to Great Britain on behalf of, or at least with the knowledge of, Adolf Hitler to conduct peace negotiations with the war-weary opposition in England. These plans, however, were prevented by Winston Churchill with the help of the British secret service, which had lured Hess into a trap. Churchill had played for time in order to drag the USA and the Soviet Union to war and thus let the European war between England and Germany result in a world war that Germany would not be able to win. The British government saw the empire threatened by the “Great German Reich Idea” (Vansittart) and an overpowering Germany connected with it on the European continent.

The film reports on various German peace proposals to England. Among other things, Hitler was ready to evacuate all occupied countries, to pay reparations for damage caused to these countries and to restore "a Polish state". Similar proposals are attributed to Hess, who actually only proposed to the English the delimitation of spheres of interest - Europe for the Axis, the Empire for Great Britain - and the return of the German colonies .

The film doubts that Rudolf Hess committed suicide in prison on August 17, 1987. We hear from Eugene Bird , director of the Berlin-Spandau Prison from 1964 to 1972, and Hess' last nurses Abdullah Melaouhi, both speak of a murder. In addition, a second autopsy of the corpse by forensic doctor Wolfgang Spann showed strangulation marks on the dead man's neck, which are atypical for a suicide. The authors accuse the British secret service of having murdered Hess after political changes in the Soviet Union ( glasnost ) meant that Hess's release could no longer be ruled out.

criticism

Historians accuse the film of numerous research errors and, in some cases, deliberate historical falsification . The theses on which the film is based in Martin Allen's Hess book are based on forged papers in the British National Archives.

The wreck of Hess' Messerschmitt Bf 110 after the crash (May 10, 1941, 10:34 pm) near the "Floors Farm" ( Eaglesham ), Scotland

The film does not provide any solid evidence for the claim that Hess flew to Scotland on Hitler's behalf. Most research is of the opinion that Hess made his flight without Hitler's knowledge. Gerhard L. Weinberg, for example, writes that Hitler was angry about the flight, but was unable to do anything more and ultimately only dropped a few Hess confidants. “Despite various speculations and the distrust of the Soviets, this amazing adventure did not lead to any further results. The course of the war was not influenced by it. ”It was publicly declared in Germany that Hess (after all, Hitler's deputy) was mentally unbalanced.

One of the historians interviewed in the film, Rainer F. Schmidt , stated that the interview, “which is clearly in a right-wing radical context,” had been shortened and placed in a context unknown to him. In particular, he rejects the claims made in the film. "The statements in this documentation in no way coincide with the results of my publications about the 'Heß-Flug' and are not shared by me," says Schmidt, and continues: "I hereby expressly distance myself from the statements in this documentation and from the context , in which this dissemination and supporters, and refer for my position on the matter to my publication 'Rudolf Hess. Errand of a fool? The flight to Great Britain on May 10, 1941 ', 3rd edition Munich 2001, which comes to completely different conclusions and results. "

literature

  • Hess secret files, history and background of the failed German-English peace negotiations - long version of the n-tv documentation , DVD, ISBN 3-937163-51-4 .
  • Rainer F. Schmidt : Rudolf Hess - "Errand of a fool?". The flight to Great Britain on May 10, 1941 . ECON, Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-430-18016-3 .
  • Kurt Pätzold , Manfred Weißbecker : Rudolf Heß. The man at Hitler's side . Militzke, Leipzig 1999, ISBN 3-86189-157-3 .
  • David Thomas: Forgery in the Archives . In: Archives. The Journal of the British Records Association Vol. 34 No. 120 (2009), pp. 21-35. Cf. same: Forgeries in the archives , The National Archives Podcast, August 28, 2009
  • Ernst Haiger: Forgeries on the history of the Second World War in the British National Archives . In: Christian Müller-Straten: Counterfeit Detection , Vol. 2. Verlag Dr. Christian Müller-Straten, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-932704-85-7 , pp. 211-221. (An examination of the documents on which the film is based, which have since been exposed as falsifications by Martin Allen)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. In one of his retellings of "Hess Secret Files" from August 15, 2015 - [1] - Vogt claims that the Hess papers auctioned "by Sotheby" in September 2013 was a peace plan of Hitler brought by Hess with the above. alleged concessions; in reality it is the well-known text of the protocol of the conversation with the British Lord Chancellor, in which Hess proposed the delimitation of spheres of interest and the return of the colonies as a basis for peace.
  2. ^ Ernst Haiger: Fiction, Facts and Forgeries: The "Revelations" of Peter and Martin Allen about the History of the Second World War . In: The Journal of Intelligence History Vol. 6 No. 1 (Summer 2006 [published 2007], pp. 105-117), ISSN  1616-1262
  3. UK police find Himmler / Churchill archive forgeries , Reuters, May 3, 2008
  4. ^ Forgeries revealed in the National Archives , The Sunday Times, May 4, 2008.
  5. Sven Felix Kellerhoff : National Archive shows forged Himmler files , Die Welt , May 4, 2008
  6. ^ Gerhard L. Weinberg: A world in arms. The global history of the Second World War, 2nd edition, Nikol: Hamburg 2002 (Stuttgart 1995), p. 266.
  7. Statement on Schmidt's Institute website ( memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed via the web archive).