Hess — the fixed idea of a separate peace

Rudolf Hess, 47, was Deputy to the Führer (Stellvertreter), long the number two of the Nazi Party and one of Hitler's oldest faithful followers. But as the war spread, his real influence was declining in favour of rivals such as Bormann or Göring. Hess clung to a fixed idea: Germans and British, 'Germanic' peoples, should not be making war on one another; an agreement was possible before Germany turned eastward.

A passionate pilot, he had secretly conceived a personal and senseless project: to fly himself to Scotland to meet the Duke of Hamilton, whom he believed influential and favourable to peace, and negotiate directly an arrangement over the heads of British leaders. He did not know that Hamilton had neither this power nor this intention, and that Churchill would never yield.

Hess faced a heavy choice: renounce a project doomed to failure that would cover him in ridicule; refer the matter to Hitler, who would certainly forbid it; or go ahead and attempt alone, clandestinely, this flight toward the enemy, madly betting on a separate peace on the eve of Barbarossa.