# Rudolph Hess not sentenced to death?! **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 11, 2014, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046 "2014-10-11T16:29:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2014, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/1 "2014-10-11T16:29:25Z")
I thought he was Hitler’s deputy Fuhrer. Why was he sent to prison, not the gallows? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2014, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/2 "2014-10-11T16:33:19Z")
During the Nuremberg trials, he was found guilty of the charges related to waging a war of aggression, but not related to the Holocaust – crimes against humanity. So the Nuremberg court determined that he bore some responsibility for Nazi Germany’s aggressive wars of conquest, but that he did not bear responsibility for the Holocaust. I don’t know if this was the correct judgment, but that’s how the Nuremberg court ruled. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2014, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/3 "2014-10-11T16:35:48Z")
The Wikipedia page is pretty clear: did you read it? [Rudolf Hess - Wikipedia](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hess#Nuremberg_Trials) In particular: > [@](#): > > He noted that Hess could not be held responsible for any events that took place after he left Germany in May 1941. Meanwhile Hess mentally detached himself from what was happening, declining visits from his family and refusing to read the newspapers And > [@](#): > > The court deliberated for nearly two months before passing judgement on 30 September, with the defendants being individually sentenced on 1 October. Hess was found guilty on two counts: crimes against peace (planning and preparing a war of aggression), and conspiracy with other German leaders to commit crimes. He was found not guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was given a life sentence, one of seven Nazis to receive prison sentences at the trial. These seven were transported by aircraft to the Allied military prison at Spandau in Berlin on 18 July 1947.[105][106] The Soviet member of the tribunal, Major-General Iona Nikitchenko, filed a document recording his dissent of Hess’s sentence; he felt the death sentence was warranted.[107] ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2014, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/4 "2014-10-11T16:44:15Z")
I don’t think it was the effect intended by the tribunal, but you could make the point that in a sense the sentence he received turned out to be worse than the death penalty. For more than twenty years, from 1966, when the last of his fellow inmates at Spandau were released, until his death in 1987, Hess was the only inmate in a prison that was operated exclusively for him (as an interesting sidenote, Spandau prison was one of the very few facilities were Allied cooperation between the victors of WWII continued as originally envisaged - right until the end, the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France would rotate in being in charge of the prison). Must have been rather depressing. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2014, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/5 "2014-10-11T17:02:52Z")
Hess was simply a toady. Compared to others tried at Nuremberg a lesser sentence might have seemed reasonable. As Schnitte pointed out, it resulted in justice, maybe more justice than for others that were executed. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2014, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/6 "2014-10-11T17:07:43Z")
Was it ever released who he intended to meet with in Britain? ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2014, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/7 "2014-10-11T22:10:55Z")
The [Duke of Hamilton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Douglas-Hamilton,_14th_Duke_of_Hamilton) - or are you suggesting it was really someone else? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/8 "2014-10-12T20:05:01Z")
I’m pretty sure that the Brits quickly discovered after they caught him that he was not all there mentally. The plan was beyond idiotic. I think there might have been a smidgen of leniency given to him given his messed up mental state. (Which decades in prison didn’t help.) ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/9 "2014-10-12T20:32:01Z")
He’d gone, in medical terminology, snooker loopy and came out with all sorts of [crazy shit](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFkm_s-Swy8) during the trial. Churchill afterwards wrote _“He was a medical and not a criminal case, and should be so regarded.”_ (The Grand Alliance (1950), p. 55.) The British psychiatrist who treated him [said of his experience](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17588632) with Hess; _“He was pathetic and pitiful rather than menacing or unpleasant…We who surrounded him always felt that this was a very insecure man who had been greatly damaged somehow in his earlier life and if only better means had existed, if only he hadn’t had been such an important prisoner of state, we might have done more for him.”_ ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/10 "2014-10-12T20:36:37Z")
And Spandau was torn down almost the day Hess died. ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/11 "2014-10-12T22:43:39Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > And Spandau was torn down almost the day Hess died. To avoid it becoming a neo-Nazi pilgrimage site. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/12 "2014-10-13T03:17:53Z")
> [@Schnitte](#): > > I don’t think it was the effect intended by the tribunal, but you could make the point that in a sense the sentence he received turned out to be worse than the death penalty. For more than twenty years, from 1966, when the last of his fellow inmates at Spandau were released, until his death in 1987, Hess was the only inmate in a prison that was operated exclusively for him (as an interesting sidenote, Spandau prison was one of the very few facilities were Allied cooperation between the victors of WWII continued as originally envisaged - right until the end, the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France would rotate in being in charge of the prison). Must have been rather depressing. His confinement became a Cold War issue. The fact that he was confined gave the Soviets the legal right to station personnel inside West Berlin. So the Soviets vetoed any suggestions for releasing Hess or moving him to another location. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/13 "2014-10-13T04:43:42Z")
My piping instructor was a guard at Spandau at one point in the fifties or early 60s. He remembers seeing Hess in the exercise yard. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/14 "2014-10-13T05:43:57Z")
IIRC it was at Yalta that Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt discussed what to do with the Germans once they won. Stalin suggested they simply execute the top 50,000 Nazis. Roosevelt did not think he was serious, and said “why not just 49,000?” So the Russians had pretty much decided that anyone even close to the top should be led away and shot, which explains the Russian judge’s poor score for the trial. Of course, their country had suffered a lot worse than Britain or the USA. ---
**Author:** ![filmstar-en](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/50afbb/32.png) [@filmstar-en](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmstar-en)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/15 "2014-10-13T09:34:09Z")
There are a great many conspiracy theories regarding Hess suggesting the man in Spandau was not really Hess and their was some great cover up. The British were anxious to kill any suggestion that the Hess flight to the UK meant that there had been any sort of deal with Hitler. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/16 "2014-10-13T12:10:23Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > His confinement became a Cold War issue. The fact that he was confined gave the Soviets the legal right to station personnel inside West Berlin. So the Soviets vetoed any suggestions for releasing Hess or moving him to another location. This was also why conspiracy theories sprang up immediately regarding in death, some said the British murdered him (although why they’d wait until he was 93 is anyone’s guess). Karl Donitz was probably the most fortunate in escaping the hangman at Nuremberg, despite his claims of being just a sailor he was a convinced Nazi. His Flensburg Government would have saved much heartache and destruction had it immediately accepted unconditional surrender rather than pointlessly string things out. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/17 "2014-10-13T15:37:57Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > Karl Donitz was probably the most fortunate in escaping the hangman at Nuremberg, despite his claims of being just a sailor he was a convinced Nazi. His Flensburg Government would have saved much heartache and destruction had it immediately accepted unconditional surrender rather than pointlessly string things out. It didn’t pointlessly string things out. It strung things out for a reason, which was to give German troops and civilians as much time as possible to surrender to the Western Allies/get into Western Allied controlled territory. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/18 "2014-10-13T16:06:01Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > This was also why conspiracy theories sprang up immediately regarding in death, some said the British murdered him (although why they’d wait until he was 93 is anyone’s guess). > > Karl Donitz was probably the most fortunate in escaping the hangman at Nuremberg, despite his claims of being just a sailor he was a convinced Nazi. His Flensburg Government would have saved much heartache and destruction had it immediately accepted unconditional surrender rather than pointlessly string things out. I don’t know that a week and a day is really stringing things out; Hitler died on 4/30/1945, and the German surrender was on 5/7/1945. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/19 "2014-10-13T16:36:38Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I don’t know that a week and a day is really stringing things out; Hitler died on 4/30/1945, and the German surrender was on 5/7/1945. Seriously, those backwards dates are really confusing to non-Americans. I read it as 4/3 (the fourth of March) to 5/7 (the fifth of July) and was trying to figure out how that added up to a week and a day. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046/20 "2014-10-13T17:17:33Z")
> [@etv78](#): > > I thought he was Hitler’s deputy Fuhrer. Why was he sent to prison, not the gallows? Even Prison was too much. The dude was a hapless helpless loony. He should have been committed, not imprisoned. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rudolph-hess-not-sentenced-to-death/701046.md?page=2)