RUDOLF HESS: HIS BETRAYAL & MURDER
By Abdallah Melaouhi
A review by Ronald Ray. How many of us, passing through the brief time allotted by divine Providence to our life in this world, can say that we have been actual participants in events of lasting historical significance, or—rarer still—that we were aware of the fact at the time?
Like the grass of the fields, we are “here today, and tomorrow . . . cast into the furnace.”
But for Rudolf Hess, deputy Führer in the Third Reich, and the last National Socialist imprisoned at Spandau Prison in Berlin, most of his adult life was an event of historical significance—as much while he labored for the peaceful restoration of Germany’s rightful place among the leading nations of the world, as in the silence and suffering of his 40 years of solitary confinement, until his death in 1987, at age 92.
Rudolf Hess was born at the end of the 19th century to Protestant German parents. Son of a merchant, he grew up in Alexandria, Egypt. There, Hess learned fluent Arabic, in addition to his native German—a little-known fact, that one day would make possible the writing of Rudolf Hess: His Betrayal and Murder, by a Tunisian Muslim, Abdallah Melaouhi.
Well acknowledged is Hess’s swift rise as a young man in the fledgling National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) during the 1920s and ’30s. One of Adolf Hitler’s most loyal and unrepentant followers and admirers, Hess actually became deputy Fuehrer, known for his impassioned introductions of the Reich chancellor at NSDAP party congresses in Nuremberg and elsewhere.
However, on May 10, 1941, all of that changed. Through a dangerous solo airplane flight to Great Britain, Hess sought to avert the impending world war, which would lead, in the end, to a nearly total triumph of socialism and communism in Europe. Nevertheless, as TBR readers well know, it was not Hitler who wanted war with the West, but the Judaeo-Freemasonic cabals, led by the Rothschild family of banksters, who sought to embroil nearly an entire planet in bloody carnage for their own personal enrichment.
Neither did Hess want war. He approved of the efforts in Eastern Europe to reunite the German people into one country, but he remembered too well the horrors of the Great War and sought to prevent a more catastrophic repetition. Thus, Hess developed a daring plan to bring Hitler’s peace proposal to Britain, so that the Bolshevist threat could be attacked and destroyed swiftly, before it could consume all of Western civilization.
Here the court historians fall—or dive—into the murk and slime. For 70 years, they have deepened the disinformational morass, until even those of good will doubted whether the truth could be found.
Did Hitler know about Hess’s flight to Britain? Was Hess suffering from a delusional madness? Was the “peace plan” his own invention, or did the Fuehrer approve its details—perhaps even have a hand in shaping it?
More significantly, why was it so important that Rudolf Hess, known and addressed only as the dehumanized “Prisoner No. 7,” should die in prison, rather than allowing the ailing nonagenarian a few weeks or months of freedom to be with his beloved wife, children and grandchildren, before passing from this world for ever? What was it that Hess knew, which was so “dangerous” that it required his death, presented as “suicide,” despite the physical impossibility of an arthritic old man hanging himself? Was the threat of a free Hess, who might tell the truth about National Socialism, so great?
How did the “Allies,” those paragons of moral virtue, treat Hess during his 40 years of solitary confinement? What were the “state secrets” that led at least one of the four “Great Powers” to murder the last important living National Socialist? And who were the murderers? Why were they never brought to justice?
Mr. Melaouhi’s outstanding book seeks the answers to these mysteries and is presented now by The Barnes Review, through great sacrifice, for the first time in English.
For all that, Betrayal and Murder is not a political book. It is, rather, an intimate portrait of the last years of a man who spent more than half of his life in the custody of those for whom the destruction of Germany and the German people was the prime objective. It is also the story of his nurse, Abdallah Melaouhi, who selflessly cared for Hess during the last five years of his life.
Mr. Melaouhi has woven a fascinating tale of the truth about one of the most maligned men of our time.
This book is also a passionate plea by the author for justice. More than 25 years after Hess’s murder, the criminals are still at large. This appalling injustice—a crime in itself—is the motivating factor for the book’s appearance. Mr. Melaouhi felt bound in conscience to seek justice for the deceased and his family, even at the risk of his own life, nearly snuffed out by persons as mysterious as the murderers of Rudolf Hess.
Betrayal and Murder is a book you must own and read, and then share with others. It is full of factual history you will find nearly nowhere else. From a contemporaneous account of Hess’s mission to Britain, to Rommel’s campaign in Tunisia, to the Melaouhi family’s lives as Tunisian freedom fighters, to the incredible tale of Hess’s survival through constant adversity, Mr. Melaouhi and TBR present compelling drama and pathos—all the more compelling because it is true.
Here, indeed, you will “know the truth.” But with knowledge of the truth comes responsibility. If we do nothing about what we learn from Betrayal and Murder, don’t we then become complicit in the crimes it reveals? So buy this book, read it, and then act. Contact the governments of the four Allies and Germany, and demand justice for Hess.