Lecture 5: Rudolph Hess and the Nuremberg Trials

Rudolph Hess was technically Hitlers deputy but because of what happened at
the trial, he was not awarded the death sentence. In the early 1920s Hess joined
a lunatic organisation The Thule Society. They believed that in the ancient past
there was a floating continent above Europe. Hyperboria its race was that of
super humans i.e. special people. They were tall, Caucasian and had blue eyes.
Their capital city was Thule. It was destroyed because they allowed racial
assimilation. Hence, races could not be corrupted.

Those who escaped, some colonized Atlantis, and the other colonized the
Germanic region these were the Aryans. It was complete nonsense. They came
up with a concept that natural processes generate no waste. What we the
society were doing, was destructive. They called the positive energy the Vril
energy and the Hyperborians were masters of the Vril. This was what the society
wanted to look for. The society had mystics, paranormal people masters of
prophecy, extra-terrestrial features etc. They were not taken seriously in the
mainstream society.

They began publishing a paper which basically served as a warning to not allow
racial mixing. The german name of this paper was The Racist Peoples Observer.
This paper became the chief financer for Hitler and this is how Hess and Hitler
got in contact with each other. The campaigns and rallies were all funded by this
paper. Hess eventually found out was that Vril cannot be harnessed directly. Your
society must have an absolute leader to harness the same, and this leader was
Hitler The Furor. He became such an ardent fan that when the German Police
was going to shoot Hitler he jumped in front and took the bullet on his shoulder.
He was made deputy furor. He was also put in charge of racial purity because he
had a history with the newspaper and such ideas hence the concentration camps
were also his idea.

In 1938, Europe goes to war and Hess finds himself not in the limelight as he is
neither a soldier not a politician. He isnt the talking point. His demented psyche
completely came apart. 2 years into the war, he realises he is really not worth
much. He has just learnt how to fly a plane, and he gets into one of Germanys
superior planes, with no idea of its working and flies from Germany, crosses the
English channel and reached Scotland just to realize he does not know how to
land.

He parachutes down, and the plane crashes into a field. The parachute did not
function properly but he had not broken any bones. They take him for
interrogation, and then they find out who he really was Deputy Furor. Hess asks
to be taken to Churchill as he had a promise of peace. They put him into an
asylum as he seemed to have no clue what he was talking about in interrogation.
They forget about him for 4 years.

The Nazis were being wounded up after the war for trial. After much debate the
trial ground becomes Nuremberg because it was one of the few cities to still
stand in Germany. Also, it is symbolic. Hitler and Hess would organize Nazi party
rallies here, hence, this was symbolic that they would kill Nazism in the place
where it fanatically began.

24 nazis had been captured alive. Hitler and Jodeph Goebbles had committed
suicide. Herman Goring and Rudolph Hess were still there. They are going to put
him on trial, however, Hess shows signs of being clinically insane. The first
challenge would be to prove Hess is sane and by now he is complaining of
another problem Amnesia, not remembering even who he is.

These trials also revealed things such as sensory deprivation a way to influence
new recruits. A person is left there in a small chamber- pitch dark silence
alone for 48 hours. Your senses are cut off. You begin suffering from physical
mental exhaustion. This is when your senses are very sensitive. Your ears want
to listen to ANYTHING. Then words like hate the jews start being played. Then
again solitary confinement. Then repeat announcements. After a period of few
months when you have gone through these practices, your mind gets moulded in
whatever manner they want.

With HESS, we was already so paranoid, they created his entire personality
RUDOLPH HESS. His entire life as HESS and as a child had been created. He had
no idea of who he really was. In Britain, when he was kept in an asylum for 4
months, no Germans were talking to him either. Hence =, even his memory
about his constructed personality began to fade away and now he had nothing to
fall back upon. This was very problematic. Yes he was the deputy furor, and was
responsible was taking Germany to war, but you could not blame him or rather
TRY him for the holocaust or the war against Russia because by then he was
already in Britain.

VIDEO

Hess doesnt even recognize Ghoring somebody he has worked with all his life.
He did seem insane, but there was hardly any way to prove it. The psychologists
who were handling him tried the Rorschach test. This test entailed showing HESS
different patterns and picking up behavioural traits from his answers which were
supposed to depict some sort of consistency. However, his answers showed that
he was depicting at least 15 different personalities. Either he was a fabulous liar
or there was something really wrong. The test failed.

VIDEO

They try to show him images of his own role in Germany, his wife, his son. He
remembered only Adolph Hitler, not even himself. There are different
explanations as to why he has lost his mind, some sexual, some just plain silly.

VIDEO

Hess doesnt seem to have a clue about what was happening in these trials.
These were state of the art courtrooms with 5 language conversions of the
judgement. He would listen for a while, at the ceiling, jolt goring sitting beside, in
other words, be absolutely oblivious to whatever was going on. This was hard to
believe considering this trial would mark life or death.

His lawyers and psychologists decide to test another way. They tell him in break
that the court has decided he is free to go, and he will not be tried any longer.
HESS seems to be visibly disappointed by the same as though he wanted to be
tried. He stands up in court and says that he had been fooling them all along,
and he never lost his memory. Now this added further to the confusion. Why
would a man who was going to be set free set his own self up this way? He was
even proud to have fooled Gorring.

VIDEO

Something about court psychologist

He starts reading comic books and laughing between the trials in the courtrooms.
He pinches Gorring in the stomach when he is being discussed. It all seems
absurd. Hess tells Gorring outside the courtroom that he is pretending to be
insane, he has found out why they were being held and that everything would
soon be okay. Gorring himself feels HESS is mad.

The trials take a different turn when the footage from the concentration camps.
Even Gorring and HESS did not know what was actually happening in these
camps. The lawyers against them were trying to prove that these camps had
been planned and were not sudden. Because, if these are called sudden only
hitler would be to blame and these two would go scot-free. However, HESS is
visibly disturbed on seeing what happened in these camps.

VIDEO

A medical doctor is called in for examination and HESS gives him a list of what is
wrong and this list must reach Winston Churchill. This list was everybody who
was hypnotized by the jews, because he said that the jews hypnotized the Nazis
to do what they did. The nazis would never do what they did otherwise.

HESS wanted to speak on last time before the trial ended. Even though Gorring
advised him not to do the same, he went ahead anyway. This speech was going
to improve things, however, it had other implications. He clearly stated why he
did not regret everything he did in his duty was right. He also called these trials
like those of Stalins court. One of the judges was from a Soviet Jury of the Troika.

He was the only one who still justified Hitler. He was the only one out of the 24
accused who escaped any sentence at all. Partially because he wasnt mentally
stable, and also because not too many crimes could be pinned down on him
because he was already in Britain by the time things started happening.

Hess is called Martyr HESS and he died naturally at 80. He did become a cult
icon. In his trial he told the world how the brainwashing techniques of Nazism
worked and this was an incredible discovery.