Officials had to quash claim jailed Hess was ‘lookalike’

THE capture of Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess after he parachuted into Scotland remains one of the strangest episodes of the Second World War.

Hess flew to Britain in a secret attempt to broker a peace deal in May 1941 but bailed out over Eaglesham, Renfrewshire, when his plane ran low on fuel.

He was captured and sentenced to life in Spandau prison in West Berlin in 1947.

Newly-released files show Foreign Office officials were engaged in a behind-the-scenes bid to quash claims made by a former British Army surgeon that the man who was jailed was an imposter and lookalike.

By 1979 Dr Hugh Thomas, who had seen Hess in jail, claimed it could not be the old Nazi because he did not have scarring left by a bullet that was known to have penetrated Hess’s lung during the First World War.

Dr Thomas accused the British government of a cover-up and alleged Hess’s plane had been shot down on the orders of his rival, SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

He claimed Himmler sent someone else on the mission instead.

To stop the allegations being revived in future, officials quietly commissioned a series of reports. One used evidence from another British physician who said the man in prison had a scar that did correspond to Hess’s war wound.

The Foreign Office then published a response stating: ‘On the basis of these studies, we have no doubt the prisoner in Spandau is Rudolf Hess.’ In 1987 Hess, 93, was found dead in Spandau having apparently hanged himself.