DEATH IN WALES LED TO RISE OF PROMINENT NAZI
T HE death of an innocent young Welsh woman decades before World War II set in motion the rise of one of the most notorious Nazis.
The death of Elizabeth Mackie in 1891 was before anybody would have contemplated the destruction of the war which ravaged the globe and left millions dead.
But her tragic death almost 50 years beforehand would set off a chain of events that led to the birth of one of Adolf Hitler’s most senior aides.
Just 12 months before her death, the Michaelstone-y-Fedw born Elizabeth Mackie married a charming German man she met in Gloucester. Her sudden death led her husband Carl Hess to return home to Germany, where he would eventually remarry and father Rudolf Hess.
Rudolf would eventually rise through the ranks of the Nazi party, help Hitler dictate his infamous Mein Kampf, and following the war be sentenced to life in prison.
An article in the Western Mail in 1941 revealed the full links between the notorious Nazi and Wales.
The article stated that Carl Hess once lived near Cardiff and potentially worked as a teacher in the area.
It described Carl as a “highly educated” man who was a “fluent master” of several languages after long periods of travelling around the world.
In 1890 he met Elizabeth Mackie, born and raised in Michaelstone-y-Fedw, but descended from a Scottish family.
The pair eventually married, but the Western Mail described how their “happiness was short-lived” as Mrs Hess died only 12 months later.
Carl Hess then gave up any share in the few hundred pounds left by his wife, and returned to Germany.
Mrs Hess was taken back to Michaelstone-y-Fedw where she was buried in the parish churchyard.
Carl Hess erected a gravestone, that still stands, at the site which reads: “Erected by Carl Hess of Schleswig, Germany, in memory of his wife, Elizabeth Mackie, who died at Exmouth, Devon, June 13, 1891 aged 35. In life beloved; in death never forgotten.”
When Elizabeth met Carl she was working at the household of the Bishop of Gloucester and he was a steward at the bishop’s palace.
The 1941 article in the Western Mail quotes Elizabeth’s brother Edward as saying: “He [Carl] made no secret of the fact he was German and shortly after he met my sister he took a position with Mr Bryce, a rich young American, and went with him to Exmouth.
“My sister followed later and they were married there. Twelve months later I had a letter from Hess saying that my sister had gone out boating and caught a chill, and had since died of pneumonia.”
The article added that Carl eventually bought a hotel in Germany, and told his former in-laws in a letter that he was due to marry again.
Edward Mackie added: “He [Rudolf Hess] is certainly a different sort of man from his father. Carl Hess and his brother Wilhelm were two of nature’s gentlemen, refined, well educated, and with gentle, loving natures.”
And decades after his father left Wales, Rudolf Hess would eventually end up back in the country as a prisoner of war.
Hess was one of the most powerful figures in the Third Reich and as deputy leader of the party answered only to Adolf Hitler. But in 1941 and on the eve of war with the Soviet Union, he betrayed Hitler by flying solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom.
His mission failed when he was forced to parachute from the plane and he became a prisoner of war.
During much of his time as a PoW he was confined to Maindiff Court Military Hospital in Abergavenny and treated for insanity.
After the war, Hess was tried at the Nuremberg war trials and handed a life sentence.
The last remaining member of Hitler’s inner circle, Hess committed suicide in 1987 aged 93 whilst imprisoned at Spandau Prison in West Berlin.
After his death Hess was buried in Bavaria, but after the site became a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis, his body was moved in 2011 and cremated with his ashes scattered in an unknown lake.