Word: hesse
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After the news of Hess's landing, Berlin's next step was to say Hess had turned peace crank, had been led astray by soothsayers and astrologers. Promptly closed was every spook shop and fortune teller in Germany, not excepting a headline mind reading act in a Berlin music hall. In a special meeting, Hitler rallied the biggest shots of Nazi Germany, who obligingly "gave . . . an impressive demonstration of a determined will for victory." To assure the people that all was well, Nazi ward-heelers started a house-to-house canvass...
Finally, at week's end, Berlin called the incident officially closed. No explanations were given, but the Nazis denied arresting Hess's wife and son, his geopolitical mentor, Professor Karl Haushofer, Plane Designer Willy Messerschmitt. But Nazi spokesmen were probably not exaggerating when they said, "The English . . . will have more headaches over this matter than...
Elsewhere along the Axis there was just as much pother. The Italian press simply parroted Berlin's official statements. Tokyo, on the other hand, showed plainly how puzzled it felt. Japanese papers dug up the dirtiest word they could think of, called Hess an Anglophile because he was born in Alexandria, lived there until he was twelve years old. (Until 1939 his father and mother remained in Egypt.) The land of Bushido (loyalty) could not understand how a man could run out on his boss. If it was all a great big clever Axis plot, the Japanese were...
...Hess took off from the Messerschmitt plant at Augsburg in a new type of reconnaissance plane on a Saturday evening. He wore a gold wrist watch, a gold wrist compass. In the pockets of his superbly tailored flier's uniform he had a photograph of his four-year-old son, two phials of medicine, one for his weak heart, the other for a gall-bladder ailment. He also had a selection of photographs of himself at different ages; a map on which was charted a course from Augsburg to a blue-penciled circle which outlined the grounds of Dungavel...
David McLean, a tenant of the Duke's, saw the Messerschmitt crash and puff into flame, saw also the white bloom of the parachute drifting down through the dusk Armed with a pitchfork, he found Hess lying on the ground with a broken ankle covered by his chute. In perfect English he said to McLean: "Will you take me to Dungavel to see the Duke of Hamilton?" Instead, McLean took him to his cottage, called the Home Guard. The local Home Guard officer arrived, sternly asked in pidgin-English: "You Nazi enemy?" Hess asked again to see the Duke...