Did Nazi Rudolf Hess have a family link to Wales?

Rudolf Hess, pictured to the right of Adolf Hitler, arrived in Wales 80 years ago

When Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess arrived in a small south Wales town, mystery surrounded why he was there.

Some suspected it was not really him. Even today no-one really knows why he was in the UK.

Historian Phil Carradice suspects Hess was sentimental about Wales because of a connection with his father, Carl Hess.

Hess arrived in Britain on 10 May 1941, when he parachuted into Scotland, where he was first detained.

Then he was taken to the Tower of London and fortified Surrey mansion Mytchett Place before his arrival at Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, exactly 80 years ago.

There was no attempt to keep his arrival at the former psychiatric hospital, Maindiff Court, a secret.

Mr Carradice believes Wales was special to Hess.

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"It is possible that Carl Hess, Rudolf's father, actually lived in Cardiff for a short while," he said.

"Certainly Carl's first wife was buried in the parish churchyard at Michaelston-y-Fedw (on the city outskirts)."

He believed Hess could have asked to be sent to Abergavenny because of the possible family connection and his friendship with Lord Tredegar.

"This might have suited the British authorities quite well as Abergavenny was out of the limelight and easier to protect Hess from himself and others who would have wanted to do him harm before he was brought to trial," Mr Carradice said.

Mystery surrounded the reason Rudolf Hess was in Wales

Mr Carradice said Hess arrived in Scotland apparently to negotiate an end to the war, but doubted he would have had the authority to do that.

"Everything to do with Hess involves a certain amount of guess work, as right up to his death he never really revealed his true thoughts," he said.

"One possibility was that he felt he was increasingly being edged out of Hitler's inner circle by the up-and-coming Nazis such as Himmler, Goring and Bormann.

"Another option is that he was simply more prescient than other Nazis and had already seen the writing on the wall for the ultimate outcome of the war."

There could be evidence for this, Mr Carradice explained.

"As early as the start of 1941, a Russian spy in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, was warning Stalin of an impending attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese," said Mr Carradice.

"Stalin ignored the threat and never shared the information with the Americans, but it's not a huge leap of faith to presume that if news had reached Moscow, Berlin were also aware of the plans.

"If Hess did know of the plans, he must have known Germany could never have won the war once America became involved, so maybe he was simply attempting to save his own neck."

This is something Hess actually achieved - while many Nazis were hanged after the Nuremburg trials, his co-operation with the Allies was taken into account and he received life imprisonment instead.

Historian Phil Carradice believes Hess (third from left) may have been sentimental about Wales

But Mr Carradice believes Hess didn't know what he was doing.

He said: "He was an extremely mentally fragile man who craved attention, was deeply paranoid and who'd already attempted to take his own life while he was in custody in Surrey.

"I also think he had a deeply skewed impression of the power structure in Britain, through his association with Unity Mitford."

Mitford was an English aristocrat and Nazi, and one of the socialite Mitford sisters.

Mr Carradice thought Hess gained from her the idea the aristocracy were Britain's real powerbrokers, and that Hess could appeal to England and Germany's shared heritage.

Hess, pictured (right) with fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini, is rumoured to have dined with Lord Tredegar in Newport

He knew Mitford between 1935 and 1939, before a failed suicide attempt left her with a bullet lodged in her brain.

"Hess was wowed by everything aristocratic and the idea that he could talk to them on the same level flattered his sensitive ego," said Mr Carradice.

At Maindiff Court, Hess was heavily guarded, as much against suicide as escape, but he still enjoyed considerable freedom.

He was driven around the countryside by his jailers, and allowed to walk around the grounds.

He was let out to paint landmarks such as White Castle and The Skirrid mountain.

Once he is even rumoured to have dined with Lord Tredegar at Tredegar House in Newport.

"Lord Tredegar was something of an eccentric peer who was in charge of messenger pigeons during the war, just the sort of man who Hess thought he should be dealing with.

"Right up until the very end I believe he felt he could talk his way out of it, if only he'd gained access to the right class of people," said Mr Carradice.

But Hess couldn't talk his way out of it.

In 1945, Hess, pictured second from left, was among many high-ranking Nazis to stand trial in Nuremburg

In October 1945 he was taken from Abergavenny to stand trial at Nuremburg.

There he was convicted of being a key architect of the Nazi regime and sentenced life imprisonment at Berlin's Spandau Prison where he shared stories of Abergavenny with Welsh guard Colin Lambert.

Hess was the last prisoner at Spandau.

For the last 21 years of his life he had the entire jail to himself. After his death on 17 August 1987, the site was demolished.

To stop it becoming a Nazi shrine it was ground into powder and dumped in the North Sea.

The only known remains of Spandau are a set of keys in a Scottish museum.