It is one of the greatest remaining conspiracies of the Second World War. In May 1941, Adolf Hitler’s deputy führer, Rudolf Hess, flew solo from Germany to Scotland in an apparent attempt to broker a peace deal between Britain and Germany. Hess’s plan failed, and he was arrested in the UK. He was eventually tried at the military tribunals in Nuremberg and incarcerated in Spandau prison in Berlin, where he died in 1987.
But from the start, there were doubts over whether the prisoner designated Spandau #7 really was Hess. The wartime president of the United States, Franklin D Roosevelt, was one of the leading subscribers to the theory that the man in Spandau was an impostor, an idea perpetuated by a British doctor who worked at Spandau, W Hugh Thomas. The UK government commissioned four investigations into the claims but the ‘doppelgänger conspiracy’ has persisted for 70 years. Had the real Rudolf Hess escaped justice and settled abroad? When the German government cremated Hess’s remains in 2011, it was thought the last chance to pursue DNA analysis of the body had been lost.
Now the mystery has finally been solved by a piece of DNA detective work by a retired military doctor from the US Army and forensic scientists from Austria. They conclude that the prisoner known as Spandau #7 was indeed the Nazi criminal Rudolf Hess. New Scientist magazine article 22 January 2019, ‘Exclusive: DNA evidence solves Rudolph Hess doppelganger theory’
Did a diehard Nazi doppelganger allow Hitler’s right-hand man to walk free? Conspiracies Decoded s1e1: Discovery 2022
Rudolf Hess – Do they have the right man? … Spandau: Hess strips for a chest X-Ray, and visiting physician Dr Hugh Thomas makes a startling discovery. ibid.
This drop of dried blood confirms the identity of Prison Spandau 7: Rudolf Hess. ibid.