AP News, September 28th, 2007
Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union squabbled constantly over the imprisonment of senior Nazi Rudolf Hess, with the Russians rejecting attempts to give him more lenient treatment, newly declassified documents reveal.
Files from Britain's Foreign Office released Friday by the National Archives show the extent of disagreement in 1973 and 1974, when Western governments sought to have the elderly Hess freed from Germany's Spandau Prison on humanitarian grounds. The campaign met opposition from Moscow, which was jointly responsible for overseeing Hess' captivity.
"The United States government has in past years joined its British and French allies in approaching the Soviet government ... to ask that Rudolf Hess be released on compassionate grounds because of his advanced age," said a letter from a U.S. official to British lawmaker Airey Neave.
"The Soviets have consistently rejected these approaches and have refused to consider any reduction in Hess's life sentence."
Support for Hess' release went to the top of the U.S. administration. A memo from the British legal adviser to the prison noted that then-President Richard Nixon "shares the view that there are humanitarian reasons for releasing Hess."
Nixon assured his allies "that the U.S. government is ready to join in a further approach to the Soviet Union at any time there is an indication that such an approach holds a reasonable chance of success."
The Western allies eventually concluded that they could not overcome Soviet opposition to Hess' release. Hess hanged himself at the prison in 1987 at age 93.
Hess, deputy to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, was arrested in Britain in 1941 after parachuting into the country on a peace mission. He was sentenced to life in prison for war crimes at the postwar Nuremberg trials of senior Nazi officials.
From the mid-1960s, he was the only prisoner at Spandau prison, guarded by a team of warders from Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union.
The documents reveal almost constant disagreement among the countries over matters ranging from the length of family visits to whether Hess could have a new notebook and what time he was to take off his glasses at night.
A memo from a British official to his American and French counterparts accuses the Soviets of "taking rigid negative positions on trivial matters."
A June 1974 letter from an American official to British and French authorities notes Soviet objection to "more relaxed procedures adopted informally ... whereby Hess is allowed to retain his spectacles if he wishes until 23.30."
"The Soviets now wish us to comply with the old regulation they follow, which required that the spectacles be removed at 22.00."
There also was friction among the Western allies. Minutes of a September 1974 meeting of prison governors include discussion of whether a British warder breached regulations by allowing Hess to collect some plums that had fallen off a tree and been pecked by birds.
