First UK edition. first printing. 164pp, with black and white plate illustrations. Black cloth-covered boards with gilt titles on spine, top text block edge sprayed blue. 8vo. Slight lean. Cloth is faded along lower edge, gently rubbed and rounded at corners and spine ends. Fore and lower text block edges a little toned and spotted. Mild offset tanning on free endpapers otherwise internally neat, clean, bright and tight. In its original dust wrapper, faded, bumped and chipped at edges, a little crumbled on corners and spine heel, minor loss at spine head. Dust jacket now protected in an archival quality Mylar wrapper fitted without the use of tape or adhesives.
Rudolf Hess (1894-1987) was deputy Fuhrer to Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1941. His daring, fruitless flight to Britain was one of the outstanding episodes of the Second World War. In the introduction to this book his wife, Frau Ilse Hess, describes those fateful days in May 1941. Thereafter she lets her husband speak through his own letters of the lone flight to Scotland and the adventurous night landing by parachute. The letters describe his years of imprisonment in England, months in the dock at the post-war Nuremburg trials and his thoughts and conversations behind the walls of Spandau prison. As the letters unfold, they also reveal how Hess reconciled himself to his fate - Hess voices little resentment but nonetheless passes judgement on the politicians of destruction of 1941, on the Tribunal of 1946 and on the goalers at Spandau.
