Was Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess replaced with an impostor in Spandau prison? Long-awaited DNA results are in
- Rudolf Hess’ own doctor and US president Franklin Roosevelt believed the man in Germany’s Spandau prison was not Hess
- The inmate was found hanged in an apparent suicide in 1987 at the age of 93
A long-standing conspiracy theory that the Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess was replaced by a doppelgänger in prison has been debunked.
For years, there were rumours that the prisoner known as Spandau #7 at the Berlin jail was an impostor substituted in to take the place of the deputy Fuhrer of the Third Reich.
But now scientists say analysis of blood samples from Spandau #7 and a living relative of Hess has put an end to the theory. The inmate was Hess after all.
“No match would have supported the impostor theory, but finally we got a match,” said Professor Jan Cemper-Kiesslich, of the University of Salzburg, a co-author of the long-awaited research.
German neo-Nazis rally in Berlin on anniversary of Rudolf Hess’s death
Hess was captured after a mysterious solo flight and parachute landing in Scotland in 1941, where he apparently hoped to negotiate a peace deal. He was held at various locations including the Tower of London before being tried at Nuremberg and given a life sentence.