Controversy around death of Hitler deputy Rudolf Hess settled by DNA test
A doppelganger controversy surrounding the death of Nazi leader and war criminal Rudolf Hess finally ended after Austrian scientists published DNA research authenticating his body.
Hess was found hanged in 1987, age 93, in an apparent suicide after spending more than 40 years in prison for war crimes. Then, conspiracies started to abound.
Some claimed that the aging Nazi had been killed by either German or British intelligence services so he would not reveal any secrets.
Another theory, which gained increasing traction after receiving support from Hess's surgeon and high-ranking intelligence officials, was that the prisoner found dead by hanging in Spandau prison was not in fact Rudolf Hess.
The proponents of what has become known as the doppelganger theory claimed that there were some physical and psychological inconsistencies between the known Rudolf Hess and Spandau #7, the moniker by which Hess was known in jail.
Despite the apparent evidence, Hess's family always claimed it to be untrue.
Researchers from Salzburg University in Austria carried out DNA testing on one of Hess's living relatives, and a blood test drawn from Spandau #7 in 1982, kept in optimal conditions.
The test, which was carried out in 2018, but was not published until last week, drew a 100% match.
Hess has been a major figure among the small but vocal community of neo-nazi supporters in Germany.
Hess was an early supporter of Hitler, and became his secretary while in jail with him in the early 1920s - even editing . He followed Hitler for the next twenty years, becoming his deputy.
But in 1941, he flew over to Scotland, apparently in an unsanctioned bid for peace. He was arrested and jailed by British authorities until the end of the war, then faced the court in Nuremberg, where he was charged with war crimes.
He was jailed in Berlin's Spandau prison, which had been set up especially for war criminals and manned by allied forces.
From 1966 to his death, Hess, who was known as Prisoner number 7, was the only prisoner in Spandau - and was kept there mostly for political reasons, as their rotating control of the jail afforded the Soviets a foothold in West Berlin.
The Nazi's grave, and the prison itself have had to be destroyed in order to prevent them from becoming a neo-Nazi pilgrimage site.
His birthday, in August, has become the occasion of controversial marches.
Protesters, who are barred from displaying Hess’s photo or glorifying the Third Reich in any way, avoid to chant slogans. But they carry ambiguous signs.
In 2018, some of those signs called to “debunk the suicide lie."