A study of the man who was Hitler's deputy, Rudolph Hess. On the 10th May 1941, Hess parachuted from a German fighter-bomber flying over Scotland and landed in what he hoped were the grounds of the Duke of Hamilton's country seat. His flight to Britain remains one of the unsolved mysteries of World War II. Was Hess acting on his own initiative, or had the Fuhrer sent him? As with most aspects of Hess's life, the unanswered questions merely multiply. Was the man who landed really Hess? Why, after the war, was Hess incarcerated in Berlin's Spandau prison for the rest of his life? Finally, was he, as his son W.R. Hess alleged, murdered to prevent him revealing some explosive secret? This volume seeks to set Hess firmly in his milieu - a man who fell under Hitler's spell in Munich and rose to a position at the very heart of Hitler's Reich. Hess, Peter Padfield argues, may indeed have been sacrificed, but at the same time he was the most willing victim.