Görtemaker, Manfred Rudolf Hess. Der Stellvertreter

"What a sight for the world," Joseph Goebbels noted in shock in his diary. "A mentally broken second man to the Führer. Horrible and unthinkable". Rudolf Hess had just departed for his mysterious flight to England to make peace single-handedly. Who was this man surrounded by mystery, who seemed like a shadow of Hitler, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Nuremberg and was to become an icon of the neo-Nazis after his death in Spandau?

Manfred Görtemaker presents the first fundamental biography, which, with new sources, provides an extraordinarily precise insight into the top echelons of the Nazi regime. The Potsdam-based contemporary historian Manfred Görtemaker worked for almost 20 years on this meticulously researched biography. For the first time, he was able to evaluate about 4100 letters and 50000 sheets of correspondence from the Hess estate in the Bern Federal Archives and, with special permission, to see the papers of Lord Selkirk of Douglas, the son of the Duke of Hamilton, to whom Hess flew to Scotland. He also consulted an impressive number of other previously untapped archival documents. The result is an extraordinarily vivid picture of the life of the man who went through thick and thin with Hitler from the very beginning, managed his growing power like an alter ego and about whose influence as the "deputy of the Führer" no rival had any illusions. Manfred Görtemaker was the first to evaluate letters and writings from the estate of Rudolf Hess.