The Flight of Rudolf Hess

This is unfortunately not the book I hoped it would be when I bought it, but at only some 140 pp. of text that should come as little surprise, especially given its rather specific title. I'd hoped it would allow me to become much more familliar with this relative enigma of the Nazi "top brass", Adolf Hitler's Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Walther Richard Hess. Now best known as a Cold War martyr and "lightning rod" for current Neo-Nazi sentiment, Hess spent more than half his long life as a prisoner of the victorious Allies, not dying until August, 1987, at the age of 93. The basic facts of his life have long been common knowledge; perhaps it's this very familliarity that ironically serves to obscure the "real" man. Hess served as both an infantryman and an aviator in WWI, emerging from that experience as a disillusioned young officer who disappointingly never flew in actual combat. Unfortunately for him - as well as most of his generation - he soon fell under the sway of the charismatic orator Hitler, becoming early on his "right hand man" and private secretary. It was Hess to whom Hitler dictated most of his landmark tirade Mein Kampf while both were imprisioned for sedition and revolution following the failed Putsch in 1923. As Hitler rose in power following release, so too did Hess in his entourage. By the opening of WWII, Hess was Deputy Fuhrer and Hitler's heir apparant. But then suddenly everything went awry for the devoted follower. I hoped this book would shed a little light on Hess, his personality, and career as Hitler's "understudy"; perhaps wisely, given the scope of this work and the area of expertise of its authors, they choose instead to focus on the narrow incident which sealed his fate. Hess is perhaps, as the authors state, the best known of Hitler's lieutenants, especially with good reason to the English. It was to them he made his fateful flight May 10, 1941, following their defeat in France the year previous and right before the German invasion of Russia in what seems to have been a crack-brained attempt at making peace, which ended in dismal failure. Though he spent the next four years as their prisoner, apart from inquiring into the state of his mental health, they seem to have paid little attention to getting inside the man or his motives; Hitler simply declared him insane, and disavowed both him and his mission. His successor Martin Bormann tried to erase all memory of him among the German people. With circumstances so odd, somewhat naturally all sorts of myths and legends have arisen regarding Hess, his motives, his flight, and even his eventual demise while serving as the last surviving member of what had been Hitler's inner circle and the last political prisoner of the Allies throughout the ensuing Cold War. The authors choose to concentrate on the details of Hess' experience as a pilot, the actual 4-hour flight, the Me/Bf 110E-2/N aircraft it was made in, and his "reception" upon arrival in Scotland; this com