W. Hugh Thomas

Presents evidence to support the author's theory that the man who has spent thirty-four years in Spandau Prison is not Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, but an imposter.

The flight of Rudolf Hess, the deputy leader of the Nazi Party, to Scotland in May 1941 remains one of the great unresolved mysteries of the Second World War. Did he come on Hitler's commission--or, as he always maintained, without the Fuhrer's knowledge? Was the man who parachuted out of the Messerschmitt Bf 100 really Hess ... or a double? What was his purpose, why was he incarcerated for life in Berlin's Spandau Prison, and was he (as his son alleged) murdered to prevent his revealing an explosive secret? The biographer of Himmler and Donitz navigates these still swirling controversies with confidence, profiling the man, the milieu, and the uppermost echelons of the Nazi hierarchy. The conclusion: Hess was indeed sacrificed ... but he was a most willing victim.