Researchers have refuted by a DNA sample, the thesis of conspiracy theorists, after which not Rudolf Hess was sentenced during the Nuremberg trials, but a doppelganger. Even US President Franklin D. Roosevelt is said to have believed in this theory.
Hess had been sentenced to life imprisonment in the Nuremberg war crimes trial and had committed suicide in 1987 in Berlin Spandau prison. The conspiracy theory about a supposed doppelganger arose mainly because of Hess' enigmatic flight to Britain during World War II.
Alleged peace mission
Hess had flown in 1941 by plane to Britain - allegedly to negotiate a peace agreement. With a parachute he jumped off near Glasgow. But British Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not even want to interrupt a dinner party to talk to Hess. Instead, Adolf Hitler's deputy was taken into custody. The National Socialist regime hated Hess because of the action as mentally disordered, Hitler himself spoke of an "unprecedented breach of trust".
Conspiracy theorists believed, however, that the British intelligence service Hess exchanged for a doppelganger to cover up his murder - either by the British or German intelligence, the researchers report in the journal "Forensic Science International Genetics".
Later CIA director Allen Dulles even sent a psychiatrist to Spandau to determine the identity and mental state of the prisoner. Analyzes of the handwriting, voice, and facial features also failed to convince critics that the prisoner was real Hess. DNA analyzes were not available at the time and were not made later.
Hess had been buried in Upper Franconia. In 2011, however, the lease for the tomb was not renewed, because it came again and again to rallies by right-wing extremists. The remains of Hess were therefore exhumed with the consent of his descendants and burned to ashes, which was then buried in the open sea. Thus, the last possibility seemed to be to clearly determine his identity with a genetic test.
Blood sample from 1982
However, one of the study authors had blood taken from the prisoner in Spandau in 1982, from which the researchers now generated DNA samples with the permission of Hess's offspring and compared them to a male relative who wishes to remain anonymous.
The result: The probability that the two are not related, was 0.005 percent, write the researchers to Jan Cemper-Kiedslich from the University of Salzburg. "Therefore, the conspiracy theory that claimed prisoner Spandau # 7 was a cheater is extremely unlikely and therefore refuted."