International Campaign for Real History

How the German authorities stifle tokens of respect for Rudolf Hess (even now)

January 12, 1999

Quick navigation

Das freie Forum
Informationsdienst, Gesellschaft für freie Publizistik e.V., Heft No. 1/1999.


WEGEN befürchteter Demonstrationen zum 11. Todestag von Rudolf Heß verhängten Behörden in Baden-Württemberg erstmalig gegen insgesamt 116 Personen vorbeugend eine Meldepflicht: Die Betroffenen mußten sich von Freitag bis Sonntag abend (15.-17. 8. 98) täglich zwei- bis dreimal bei der Polizei melden. Bei Nichtbefolgung wurde ein Bußgeld und die Möglichkeit späterer Verhaftung angedroht. Landespolizeipräsident Erwin Hetger erklärte: »Ich hätte am liebsten alle Aktivisten in Vorbeugegewahrsam genommen.« (Stuttg.Nachr 15. 8. 98)

Bundesweit wurden an dem Wochenende mindestens 435 Menschen vorläufig festgenommen, so in Thüringen rund 190, um Braunschweig 150, in Baden-Württemberg 29 (Welt 18. 8. 98)

Wie das mit den Grundrechten der Demonstrations- und Versammlungsfreiheit zu vereinbaren ist, wird wohl gar nicht mehr bedacht. Daß vorbeugend Kurden beim Fall Ocalan festgenommen wurden, wurde nicht berichtet. Dementsprechend hoch war dann auch der entstandene Personen- und Sachschaden.


[TRANSLATION: Fearing demonstrations on the eleventh anniversary of the death of Rudolf Hess, authorities in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, issued police-reporting orders for the first time against altogether 116 persons. These persons were required to report twice or thrice daily from Friday to Sunday evening (August 15-17, 1998) to their local police. In the event of non-compliance they were threatened with fines and later arrest. Provincial police chief Erwin Hetger explained, "I would have preferred in fact to take all the activists into custody." (Stuttgart Nachrichten, August 15, 1998).

Nationwide that weekend at least 435 persons were temporarily taken into custsody, including 190 in Thuriginia, 150 in Brunswick, twenty-nine in Baden-Württemberg (Die Welt, August 18, 1998).

It is not at first clear how this can be reconciled with the constitutional rights of free assembly and demonstration. There have been no reports of Kurds being taken into preventive custody in the Ocalan affair. Damage to people and property was correspondingly severe.]

Our opinion
IN MAY 1941 Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, parachuted into Scotland in a crazy solo mission to end the bloodshed of World War II. He brought for the King George VI of England a peace offer on terms which, he alleged, Adolf Hitler had authorised him to make, and which would have been completely painless for the British Empire. Churchill intercepted him, and locked him away as a "prisoner of the Secret Service" until 1945. Unimpressed by his motives, the victorious Allies put him on trial at Nuremberg for"crimes against the peace" and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Hess outlived every single one of his judges and prosecutors, and after 47 years in jail, the last twenty-one of them in solitary confinement, he died mysteriously (of strangulation) in the American-guarded Spandau jail, in the British Zone of Berlin, in August 1987.

Intelligent young Germans today regard him as something of a martyr; but their government denies them the right to show their respect for his attempts to end war's cruel madness. Das kann nicht gut gehen, as the Germans say. No good will come of that.

© Focal Point 1999 e-mail:  write to David Irving