Officials close ranks against Hess theory

Press, 19 April 1979, Page 8

Officials close ranks against Hess theory

NZPA London Allied officialdom has been quick to dismiss claims that Hitler’s war-time deputy, Rudolph Hess, is not the man held in Berlin’s Spandau Jail for more than 30 years. Lord Shawcross, Britain’s chief military prosecutor at the Nuremburg war crimes trials which sentenced Hess to life imprisonment for his role in the Third Reich, called the “imposter’’ allegation “most unlikely.” Officials of France, Britain, and the United States (which With the Soviet Union jointly administer Spandau) have said Hess’s identity is known beyond doubt. The allegations that the now 85-year-old Hess was not Spandau’s Prisoner Number Seven were made public last week by a former British military surgeon, Mr Hugh Thomas. Now a consultant at a hospital in Wales, Mr Thomas

said the man imprisoned in Spandau did not match the medical records of Hess. Mr Thomas, who as a military surgeon examined the prisoner in 1973, said he showed no trace of the chest wounds received by Hess in World War I, and that there were other medical irregularities. But in a radio interview at the week-end, Lord Shawcross said he was not impressed by Mr Thomas’s theory. “I cannot imagine any reason why the Germans should have carried out an exchange, or how the. Allies could have been deceived if they had.” Allied officials also called the Thomas allegations “nonsense.”

There was ample evidence of Hess’s identity spokesmen said, and a British military spokesman had told the “Daily Mail” newspaper: “We have no doubt whatso-

ever that the man In Spandau is Hess.” Hess’s wife, Use, who lives in the Bavarian Alps, called the suggestion “absurd.” Referring to Mr Thomas, she told the “Sunday Telegraph,” which is serialising Thomas’s book, “The Murder of Rudolph Hess”: “This fellow hasn’t got all his cups in the cupboard.” But Mr Thomas himself has rebutted the criticism. “Most people have commented without reading my evidence which 1 regard as conclusive,” he said. A Labour backbencher, Mr William Molloy, has called for a full official inquiry into the allegations which he said “could be the revelation of the century. “The author’s qualifications alone mean that his bookmust be taken seriously,” he said. “It is now incumbent • on the Allied Powers to es-1 ' tablish what the truth reallyl • is."