Book reviews: Camp Z: The secret life of Rudolf Hess And The Flight of Rudolf Hess

ON THE evening of 10 May 1941, the Deputy Fuhrer of the Third Reich, Rudolf Hess, flew across the Cheviot Hills. It was, he recalled, a "heavenly, polar-like view". Near St Mary's Loch, he waved cheerfully to farm hands from treetop level.

After the "fairy-like view" of the Cumbrae isles, he baled out above Eaglesham. Knocked unconscious, he "woke up in a German-looking meadow". After a cup of tea from a ploughman, Hess told his captors that he wanted to meet the Duke of Hamilton: he was on a peace mission that would give Britain a free hand in its Empire in exchange for Hitler's free hand in Europe and the East. News of Hess's departure reduced Hitler to tears, while Goebbels noted: "What a spectacle for the world: a mentally deranged second man after the Fuhrer".

The flight from Augsburg to Eaglesham by the world's second most famous Nazi has spawned countless conspiracy theories. In a new edition of The Flight Of Rudolf Hess, Roy Conyers Nesbit and Georges van Acker try to discredit definitively such theories, with the help of recently declassified documents. For the authors, the Duke of Hamilton was not implicated in the actions of Hess, whom he had never met, and nor was British military intelligence. The flight was not made with Hitler's knowledge, and it was certainly not made by an imposter. Instead, it seems Hess, increasingly isolated in the Nazi leadership, acted alone; though recent revelations may indicate Hitler was more personally involved.

But was Hess, as the Nazis claimed, the "victim of hallucinations"? Stephen McGinty fills a crucial gap by exploring Hess's time as the only inmate of Camp Z in Surrey. Bugged conversations with MI6 officer Frank Foley, guards, psychiatrists and Lords Beaverbrook and Simon were used in a vain attempt to ascertain the real motives and mental health of their prisoner. "Jonathan" could be charming but extremely vain. He also showed signs of acute paranoia, being convinced that his food was poisoned. Hess attempted suicide, and would spend much of his time pining for Bavaria or sketching the Scottish country house he dreamed of settling in after the war. Outside Camp Z, politicians suggested he was in cahoots with a "peace party" of pro-Nazi aristocrats, while British intelligence used Hess to undermine the Soviet-Nazi alliance.

Hess did not divulge significant secrets, and it is not certain if he was bluffing in Camp Z, just as he feigned amnesia at the Nuremberg Trials. But it is difficult to accept the judgement of Hess's psychiatrists that his personality, divided between passivity and idolisation of "chivalric" father figures like Hitler then Hamilton, was "based on masturbation guilt".

There was indeed a peace party in the Scottish aristocracy, as had been shown by support for the Munich Agreement by the Dukes of Argyll and Buccleuch. After the twilight of the Third Reich, the new paranoia of the Cold War would offer his erstwhile comrades lucrative consultancies with western intelligence and Latin American dictatorships, while Hess himself was forced to rot in solitary until his suicide aged 93. Foley, who, as head of station in Berlin before the war, had saved thousands of Jews, wrote of his former prisoner: "He was a nasty piece of ignorance, but he was not as cruel as some of those who are now free."

This article was originally published in Scotland on Sunday on June 5th 2011