Irish judge sought Government intervention over imprisonment of Rudolf Hess
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Rudolf Hess
(via German
Federal Archive)
An Irish judge wrote to the Government in 1977 to plea for an intervention on behalf of Hitler’s former deputy, Rudolf Hess, as a “Christmas good deed”.
Judge Franke Roe’s bid to have the leading Nazi released was revealed in newly-released papers from the 1988 State Archive.
Judge Roe, who later became president of the Circuit Court, wrote to Foreign Affairs Minister Michael O’Kennedy on 18 December 1977.
He wrote: “This is my Christmas good deed – can you do anything to get unfortunate Rudolf Hess released?”
The judge said historian A.J.P. Taylor “makes an unanswerable case” for the Nazi deputy’s release, adding: “I like [Taylor] very much – he is always very favourable to Ireland and the Irish.”
Mr Hess was arrested in Britain in 1941 after flying to Scotland by himself in a bizarre attempt to broker a peace deal between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany.
He was prosecuted in the Nuremberg Trials in 1946 and jailed in Spandau Prison in 1947, where he eventually took his own life in 1987.
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