Andrey Plotnikov

The Mystery of the Death of Rudolf Hess. The Diary of the warder of the Spandau Prison

Rudolf Hess is one of Hitler’s closest associates, and at the same time one of the most mysterious hierarchs of the Nazi Reich. Not only his life is shrouded in mystery, but also the circumstances of his death in the Spandau Allied Prison in 1987. There are still ongoing debates about whether he committed suicide or was killed by intelligence agents. The author of the book, Andrey Plotnikov, a Soviet warder at the Spandau prison, conducted his own detailed historical investigation and came to unexpected conclusions that shed light on the true circumstances of the death of the “Deputy Fuhrer.”

Andrey Plotnikov. From the author

I am often asked why I published my diary entries only many years after the completion of the Spandau prison? There is an explanation for this. In accordance with the Statute of the Spandau Allied Prison, prison staff did not have the right to make public the circumstances of the prisoners’ lives and any information that became known to them in the course of performing their official duties.

Naturally, for me, a young Soviet man, the obligations undertaken to not disclose official information were an unquestionable law, not only during my work, but also in the first years after my dismissal from Spandau. The scattered notes that I had, newspaper clippings, and copies of individual documents lay motionless, neatly folded into a large folder.

Well, very “dark” times soon came: the completion of “perestroika”, the collapse of the Soviet Union. For many years, Spandau prison and everything connected with it ended up in the distant corners of my memory. Life posed more prosaic questions: what to live on, where to work, how to support a family? A folder with documents about Spandau prison lay in the closet under books for many years and was not even opened.

Thoughts arose first

And only at the beginning of the 2000s I again brought my archive out into the world. In the evenings after work or on weekends, I took time away from communicating with my family to organize and analyze the surviving materials. In 2005, as a tourist, I visited Germany and visited the site of the former Spandau prison. This trip stirred up old memories and inspired specific creative activities. But I was still not sure about the need and advisability of open publication.

In 2009-2010, articles by the last Soviet director of Spandau prison V.A. Chernykh, appeared in Russian publications. “If my former boss has the right to talk about his work at prison,” I thought then, “then I can do it too.” After that, work on the book became more fun.

I soon learned that the former British director of Spandau, Mr. Le Tissier, published the book “Farewell to Spandau” back in 1994. In it, the British director stated that Hess committed suicide because the USSR promised to release the old man, but did not keep his promises. He declared that Hess did not suffer such a nervous shock, and the Soviet Union is to blame for everything. This version is still the “official” version of Hess’s death for the whole world.

It also turned out that former prison orderly Abdallah Melaouhi published the book “I looked his killers in the eyes!” in 2008. In it, he puts forward his version: Hess was killed by two British intelligence officers dressed in American army uniforms. Journalists from different countries still love this version today. However, due to the fact that I knew Abdallah personally, a question arises: who suggested this topic to the orderly and helped him write the book? Who benefits from this version? It is worth noting that individual episodes in Melaouhi’s book only bring a smile to people familiar with the real situation in Spandau in 1987. Obviously, someone greatly “corrected” the author or simply wrote for him.

Declassified documents have appeared

My diaries were almost finished when in 2013, 25 years after being classified, as required by British law, materials from the British military police investigating Hess’s death appeared on the Internet. And after some time, American archives opened access to State Department materials related to the Spandau prison. Thus, I had the opportunity to independently analyze the circumstances of the death of Rudolf Hess on the basis of the documents that were discovered and substantiate my version of what happened. This took a lot of time.

The result of this many years of work was the two parts of the large book “The Mystery of the Death of Rudolf Hess: The Diary of the Warder of the Spandau Allied Prison,” which was published by the Kuchkovo Pole publishing house in 2018. The first part of the book is written in narrative form, with a lot of intrigue, adventure, and interesting little-known events. Second part is a documentary investigation, presented in dry, official language with many details.

The presentation of the book was successfully held on September 8, 2018 at VDNKh as part of the Moscow International Book Fair. The book’s circulation quickly disappeared from bookstore shelves. Therefore, there was a need to publish an electronic version of the book.