The real reason for Rudolf Hess's flight to Britain in 1941?

[StefanM]

Apparently he was wearing a leather flying suit bearing the rank of Captain and 'he brought along a supply of money and toiletries, a torch, a camera, maps and charts, and a collection of 28 different medicines, as well as dextrose tablets to help ward off fatigue and an assortment of homeopathic remedies'.

Wikipedia.
Rudolf Hess - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Many thanks

I wonder are these items and flying suit at the Imperial War Museum or some other museum?

[Shadwellarmy]

At that time the Labour Party of Great was almost entirely funded and supported by the trade union movement, which was also closely involved in the pre-selection of Labour candidates in parliamentary elections, a case of “he who pays the piper”.

Attachment 574490

The trade union movement in turn received “sponsorship” funding to a great degree from the USSR through proxy communist organisations and trade missions whose ultimate aim was the creation of a soviet socialist state in Great Britain. This was not unique to the UK as similar communist front organisations were set up throughout Europe for the same express purpose of spreading the communist revolution abroad.

It will be recalled that the British trade union movement as well as the communist party of Great Britain fully supported the Bolsheviks during the Polish-Bolshevik War of the 1920s by refusing to handle any cargos likely to be used by the “Polish white-guards” against Bolshevik Russia.

The animosity between the Labour party and the communists during the 1920s was the result of "Zinoviev letter" published by the Daily Mail newspaper just before the 1924 General Election which purported to show the communists and Labour party plotting to take power, this is supposed to have scared the wider public into voting Conservative thus ousting the Labour Party out of government. However the "Zinoviev letter" was found to be a fake. As recently as 1999 the Chief Historian of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Gill Bennett concluded "it is impossible to say who wrote the Zinoviev Letter" though her best guess was that it was commissioned by White Russian intelligence circles from forgers in Berlin or the Baltic states, most likely in Riga.”.

It was also a common practice of the “Red” press to vociferously oppose something as a public diversion for the communists supporting that which it seemed to publically oppose—a standard black propaganda tactic. This was apparent IMO after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement of August 1939, which the socialist-left seemed, outwardly, stunned to learn and was very vocal against the agreement in the “Red” press. However, and curiously, the Polish-British Common Defence Pact specifically excluded acting on aggression by the USSR so when the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939 Britain did not declare war on Stalin’s Soviet Union as it had done two weeks earlier on Hitler’s Germany. How much influence communist “moles” in the British establishment had over government policy remains a matter of conjecture.

But one must ask if it were true “that many British politicians considered Stalin a bigger threat than the little Austrian with the moustache” then why would the threat of the Soviets as an aggressor against Poland not also have been considered and therefore included in the Polish-British Common Defence Pact given centuries of turbulent history between Poland and Russia?

I think it would be fair to say that as many British politicians and sections of the "establishment" elite supported Hitler's Germany as did support Stalin's Soviet Russia.

Hi 4thskorpion,

Interesting points you bring forward. Im not British and I might have missed something, but to my knowledge the situation where Soviet Union indirectly funded the Labour party took place after wwII and up untill the 1980's not before wwII.

In the beginning of the 1930's the Soviet Union and thus the British Communist party, saw the Labour party as one of their main opponents along with the Nazi movement. They even went so far as to invent the term social-fascists to describe the Labour party.

They also tried to develop their own trade unions in order to compete with the traditional trade unions and when it didnt work they tried to infiltrate the existing ones.

However you're right that towards the end of the 1930's the British communist party tried to put their hostility towards Labour aside as Hitler emerged as a bigger threat internationally.

I think the reason why the British-Polish alliance only aimed at Germany is the fact that everyone expected Germany to launch an attack sooner or later, the Soviet Union had huge internal problems so it wasnt expected that they would assault a large country like Poland.

The pact between Hitler and Stalin also came as a huge suprise to the rest of the world, and Britain wasnt aware of the hidden protocol that included the division of Poland between the two of them until it happened.

Another issue might be geography, the distance from Britain to Germany is short and the SU much farer away. Also Germany was the main enemy in the first war. However Stalin came to power long before Hitler and thus had much more time to terrorise his own population than his Austro/German counterpart so I think the picture of Stalin as a paranoid tyran was established long before that of Hitler who was more considered some sort of caricature in the beginning of his reign hence Stalin being a larger danger in the long term.

Btw. the British actually did try to fight the Soviet Union during the Finnish-Soviet Winter war in 1939/1940. Although it wasnt a wholehearted effort.

Hope this all makes at least some sense and sorry for the long text.

Anyway Im open to new info, as Im here to learn.

Have a nice weekend!

Cheers, Mads

[StefanM]

The Labour Party was formed out of the Labour Representation Committee by the trade union movement in Britain which sought to establish political representation for itself in Westminster. The 1921 Trade Union Congress endorsed the formation of four joint departments with the Labour Party - research, legal advice, publicity and international affairs - and approved the creation of a National Joint Council with representatives from the TUC, Parliamentary Labour Party as well as the Party Executive

Many of the militant trade union shop stewards were influenced by the theories of Marx and Lenin especially after the Bolshevik revolution. As I mentioned previously the trade unions formed the powerful solidarity movement 'Hands Off Russia' campaign to stop British support to Poland fighting during the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1919-1921. The threat that Britain might actually declare war against the Soviet Republic resulted in the formation of Councils of Action which pledged, with the support of the TUC and the Labour Party, to mobilise mass strikes should the threat prove real.

Trade union leaders and activists made many visits to Soviet Russia and were impressed by the workers utopia as shown to them in carefully orchestrated tours. In fact the Labour Party's first constitution written by Sidney Webb in 1918, included the "socialist clause 4" this followed Webb's own visit to Soviet Russia.

The Communist Party of Great Britain was small however its influence however was vastly greater than the sum total of its members, which Included the leading industrial militants who had orchestrated and led the massive pre-war strikes. They had also formed the core of the Shop Stewards' Movement. Support for the fledgling Soviet Union was not confined to communists. TUC delegations visited the USSR in 1920 and 1924, and an Anglo-Russian Joint Advisory Council was established between the TUC and Soviet unions.

The leadership of the trade union movement was almost entirely pro-communist or communist and the unions received financial "sponsorship" and "grants" by proxy Soviet Russian cultural and trade missions.

The fact that the Labour Party was the Trade Union Movement and the trade union movement was supported by its communist sponsors meant that the Labour Party was also indirectly funded by Soviet Russia, even before WWII. Many Labour MPs originally had leadership roles in the trade union movement; one example was Ernest Bevin who co-founded and served as general secretary of the extremely powerful Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) whom Churchill appointed as Minister of Labour in the war-time coalition government.

The communists had not only found fertile ground from within the trade union movement but also with the British establishment and intelligentsia, which of course included the infamous "Cambridge Five". From researching original files at the National Archives it is clear the Foreign Office was most definitely pro-Soviet in its outlook during the interbellum period.

"In the beginning of the 1930's the Soviet Union and thus the British Communist party, saw the Labour party as one of their main opponents along with the Nazi movement. They even went so far as to invent the term social-fascists to describe the Labour party."

As I mentioned in my earlier post, it was also a common practice of the “Red” press to vociferously oppose something as a public diversion for the communists supporting that which it seemed to publicly oppose—a standard black propaganda tactic.

"...The pact between Hitler and Stalin also came as a huge surprise to the rest of the world, and Britain wasnt aware of the hidden protocol that included the division of Poland between the two of them until it happened."

The Polish-British Common Defence Pact also had a secret protocol - to exclude an aggressor from the East (a diplomatic euphemism for the USSR) under the mutual aid agreement, ie Britain would not go to war if Poland was invaded by the USSR. This protocol was kept secret supposedly so that the USSR would not take it as a go-ahead to invade Poland itself knowing no action by Britain would be taken. Or it could have been that an aggressor from the East was excluded because "someone" in the British government/establishment already knew about Stalin's intentions to invade and grab part of Poland if and when Germany launched its own invasion from the west!

"....Another issue might be geography, the distance from Britain to Germany is short and the SU much farer away. Also Germany was the main enemy in the first war."

I am not convinced that geography was a factor because shortly after WWI British forces did take part in the civil war in revolutionary Russia on two fronts; one as a main contingent in Allied intervention supporting the 'White' military cause in North Russia in Archangel and Murmansk, 1919 and secondly the RAF also fought in South Russia between 1918-1920, so Russia was not as distant to the British as might be imagined.

".....so I think the picture of Stalin as a paranoid tyrant was established long before that of Hitler".

Actually quite the opposite picture of Stalin was prevalent, he was not seen as a tyrant as all negative aspects of the communist terror was hidden from outsiders by the regime. The USSR was seen as a workers utopia by those on the left in the west...they didn't visit the gulag camps on their tours of Soviet factories, farms etc.

[Dean]

Interesting.. I don't believe most of what the government tells me. Losers or winners. I'd rather trust the people who actually saw it.
Check out the North Korean War museum..

[Gunny Hartmann]

"Yankee Imperialist Dogs"!....

[Dean]

Seriously! I can't believe my people would do that to them..

I'm eager to read the Hess book. The cover looks good.

[StefanM]

Interesting.. I don't believe most of what the government tells me. Losers or winners. I'd rather trust the people who actually saw it.
Check out the North Korean War museum..

Even those that "saw it" can't be entirely trusted, just look how unreliable police witness statements can be. No two people have identical experiences or recollections of identically experienced events. "History" is the study all of these individual experiences and the arrival at a consensus at a particular point in time, because as we know the consensus over accepted history evolves as new information and new insights are incorporated into what was previously accepted.

[Dean]

Very true. I suppose we should trust no one . We should have cameras posted on every corner! that's actually starting to happen..I shouldn't joke!
The truth, in my opinion, is there are madmen in every country and every era. You can find atrocities during every war, on every side.
Without digressing from the Hess book, I'd like to say its odd they kept him locked up so long for what he had done.

[StefanM]

It was the Soviets who wanted Hess imprisoned for life, I believe they vetoed any attempt by "soft" Britain, France and the US at releasing him.

[Glenn66]

We should have cameras posted on every corner!

...or iphones with laser-pen lenses stickytaped to them!