In January 2019, the New Scientist in London announced that the US Army has solved the mystery around the identity of the Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess. The article maintained that a blood sample was taken from Hess back in 1982 by US Army doctor Philip Pittman during a routine health check at Spandau Prison in Berlin. A pathologist mounted some of the blood on a microscope slide to perform a cell count and named the slide “Spandau #7”. It was hermetically sealed and kept for teaching purposes at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC.
This sounded very convincing almost 12 months ago, but has since been debunked by numerous sources. From the blood smear a molecular biologist at the University of Salzburg in Austria succeeded in extracting the DNA and soon the scientists were busy looking for a Hess family member after the son, Wolf Rüdiger Hess, had died. They turned to the discredited British historian, David Irving, who provided various phone numbers and from there, they were able to make a match with an unnamed Bavarian member of the Hess family.
What makes this match so suspect is the origin of the blood smear and the unnamed person who provided the Hess family DNA. Hugh Thomas, the author of “The Murder of Rudolf Hess”, wrote in February 2019 the following: “the decision of the Austrian researchers not to reveal either the genotype or haplotype of this DNA and to admit that their sample was for a time in the custody of the Hess family and delivered to the Austrian researchers by an unnamed member of that politically suspect family undermines the provenance of both samples.” The technician who did the work in the laboratory mentioned that the blood looked “remarkably fresh” for a 37-year old sample and had no trouble doing the DNA extraction.
It is highly unlikely that any American medical officer would be allowed to do a routine health check on prisoner #7 when all four nations involved in running Spandau were required to be present. A doctor for each of the four powers would have had to be in the room during any such routine health checkup. For a long time, the British government has had excellent DNA samples of Hess which were taken during his post-mortem examination in the UK back in the late 1980s. They could easily do these DNA tests and compare samples, but have refused to do so. There was never really any need for this bogus DNA confirmation from the Austrian research laboratory.
And finally, after all the medical evidence proving that the man in Spandau was an imposter, there was the surprising evidence provided by a retired Manchester orthodontist, Hans Eirew, who wrote in an email in February 2019 the following: “During 1950/51 I was the British Army dental officer at Berlin military hospital. One of my responsibilities was the dental care of the war criminals at Spandau jail. I had to extract a left upper molar for the very weird prisoner introduced as Rudolf Hess, at his insistence standing up and without pain killing injection. Later I had access to the full official Nazi party medical records for the real Rudolf Hess, going back to his gunshot wounds in WW1. They showed that he had lost his upper left molar teeth early and had an artificial metal bridge where I was deemed to have extracted a tooth. My suspicions were supported by the fact that the other prisoners appeared to have very little contact with No.7 Hess. I am in full support of Dr Hugh Thomas, who was then the most tested army gunshot expert with wide experience in Northern Ireland and who provided medical evidence that the man at Spandau was a “ringer’.”
So it appears that the Hess family or some other source is trying to manipulate the media with this highly suspect DNA study. As the author Joseph Farrell has suggested that “the Hess Mess doesn’t go away by simply waving the DNA wand.”
*Originally posted in December 2019
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