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Rudolf Hess: Deputy Führer

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What would it take to get you to steal a plane, fly alone over to another country that was at war with your own, parachute out of the plane, and then try to make peace with that country that was your enemy? Well, that is exactly what Rudolf Hess did. So, what happened in his life that caused him act the way he did, and what happened afterward? Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (also spelled Heß) was born on April 26, 1894 in Alexandria, Egypt. His parents, Fritz and Clara Hess, were simple merchants and probably never imagined that their eldest son would later go on to become second in the line of succession to one of the most influential dictators that ever lived, Adolf Hitler. Before all of that, his life was fairly normal. He was just another average person.
“Hess volunteered for the German Army in 1914 at the outbreak of World War One, partly to escape the control of his domineering father who had refused to let him go to a university but instead persuaded him into an unwanted career in the family business” (History Place). He fought with a unit from Bavaria in the Battle of Ypres. After being wounded twice, he changed his careers slightly, not too long after the battle previously mentioned. He transferred from being a regular foot soldier in a Bavarian unit to an airplane pilot in the German air force.
After the war, he joined an organization called the Friekorps that hired ex-soldiers to violently put down Communist uprisings in Germany. Then, Hess decided to go to college

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