Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess was a high-ranking officer in Nazi Germany.
Biography
In 1940, Cybermen were discovered in the Le Mur Engineering compound after the Germans occupied Jersey at the start of World War II. This resulted in a power struggle in Berlin in which Hess, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering and others all competed for a position under Adolf Hitler that would allow them control of the discovery. (PROSE: Illegal Alien [+]Loading...["Illegal Alien (novel)"])
Later, Hess embarked on a mission in a plane. (PROSE: Heart of TARDIS [+]Loading...["Heart of TARDIS (novel)"]) He was captured by the British and imprisoned in the Tower of London. (PROSE: The Domino Effect [+]Loading...["The Domino Effect (novel)"]) After the war, he was imprisoned in Spandau. (PROSE: Heart of TARDIS [+]Loading...["Heart of TARDIS (novel)"])
Behind the scenes
- In the real world, Hess was captured in March 1941 after his plane crashed in Scotland during an unauthorised mission to make peace with Britain before Germany invaded the Soviet Union. While Heart of TARDIS briefly alludes to this by mentioning his plane, the exact details of Hess's capture within the Doctor Who universe have yet to be revealed.
- Rudolf Hess was among the senior Nazis tried at the Nuremberg trials. He was found guilty on all four charges against him and sentenced to life imprisonment. While the Nuremberg trials have been mentioned in the DWU, Hess has not been mentioned to have been a defendant. Heart of TARDIS does, however, mention Hess's imprisonment at Spandau.
- Originally, the character Kane from Dragonfire [+]Loading...["Dragonfire (TV story)"] was to be named "Hess." However, around this time (August 1987), the Soviet Union government had announced that they were no longer blocking the release of Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess on humanitarian grounds, an announcement closely followed by the 93-year-old Hess' death by apparent suicide at Spandau Prison in Berlin, West Germany. These events forced a name change to Kane. "Kane" came about because it also had four letters, which allowed the script editor, Andrew Cartmel, to easily replace "Hess" with "Kane" in the scripts. (DOC: Fire and Ice)
